Federal judge calls out Trump administration over glaring error in court filing

05 January

Kristi Noem addressing members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on January 17, 2025 (Maxim Elramsisy/Shutterstock.com)

One federal judge recently took President Donald Trump's administration to task in its attempt to apply for a search warrant by citing a nonexistent law.

On Monday, Reuters legal journalist Brad Heath highlighted a footnote from a decision by U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes (an appointee of former President Barack Obama) in a case from the Northern District of New York, where Sannes is the chief judge. The case itself is in reference to an immigration raid carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) at a nutrition bar factory in Cato, New York. Sannes' decision from late last month granted a motion by one of the defendants to suppress evidence CBP and HSI obtained during the raid.

In her ruling granting the motion to suppress, Judge Sannes observed that CBP and HSI sought a warrant to search for "evidence, contraband, fruits, and instrumentalities of violations" of several immigration statutes. According to Sannes, those statutes pertain to "the employment, smuggling, transport, or harboring of immigrants unlawfully present in the United States; fraud in connection with identification documents and the use of a false Social Security number."

Sannes further noted that the warrant application itself was "inconsistent," and sometimes referenced "§ 1324, and other times referring to “8 U.S.C. § 1342(a)." The judge wrote in a footnote in the decision that the latter statute "does not appear to exist."

"The warrant itself, however, listed only the nonexistent statute," she wrote. "The parties have not raised this issue, and Defendant has not challenged this warrant, so the Court has not considered it."

The case itself was brought in early 2025, when CBP and HSI received anonymous tips that Nutrition Bar Confectioners knowingly employed undocumented immigrants. New York state labor department records found that 134 employees of the factory "were either using a valid Social Security number that was not assigned to them, a Social Security number belonging to a deceased United States citizen or a number that was not a valid Social Security number issued by the Social Security Administration."

Further investigation by HSI found that the company "did not participate in a federally administered 'web-based system that allows enrolled employers to confirm the identity and eligibility of employees to work in the United States.'"

Click here to read Judge Sannes' full decision.

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