A Texas federal judge had scathing words for the Trump administration last month when he dismissed a “largely fictional” case against a Honduran immigrant who officials accused of harming an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who broke the man’s car window during a stop.
“The Government’s conduct was—and has been—outrageous,” U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his October 20 ruling tossing the case.
The controversy centered around a June stop in San Antonio, where federal agents and Texas troopers arrested Jaime Alberto Quintanilla-Chavez, 35, a Honduran immigrant married to a U.S. citizen. After getting a tip from a Texas woman who claimed Quintanilla-Chavez was in the country illegally and had abused her daughter, officers considered the man an “easy target” and prepared to arrest him.
During the stop, agents ordered him to open the doors of his truck and soon broke the driver’s-side window. In the process, a Homeland Security Investigations officer, William Carl, suffered a cut to his arm.
Federal officials accused Quintanilla-Chavez of impeding officers and harming the agent, seeking a sentence of up to 20 years.
In his ruling, Judge Rodriguez called the government’s description of the stop “largely fictional,” pointing to a variety of issues with the stop: agents lacked a warrant; there was no evidence the Honduran had an order of removal from the country; and officers only asked about his immigration status after they forcibly removed him from the truck and handcuffed him.
Officers claimed the 35-year-old was a threat to them, but the judge found that the evidence did not show the man trying to “assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with the officers.”
Instead, Carl, the immigration agent, appears to shatter the window out of impatience, according to the body camera footage.
“I’m going to go get my window break; I ain’t got time for this,” he can be heard saying on the footage, shortly after ordering Quintanilla-Chavez to open the door of the truck.
In dismissing the case, Judge Rodriguez criticized immigration agents’ apparent “break car windows first and ask questions later policy.”
He wrote that letting the indictment stand would “would grant immigration enforcement officers carte blanche to evade the requirements of the Fourth Amendment,” which bars the government from conducting unreasonable search and seizures.
The Independent has contacted the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, for comment.
Despite the case being dismissed, Quintanilla-Chavez remains in detention while he awaits a November 20 immigration court hearing, his public defender Marina-Thais Douenat told The Daily Beast, which first reported the case.
“We cannot allow these overreaches to stand unchallenged,” the attorney said, warning of how the “aggressive tactics being employed by ICE are becoming increasingly unchecked and threaten the very fabric of our society.”
Immigration agents have broken car windows nearly 50 times since Trump took office, a July analysis from ProPublica found, compared to just eight instances identified in the previous decade.
Courts across the country have expressed deep reservations over the tactics used by immigration agents as they seek to carry out the Trump administration’s goal of a record-breaking deportation campaign.
On Thursday, a federal judge largely banned immigration officers from firing tear gas and using other riot weapons during protests in Chicago, accusing a top Border Patrol official of lying in court about officer conduct.
