Cruz Gamez v. Lyons

In October 2025, officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security reported to Oregon to execute what President Trump described as “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” To meet the President’s demands for 3,000 immigration arrests each day nationally, ICE officers arrested a staggering number of Oregonians. In making these arrests, ICE arrested people without first securing arrest warrants and without making individualized probable cause determinations as to each arrested person’s risk of escape, as required by the Immigration and Nationality Act and its implementing regulations.

Two individuals who were unlawfully arrested and detained by ICE sued on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, challenging ICE’s policy and practice of systematically making immigration arrests without a warrant and the required probable cause findings. They moved for a preliminary injunction and provisional certification of a class of people arrested without any assessment of flight risk. The district court granted the motion, preliminarily enjoining ICE from enforcing its unlawful policy and practice of making warrantless civil immigration arrests in the District of Oregon without the required individualized probable cause findings. The court also granted provisional certification of the “Unassessed Escape Risk Subclass.” Several months later, the district court certified both a “Warrantless Arrest Class” and the “Unassessed Escape Risk Subclass.”

ICE appealed both the preliminary injunction and, several months alter, the class certification order. Co-counseling on the appeal with Innovation Law Lab, we moved to dismiss the class certification appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction, because the government failed to seek permission to appeal the class certification order as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f). Meanwhile, ICE filed a motion to consolidate the two appeals, which we opposed.