See inside immigration raid at Cato factory as agents bust into bathrooms, sort workers (video)

Federal agents in military-style tactical gear filmed their actions as they stormed a Cato nutrition bar plant in September, ordering dozens people off the production floor, kicking in bathrooms and herding people into a hot break room.

The videos, made public in a federal court filing, confirm what witnesses told syracuse.com in interviews after the Sept. 4 immigration raid on the Nutrition Bar Confectioners plant: Agents lined up Latino workers and released people they said were U.S. citizens. They questioned and detained 57 people, including people who said only that they wanted a lawyer.

The videos also show the fear and apprehension of the workers in their last moments of freedom in the United States.

Many workers were sent to detention centers around the country and deported less than 72 hours later. At least 21 people were separated from children, including three under the age of 2, court records show.

The raid on the Cato plant is the largest in Upstate New York since January, when President Donald Trump took office.

Homeland Security agents won two warrants from a magistrate judge that allowed them to enter the building and seize documents – things like employee files and laptops.

The video shows, however, dozens of agents went into the building to look for workers. They looked behind boxes and waved their hands through rows of white coats for anyone who might be hiding. They kicked in the door to a bathroom and told a woman to pull up her pants and get out.

The factory’s owners said federal agents told them they had a warrant for a violent felon.

The raid turned up five arrests of people who entered the U.S. illegally after previously being deported, a felony.

Two months later, no one has been charged with a violent crime and the owners have not been charged with any crimes.

Paul Tuck, a lawyer for one woman charged with a felony immigration charge, shared the body camera footage with Judge Brenda Sannes, chief of the federal court’s Northern District in New York. Tuck has asked the judge to suppress any evidence collected in the raid, saying it violated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents search and seizure without probable cause.

Argentina Juarez-Lopez, who is fighting a felony immigration charge, said officers wore guns on their hips and blocked the exits from the break room for an hour.

Agents interviewed her for 9 seconds. She said only that she wanted to talk to a lawyer. They did not know her name or anything about her citizenship. Still, she said, they put her in handcuffs and shackles and took her to the Oswego Border Patrol facility.

Two agents later wrote in their reports that they learned at the factory that she is from Guatemala and unlawfully present in the U.S., Tuck wrote in his motion.

Tuck said agents violated the Fourth Amendment when they seized Juarez-Lopez without probable cause. At minimum, he wrote, officers required reasonable suspicion to justify her seizure.

“The Fourth Amendment does not permit such a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ approach,” he wrote in his motion.

It appears the mass seizure was meant to separate suspected immigrants and U.S. citizens in order to question them further. It was not meant to investigate the owners for employing undocumented workers, as was implied by the type of warrant they received.

Lawyers for the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union have also filed a motion, asking the judge who signed the warrant to unseal the documents federal agents used to win her approval. Magistrate Judge Therese Wiley Dancks signed two warrants. An administrative warrant and a criminal warrant that allows the search of documents and computers.

Perry Grossman, a NYCLU attorney, said it is of “exceptional public concern” whether the government sought to convert a narrow administrative search warrant into an authorization for mass detention.