Aceituno v. USDHS

The ACLU of North Carolina, the ACLU, Democracy Forward, and Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) filed the lawsuit on behalf five individuals — and a class of similarly situated people — to prevent unlawful warrantless immigration arrests across North Carolina by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its agencies, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP).

Plaintiffs include:

• Willy Wender Aceituno, 46, a naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in Charlotte for over 25 years;
• Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, 23, a U.S. citizen who was born in North Carolina and has lived in Charlotte his entire life;
• Ruben Arguera Lopez, 39, a visa holder who has lived in Charlotte for 15 years and obtained a humanitarian U-Visa after helping law enforcement investigate a serious crime;
• Edwin Godinez, 29, a U.S. citizen who was born in California and has lived in Spencer for seven years; and
• Yair Alexander Napoles, 22, a U.S. citizen who was born in North Carolina, currently resides in Salisbury, and is the brother of Edwin Godinez.

Each plaintiff was subjected to a warrantless immigration arrest without the probable cause federal law requires, including a determination that the person is removable from the United States and likely to escape before officers can obtain a warrant.

Aceituno, Cuenca, Arguera Lopez, Godinez, and Napoles seek to represent a class of individuals who have been or will be subjected to similar warrantless immigration arrests by DHS in North Carolina. They are asking the federal court for the Western District of North Carolina to declare DHS’s warrantless arrest policy unlawful and to issue a court order permanently blocking the named agencies from continuing to conduct warrantless immigration arrests without individualized probable cause.

You can read more about each client’s story and the initial complaint below.

Update: On October 1, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint expanding their class action lawsuit challenging DHS’s unlawful immigration enforcement practices across the state.

The amended complaint challenges DHS agents’ policy and practice of stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they are unlawfully present in the United States, in addition to the lawsuit’s existing challenge to the agency’s policies and practices of conducting warrantless immigration arrests without the probable cause required by federal law. Plaintiffs asked the court to immediately stop DHS’s unlawful conduct while the case moves forward.

The amended complaint adds Fernando Vazquez Orea, a U.S. citizen born in Raleigh, who was unlawfully arrested and detained while at work.