The Feds Unleashed a Military-Style Raid on an Upstate Factory. Here’s How We Know It Was Illegal

Here’s what you need to know:

• On September 4, 2025, 60 armed federal agents raided the Nutrition Bar Confectioners Facility in Cato. 
• In a clear violation of 4th Amendment rights, agents rounded up 160 workers in the factory that morning and questioned them about their citizenship or immigration status. 
• Agents detained at least 57 workers, some of whom were then wrongfully deported. 
• The NYCLU successfully fought to unseal the applications for the warrants agents used to raid the factory and round up the workers. These documents show plainly that officers had no authority to conduct the raid the way they did.

On the morning of September 4, 60 armed federal agents—supported by local law enforcement from Cayuga and Oswego county sheriff’s offices—descended upon the Nutrition Bar Confectioners facility in Cato, mounting the sort of massive, military-style assault you would expect to meet a hostage situation. But affidavits submitted by the government to justify the raid named or described fewer than 10 potentially undocumented individuals working at the facility.

Yet Federal agents seized virtually all of the 160 workers in the factory that morning for forced questioning about their citizenship and immigration status.

Body camera footage shows that while guarding the perimeter of the NBC plant, a Cayuga County Sheriff’s Deputy remarked to one Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent that there was something odd about the warrant that purportedly authorized the immigration sweep.

The officer was correct. That warrant looked different from others he might have seen because it was an administrative warrant that cannot be used to round up human beings. And the agents lacked justification for the mass, indiscriminate seizure law enforcement was about to undertake—violating the Fourth Amendment.

Profiled, Sorted and Disappeared

While workers in gloves and hairnets processed and packaged nutrition bars, masked officers stormed the facility, reportedly using crowbars to open doors and even forcing open a bathroom stall where one woman was using the toilet.

Once inside the factory, some officers entered a conference room to make an announcement over the loudspeaker calling workers to the lunchroom.

Of all the workers on shift that morning, agents arrested at least 57 people. The government deported some of those workers in error and with alarming speed, with reports of workers being deported within approximately 72 hours of the September 4 raid. Families and lawyers frantically tried to locate missing workers in the aftermath of the raid, at times only to discover that they had been moved to out-of-state detention centers or deported.

Agents also separated children from their parents. September 4 was the first day of school in Oswego and Cayuga Counties, and school officials were left scrambling to safely place children with guardians at the end of the day. Several of the children were toddlers and infants.

While the raid took place, a body camera recorded a CBP agent’s chilling remarks comparing immigrant children to animals. Other officers listened without objection, revealing the racist underpinning of the raid and agents’ callous disregard for the families they separated.

The raid flagrantly violated workers’ constitutional rights. The Fourth Amendment protects everyone – citizens and non-citizens – from unreasonable search and seizure. But officers had no probable cause to demand identification, question, or arrest factory employees. Agents arrested some people even though they had valid work authorization and open immigration cases.

In one clear rights violation, worker Argentina Juarez-Lopez was detained after asking to speak with a lawyer. Officers did not know her immigration status or even her name when they arrested her. Juarez-Lopez was subsequently indicted on one count of illegal reentry into the country. She argued in court that the evidence against her was illegally obtained, and a judge ruled that the evidence should be suppressed. Chief Judge Brenda K. Sannes found that Juarez-Lopez had been subjected to an unreasonable seizure, explaining that the warrants did not grant officers the authority to arrest her and they otherwise lacked probable cause to do so.

Other detained workers were denied their Fifth Amendment right to due process by not having any opportunity to challenge their detention.

Maribel Lopez was detained and deported despite a pending appeal in her asylum case –documentation of which she provided to officials. She also showed them her two-year-old son’s social security card. The government later conceded that Lopez’s deportation was “inadvertent” and returned her to the U.S., but she is now sitting in a detention center while her immigration case plays out, still unable to see her children.

ICE billed the raid as part of an “ongoing criminal investigation,” but on September 9th acting US Attorney John Sarcone III said only five people had been criminally charged – not with a violent offense, but for reentering the country after deportation.

The raid shattered families and communities. It accomplished nothing to keep anyone safe. The officers ignored legal protections we have in place against violations of people’s rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. And the warrants that the government claimed authorized the immigration sweep – including the one that looked unusual to that Cayuga Sheriff’s deputy – did not give agents authority to seize people and question them about their citizenship and immigration status

An Unwarranted Search

In August, federal agents applied to Magistrate Judge Therèse Wiley Dancks for two warrants to be executed at the Nutrition Bar Confectioners premises. Shortly after the raid was carried out, the NYCLU filed a motion to have the applications for these warrants and other supporting documents unsealed, which resulted in those documents becoming public. New Yorkers have a right to know how law enforcement justified the unconstitutional actions taken in Cato that day.

Neither warrant identifies or describes any particular individual the government wants to seize – which the Fourth Amendment requires when the government seeks authorization to arrest someone.

One of the two warrants that the government applied for is an administrative warrant. In general, the government uses administrative search warrants to conduct workplace safety or building code inspections or recordkeeping audits. They cannot be used to gather evidence of criminal violations or to arrest people, which is why they don’t require the same justification as warrants to search for or seize people or to conduct searches for evidence of crimes.

To carry out the raid in Cato, agents requested what’s known as a Blackie’s warrant. A Blackie’s warrant only allows agents to engage in “consensual” questioning of workers about their citizenship and immigration status. But there’s no way the searches in the Cato raid could be consensual. It is inherently coercive for armed agents to enter a worksite to search for and question people for the purpose of arresting and deporting them or charging them with crimes.

Officers’ action at the NBC plant didn’t even meet the impossible requirement of “consensual” questioning. Armed agents seized all the workers (including U.S. citizens), herded them into the lunchroom, and subjected them forced questioning about their citizenship or immigration status. People who elected to remain silent or invoke their right to counsel in response to agents’ questioning were arrested – making clear that the NBC workers could not refuse to answer any question agents asked them.

The second warrant law enforcement used in the Cato raid was a Rule 41 criminal warrant. It gives officers permission to search for HR records and IT equipment – but not to search for or seize people for questioning.

If, during this search of documents, officers found probable cause to arrest someone, they could do so – but only those individuals for whom agents found probable cause. However, that’s not what agents did. They seized and questioned all of the workers before they seized the company’s HR records. They didn’t even bother to first learn the names of many of the people they were arresting.

In the applications for the warrants, the Homeland Security agent does name four undocumented individuals who agents claimed were employed at the factory, two of whom police encountered during traffic stops. But law enforcement officers had taken all four of these individuals into custody before the raid took place, so they could not have been targets of the raid.

The Rule 41 warrant did authorize agents to search the premises for documents, but neither the Rule 41 warrant nor the Blackie’s warrant granted law enforcement the right to round up workers, demand identification, question under duress or detain many of those who agents took. As Chief Judge Sannes notes in her decision regarding Argentina Juarez-Lopez, officers conducted a mass seizure that was “materially different” from that requested in the application for the warrants.

The illegal use of the warrants officers were issued to raid the factory in Cato should concern all workers, employers and New Yorkers. We must not allow law enforcement to enter a worksite, halt production, and interrogate workers who can’t truly consent to questioning without warrants that protect our Fourth Amendment rights.

The fact that some unknown workers might be undocumented is no justification for terrorizing people and violating their constitutional rights. CBP, ICE, HSI, and all the other agencies involved, including the county sheriffs who participated in the raid, must be held accountable.