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Immigrant rights group claims Iowa workers’ civil rights were violated in traffic stop

Immigrant rights group claims Iowa workers’ civil rights were violated in traffic stop

Ninoska Campos, a founder of Escucha Mi Voz

By Zachary Oren Smith, Amie Rivers

April 25, 2025

Escucha Mi Voz Iowa and community members from the Iowa City Catholic Worker filed a complaint with the state, alleging an Iowa State Trooper violated the civil rights of seven Latino construction workers during an April traffic stop. The complaint demands the state clarify its own requirements of law enforcement conducting immigration actions.

Seven Latino construction workers left a jobsite in Dubuque last Friday, April 18. They got on Highway 151 S, headed back to their home and families in Iowa City.

It should’ve been an unremarkable experience — part of their daily routine.  

“We drive daily from Iowa City to Dubuque because that’s where we work—we’re construction workers,” said Ninoska Campos, one of the seven workers in that van.

What happened next was anything but routine. 

That afternoon, Cristian Pinto was driving the van when he merged lanes to let a State Trooper onto the highway. The patrol car followed Pinto’s car for a while, Campos said. Around 5:45 p.m., he was pulled over.

State Trooper Devon Baumgartner took IDs from Pinto and three other passengers. During the stop, Baumgartner allegedly neither explained that he was questioning them to determine their immigration status nor offered English language interpretation for the passengers who had limited English language skills. When one passenger tried to clarify their rights during the stop, Baumgartner ignored the question, saying only one person was allowed to answer his questions at a time. 

Baumgartner detained Pinto for 30 minutes in his patrol car along the highway. And then after returning Pinto to the van, he isolated a second passenger, Cristian Lagos, for another 15 minutes, questioning him about his status, employment, and living situation. 

“I was just nervous that he was taking us one by one to see our immigration statuses,” Campos said during a press conference hosted by Iowa City-based immigration rights group Escucha Mi Voz.

“We just wanted to go home,” she added. “We’re not criminals.”

Pinto was issued two tickets: driving without a license and for “following too close.” At 6:37 p.m. — nearly an hour after the stop began — Baumgartner let the seven Iowa City residents depart. 

In the aftermath, Escucha Mi Voz, filed a civil rights complaint this week  saying these construction workers’ civil rights were violated by Baumgartner’s stop. 

“This was not a normal traffic stop,” said Tom Mohan with Iowa City Catholic Worker House. “This was a dragnet—a coordinated effort to trap immigrants.”

The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution gives individuals the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. That includes protection from pretextual stops and searches where law enforcement contrives a pretense to stop someone in order to investigate a separate matter. If an officer is investigating someone’s immigration status, the individual has a right to know that.

The complaint alleges that Baumgartner decided to go after the car based on racial or ethnic profiling, and that the traffic stop was initiated as a pretext to check the passengers’ immigration status. It says Baumgartner only appeared interested in the driver’s immigration status and even began questioning passengers who were not the driver of the car. 

“What happened on April 18 looked nothing like a targeted operation; it looked like a fishing expedition,” said Alejandra Escobar, an organizer with Escucha Mi Voz. She said the group was calling for “transparency, accountability, and the end of 287(g) programs in Iowa.”

Iowa Starting Line requested received the incident complaint from Iowa DPS as well as the following statement: 

To promote public safety, the Iowa Department of Public Safety has always cooperated and assisted, to the extent permitted by law, with the investigative efforts of the United States Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Justice and its subsidiary agencies. The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the parties merely formalized that longstanding relationship. The Iowa Department of Public Safety is committed to assisting our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners with the execution of their duties. Our cooperation in this context is no different than that which exists with other federal law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); the United States Marshals Service (USMS); or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). The Department assigned three existing Special Agents within investigative operations to complete the required training to assist our federal partners on an as needed basis in the enforcement of immigration laws under 8 USC 1324. The Iowa Department of Public Safety also continues to comply with its state law requirements to assist in the enforcement of immigration laws as required in Iowa Code chapter 27A.

Traffic stop comes after Iowa DPS, ICE create immigration task force

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a program that delegates federal immigration enforcement authority to local law enforcement agencies. One of the models, the “task force model,” allows officers to enforce limited immigration authority during routine police duties like traffic stops. The Des Moines Register reported last week that The Iowa Department of Public Safety entered into an agreement with ICE to set up its own three-member task force.

In his letter requesting participation, Iowa DPS Commissioner Stephan Bayens said a task force would “enable my agency to assist in the identification and apprehension of illegal aliens who may pose a risk to public safety in Iowa.” 

It is unclear whether Baumgartner is a task force member or if the immigration questions during the traffic stop rested on the authority of the state’s new agreement with ICE.

These 287(g) agreements have a controversial history that extends well beyond the April 18 traffic stop. The Task Force Model was actually discontinued nationwide in 2012 following widespread documentation of civil rights abuses. 

The Department of Justice (DOJ) documented a pattern of racial profiling in jurisdictions with 287(g) agreements. In Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies conducted “sweeps” in Latino neighborhoods where Latino drivers were nine times more likely to be stopped than non-Latino drivers. This led to over $43 million in litigation costs before federal intervention terminated the agreement. 

Similarly, in Alamance County, North Carolina, a DOJ investigation showed deputies set up checkpoints at entrances to Latino neighborhoods, with Latino drivers 10 times more likely to be stopped and frequently arrested for violations that only resulted in citations for non-Latinos.

The Migration Policy Institute found half of all detainers issued through the program were for misdemeanors and traffic offenses. Instead of enhancing public safety, law enforcement executives admit the program damages community trust — the International Association of Chiefs of Police warns that without assurances against deportation, “many immigrants with critical information would not come forward, even when heinous crimes are committed against them.”

Iowa’s adoption of the previously discontinued Task Force Model raises serious concerns given the April 18 incident, which the complaint mirrors the exact pattern of abuses that led to the model’s original termination.

“This isn’t about politics, it’s about human rights,” Escobar said, asking people to sign onto a petition of support. “Workers deserve to get home safely. We deserve a system that follows the law.”

  • Zachary Oren Smith

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    Zachary Oren Smith is your friendly neighborhood reporter. He leads Starting Line’s political coverage where he investigates corruption, housing affordability and the future of work. For nearly a decade, he’s written award-winning stories for Iowa Public Radio, The Des Moines Register and Iowa City Press-Citizen. Send your tips on hard news and good food to [email protected].

  • Amie Rivers

    Amie Rivers is Starting Line's community editor, labor reporter and newsletter snarker-in-chief. Previously, she was an award-winning journalist at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier; now, she very much enjoys making TikToks and memes. Send all story tips and pet photos to [email protected] and sign up for our newsletter here.

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