Bodycam Footage of Cato Factory Immigration Raid Released in Lawsuit

Federal immigration officers arrived at a snack-food factory in Cato, New York, shortly after 9 a.m. on 4 September 2025, and body cameras captured what followed: a brief debate over forcing entry, a manager opening the front door, and hours of searches that ended with 57 arrests.

The footage, analyzed as part of a lawsuit filed Thursday, offers a rare view inside a workplace immigration sweep at Nutrition Bar Confectioners in the town of about 2,500 people east of Syracuse. The suit accuses authorities of exceeding the scope of their search warrants.

Agents from several agencies ordered a manager to announce their presence over loudspeakers as they moved through the plant, catching employees on the production line, in the warehouse and in restrooms. Officers covered exits while others searched offices, storage rooms and hallways for anyone hiding.

At a locked bathroom, male officers shouted instructions in broken Spanish to women inside, demanding they come out. After roughly ten seconds, they broke through the door. One woman was outside a stall and another inside; a body camera showed a woman seated on the toilet. When an officer told her to pull up her pants and exit, she replied that she could not come out while naked.

Workers were lined up and divided into groups of U.S. citizens and potential noncitizens. Officers asked about immigration status, requested documents and questioned how employees had entered the country. Some workers were pregnant; others said they were parents worried about children at home. Several said they would not answer without speaking to a lawyer, and officers told them they would be arrested. U.S. citizens were asked for names, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers before being allowed to leave.

Investigators interviewed the general manager and said they were examining hiring practices and possible fraudulent documents.

A Border Patrol agent, speaking to another official wearing a camera, used disparaging language about children from other countries while recounting his time at a South Texas immigrant detention center. He said the previous administration had allowed millions of people into the United States from countries where children are treated differently, and described young detainees learning a pecking order.

Perry Grossman of the New York Civil Liberties Union said the government had told the magistrate judge who issued the warrant that the law permitted only consensual questioning of the workforce absent individualized reasonable suspicion. He said a federal district court judge has already found that agents at Cato did the opposite of what they told the issuing judge, and argued that a genuine goal of consensual questioning would not require a massive show of force.