The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration Monday to continue sweeping immigration raids in the Los Angeles area that target individuals based on broad criteria such as their occupation or whether they speak Spanish.
The justices halted a lower court ruling that restricted what critics have dubbed “roving” raids conducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while the matter is considered by the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a brief concurrence explaining the order, while the court’s three liberal justices issued a blistering dissent.
Customs and Border Protection agents standing guard near an armored vehicle in Los Angeles.
“Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of US immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations,” Kavanaugh wrote. “… “The interests of individuals who are illegally in the country in avoiding being stopped by law enforcement for questioning is ultimately an interest in evading the law. That is not an especially weighty legal interest.”
Last month, Los Angeles US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from pursuing immigration raids premised on four factors: race and ethnicity, specific locations such as bus stops, type of work an individual performs and speaking Spanish.
Frimpong, appointed by former President Joe Biden, had previously ruled that the stops violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
Three individuals in the US illegally filed a lawsuit over their detention. They had been arrested at a donut shop before being released on bond, according to court documents.
Their lawsuit was later backed by two American citizens and four left-leaning organizations.
Another plaintiff claimed he was detained despite telling officers he was a US citizen. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Gregory Bull/AP |
The ruling blocks a lower court’s order that found the enforcement operations were based on impermissible factors.
The Supreme Court has lifted restrictions that barred the Trump administration from carrying out immigration-related raids in the Los Angeles area based on broad criteria such as speaking Spanish or gathering at locations day laborers often congregate.
The justices, who apparently divided 6-3 along ideological lines, put on hold a federal district judge’s order that reined in what critics called “roving” raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That judge had found the tactics were likely unconstitutional because agents were detaining people without probable cause at car washes, bus stops and Home Depot parking lots based on stereotypes.
The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision to grant the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to block the district judge’s order. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately in support of the decision, saying it was reasonable to briefly question people who meet multiple “common sense” criteria for possible illegal presence — including employment in day labor or construction, and limited English proficiency.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
The Justice Department complained in an emergency appeal last month that the court-ordered limitations amounted to “a straitjacket” for law enforcement officers carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation policy.
However, immigrant rights and civil liberties advocates accused federal officers of stopping Latinos solely because they were speaking Spanish or present at home improvement store parking lots or car washes. With nearly half the population in L.A. of Hispanic origin, such a broad-brush approach is certain to sweep up many U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, the advocates said.
Sotomayor said in her dissent that Supreme Court precedent makes clear that immigration officers cannot rely on ethnicity alone to make stops seeking potentially undocumented immigrants and “ethnicity and language are often intertwined, so relying on only those two factors is no different than relying on ethnicity alone.” She said adding certain types of businesses to the mix was “plainly insufficient” to make the stops legal.
Sotomayor said the high court’s ruling posed a threat not just to undocumented foreigners but to Americans of Hispanic descent. --->READ MORE HERE
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