The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration may continue its aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles, which target individuals under broad guidelines including their line of work or whether they speak Spanish.
The decision blocks a lower court’s order that had temporarily limited what opponents call “roving” ICE raids, allowing them to go forward while an appeals court reviews the case. Justice Brett Kavanaugh released a short concurrence supporting the order, while the three liberal justices issued a sharp dissent.
“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.”
Just a few weeks ago, US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles had temporarily prohibited the administration from carrying out raids that relied on four criteria: targeting based on race or ethnicity, operating at locations such as bus stops, identifying individuals by their type of employment, and singling out people for speaking Spanish.
{Matzav.com}
What’s chilling is that the patrols can again stop and question people based on a “totality of circumstances” standard—meaning race, accented English, location, or job type may become relevant factors in initiating a stop.
For immigrants, for Latinx communities, for residents who speak Spanish or live in working-class neighborhoods, this decision will feel much less like abstract policy and much more like an imposition on everyday safety, dignity, and trust in the system.