Immigration advocates warned that the supreme court has “effectively legalized racial profiling”, granting federal agents the power to stop people in Los Angeles simply for speaking Spanish or appearing Latino – and opening the door, they say, to a broader unraveling of civil rights protections nationwide.
In a 6–3 decision on Monday, the court’s conservative majority lifted restrictions on “roving” immigration patrols across the LA area after a lower court found that federal agents were indiscriminately targeting people on the basis of race, language, employment or location.
The high court’s ruling alarmed civil liberties advocates and rattled immigrant communities in a county where one in three residents is foreign-born, and where the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement has already seen armed and masked federal agents detain residents, including US citizens, near bus stops, construction sites, churches, and other public spaces with little explanation or due process.
Monday’s supreme court decision stems from a lawsuit challenging the tactics used in a series of aggressive immigration sweeps in the Los Angeles area. Plaintiffs argued that federal agents were targeting people without reasonable suspicion – in violation of the fourth amendment, which protects against unlawful searches and seizures.
In July, US district judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring agents from stopping people based solely on four factors, alone or in combination, including race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or accented English, being in certain public areas such as day laborer sites, or the type of work they do.
The administration celebrated the supreme court ruling as a “massive victory” for Trump’s aim to carry out the “largest mass deportation campaign” in US history.
The justices did not offer a rationale for their order, which has become increasingly common in cases decided on the court’s so-called “emergency docket”. But in a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, part of the conservative majority and a Trump appointee, cited Los Angeles’s large undocumented population and wrote that race can be a “relevant factor”, alongside other “common sense” indicators, such as employment in landscaping, agriculture or construction and limited English proficiency, in forming a “reasonable suspicion” to interrogate individuals about their immigration status.
My opinion? The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision is a significant step backward in terms of race and justice. Racial profiling is not legal under U.S. law. It violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and is prohibited by federal court rulings and proposed legislation like the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act.
Nevertheless, while the Supreme Court recently allowed some leeway for immigration agents to consider factors like ethnicity in certain circumstances, this was a narrow decision and does not equate to a legalization of racial profiling in general.
Please contact my office if you, a friend or family member are charged with a crime. Hiring an effective and competent defense attorney is the first and best step toward justice.
