In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem the green light to continue immigration status raids in California, after a federal appeals court ruled federal agents were violating the Fourth and Fifth amendments.
The Supreme Court ruling is temporary until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit comes to a decision.
The appeals court had barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from approaching individuals based on the following factors:
- Their presence at bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites and agricultural sites.
- Their type of work.
- Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent.
A University of Southern California study estimates that around 1 million people in the Los Angeles area are in the country illegally.
The American Civil Liberty Union’s senior staff attorney Mohammad Tajsar said the decision made it clear the operation is a “racist deportation scheme.” Similarly, Mark Rosenbaum, a strategic litigator at Public Counsel, said the decision allowed Trump “to resume racially discriminatory raids across Los Angeles.”
However, on the behalf of the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a defense of why he believes allowing patrols by federal officials to continue is not racist.
In order to stop someone about their immigration status, the federal officer must have “reasonable suspicion” that they are illegally present in the United States. “Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances,” Kavanaugh said.
He continued, “Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English.”