The U.S. Supreme Court has halted the enforcement of a court ruling limiting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement measures in Los Angeles, California.
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to stop an order from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California pending an appeal in the case of Kristi Noem et al v. Pedro Vasquez Perdomo et al.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored a concurring opinion to the granting of the stay, writing that “stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U. S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations.”
“To stop an individual for brief questioning about immigration status, the Government must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States,” wrote Kavanaugh.
“To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.”
Kavanaugh noted that “the balance of harms and equities” that are possible for all parties involved in this case “tips in favor of the Government.”
“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,” he continued.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored a dissenting opinion, joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, calling the stay “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket.”
“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. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” wrote Sotomayor.
“The Government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.”
In June, large protests broke out in the Los Angeles area in response to a raid by immigration enforcement officials, resulting in violent clashes between law enforcement and protesters.
A group of individuals detained by authorities as part of the crackdown on unlawful immigration in Los Angeles sued the federal government in July, claiming that the measures taken involved racial profiling and denying access to attorneys.
Soon after the lawsuit was filed, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the Central District of California issued a temporary block on the Trump administration’s actions.
Frimpong, a Biden appointee, wrote that “roving patrols without reasonable suspicion” violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, while denying detainees access to lawyers violated the Fifth Amendment.
