SCOTUS Allows LA Immigration Raids
The Shadow Docket strikes again.
BBC (“Supreme Court lifts limits on LA immigration raids“):
The US Supreme Court has ruled sweeping immigration raids in Los Angeles can continue for now, lifting a federal judge’s order that had barred agents from making stops without “reasonable suspicion”.
The Monday ruling is a win for President Donald Trump, who has vowed to conduct record-level deportations of migrants in the country illegally.
The 6-3 decision of the conservative-majority court allows agents to stops suspects based solely on their race, language or job, while a legal challenge to the recent immigration sweeps in LA works its way through the courts.
The liberal justices dissented, saying the decision puts constitutional freedoms at risk.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in Monday’s decision that the lower court’s restraining order went too far in restricting how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could carry out stops or questioning of suspected unlawful migrants.
“To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” he wrote. “However, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.”
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices issued a strong dissent penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote that “countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labour”.
“Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities,” she wrote.
The White House welcomed the ruling, vowing in a statement to “continue fulfilling its mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens”.
[…]
The decision lifts an order by US District Judge Maame E Frimpong in Los Angeles, who had said that there is a “mountain of evidence” showing the raids were violating the US Constitution.
The order halted the raids, with Judge Frimpon saying the Trump administration cannot rely on factors like “apparent race or ethnicity” or “speaking Spanish” alone to stop or question individuals.
The judge also barred immigration enforcement agents from conducting stops based solely on someone’s presence “at a particular location” like a bus stop, agricultural site or car wash, or based solely on the type of work an individual does.
The temporary restraining order was issued in a legal challenge by immigration advocacy groups, who argued that immigration officers in Los Angeles were conducting “roving patrols” indiscriminately, and were denying individuals access to lawyers.
Judge Frimpong said this may violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable government searches and seizures.
The Supreme Court, however, said that the administration’s actions have a good chance of ultimately being considered constitutional by the federal courts. While its decision only pertained to Judge Frimpong’s temporary restraining order, the justices also showed how the court would approach the lawsuit should it have to consider an appeal down the road.
Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security have argued that immigration officers are targeting people based on their legal status in the US, not skin colour, race or ethnicity.
The aggressiveness of the raids is deeply troubling. At the same time, I don’t know how ICE would target illegal immigration from Latin America without taking into account “apparent race or ethnicity” or “speaking Spanish” and being congregated in a Home Depot parking lot. While none of those factors alone is a reasonable basis for a search, the combination of them may well be.
Regardless, this is yet another example of why we need a Constitutional Court or some similar vehicle to quickly adjudicate cases where a President’s orders potentially exceed his Constitutional authority and/or violate the Constitutional rights of residents. Nationwide injunctions are too much power to give District Court judges, particularly given the ability of litigants to forum shop. At the same time, the Supreme Court simply can’t handle these cases fast enough.
The “compromise” solution, the Supreme Court issuing scores of temporary rulings via the so-called Shadow Docket, is wildly inadequate. The effect is to empower President Trump with extraordinary power for potentially years before we get a definitive ruling. And, by then, much damage will have been done, much of which will be permanent.
To begin with, when the US stole vast tracts of Mexico’s territories, they also brought in lots of Mexicans who’d been living there. To continue, millions more have since immigrated legally, or got legal status eventually.
People of Latin American descent make up almost 20% of the US population. They’re all now subject to harassment and intimidation, not to mention illegal internment, because of what they are.
Oh, and you can’t take race into account for college admissions, but you can take only race into account in disrupting or ruining the lives of millions of people.
The conclusion is insane. Something like 50% of people in LA fit the profile. Should they be carrying proof of citizenship at all times? The Court’s majority is like end-state Soviet Union leadership here. No connection to reality, just making sure their rulings adhere to the Federalist Society ideology which paid their way in.
“The “compromise” solution, the Supreme Court issuing scores of temporary rulings via the so-called Shadow Docket, is wildly inadequate. The effect is to empower President Trump with extraordinary power for potentially years before we get a definitive ruling. And, by then, much damage will have been done, much of which will be permanent.”
The “compromise” solution is for the Supreme Court to issue a ruling without briefs, oral argument, or written opinions explaining why they are deciding the case in the way they are (especially in cases where they are refusing to uphold decades-old precedent)? I guess this must be a compromise between having a country governed by the rule of law and a dictatorship, but it seems to be going too far in the direction of dictatorship.
@James:
On the one hand, I understand that finding Hispanics illegally in the country means that targeting Hispanic-looking/acting people makes that easier.
But being Hispanic-looking is not a crime.
Speaking Spanish is not a crime.
Congregating at Home Depot might be loitering, but then that is not an ICE issue.
Allowing ICE to use utterly legal things as a pretext for stopping people will always lead to abuse.
We know that most mass shooters are young white males, should, therefore, the FBI or BATF officers be allowed to stop and search all young white males just in case?
Agree on a Constitutional Court, BTW,
Liberal judicial process tends to “err” on the side of civil rights and typically underwritten by thoughtful deliberation. Rightwing judicial process reflexively supports its monetary patrons.
A number of federal district court judges have complained that the problem with the shadow docket decisions is that quickness has replaced reasoning, and the result is a lack of guidance for the lower courts. Declaring that “party A is likely to prevail” has replaced a well reasoned opinion on WHY Party A is likely to prevail, and leaves both the parties and the judges wondering if they have to reinvent the wheel. And JJ hit the nail on the head – by the time these matters are fully litigated the damage has already been done. That seems to be Trump’s M.O.: just do it.
@Kathy:
Just as soon as that 20% figures out that Republicans are their enemies, it will end Republican power at the national level. But will they ever figure that out? ~50% voted for Trump, especially men. His current standing with Hispanics is 25%. But will their actual votes track that way? Will they show up for mid-terms?
Related:
@Rob1:
Amen. There you get to the heart of the conservative legal movement. In fact. to the heart of the conservative movement.
Thomas likely stands out only for being less circumspect than the others.
@Charley in Cleveland: Book bans and bans on “abortion” medical procedures are often vague. It’s a tactic. It leaves librarians, teachers, and hospital legal departments self-regulating on the side of caution. The Supremes are, knowingly, using the same tactic. They’re making “the president always wins” a standard for the lower courts without having to say “the president always wins”.
With an implicit footnote to the implicit standard – offer valid only for Republican presidents.
I’m going to guess that it’s a touch more more difficult to profile the millions of non-Hispanic immigrants who overstayed their visas and are here illegally.
I have a few ideas for Tom Homan:
(1) Track and follow UPS and Amazon delivery vehicles and demand identification from those who receive the packages.
(2) Wait in an Ikea parking lot and demand identification from shoppers who are returning to their vehicles.
(3) Wait and watch people going in and out of a Whole Foods, Starbucks, Peet’s or Apple Store.
I assume that is the intent.
How do you enable a Republican president to do whatever they want, but not create precedents that will let the next Democratic president do whatever they want?
Simple, don’t rule on the merits, even when the merits are obvious.
Justice delayed is justice denied, after all. It’s just that when people said that in the past, they were thinking of it as a warning rather than a plan. See also WaPo and “Democracy Dies In Darkness”
Brad Delong,
Succinct and to the point.
You can be busted in a city called Los Angeles that was founded in 1780 by Hispanic people for looking Hispanic. Do I understand that correctly? Can we round up guys driving muscle cars in New Jersey for being mobsters?
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
I’m reminded of dissidents in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Block countries. Contrary to popular belief in the west, they were largely not opposed to communism, only to the heavy-handed, stalinist repression the USSR enjoyed so much. This is particularly true of the latter dissidents, who were raised under communist ideology.
The ideology on the Wingnut sphere is just as seductive, even if not as entrenched in the education system. It does sound more like the historical mythology children drink up in school, though.
So a lot of people may not like the Taco Wingnuts, but they’ll vote for others along the same ideological spectrum.
Repeating myself from the other day in the open thread: I can think of no better argument for expanding the Court than the fact that there is too much work for them to hear cases, “forcing” them to rely on shadow docket processes. Let’s give them some relief from their onerous workload! Make sure there are enough members to empanel a court year round instead of taking the summer off while we are at it
Presumably the permissible reasons to detain someone for investigation have been extended now to include “Asian-looking, speaks Korean and works in construction”.
But I’m sure it’s only a temporary issue. Assuming there’s another Democratic president in the life of this court, I’m confident we will soon thereafter be reading decisions upholding District Court injunctions pausing implementation of their executive orders. “We have long been concerned that decisions issued under the emergency docket give insufficient guidance to lower courts,” Justice Kavanaugh will write for the majority. “In cases like the one before us today, it would be prudent to preserve the status quo until the court can issue full reasons for decision after a comprehensive hearing …”
@Erik: What you describe isn’t a Supreme Court, at least in the way we’ve been accustomed to think about it. It’s how the various Circuit courts operate, but there are appeals beyond them—including to the full bench of the Circuit. If a ruling depended on the luck of the draw of which Justices happened to get assigned to a case, it would potentially be less partisan than today’s version. It would also be less definitive.