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.
