Washington – Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the border patrol agents of the United States violated the Constitution when they stopped a car on a highway near San Clemente because their occupants seemed to be “Mexican descent.”
The 4th amendment protects the Americans from unreasonable searches, judges said at that time, and the “Mexican appearance” of a motorist does not justify that I ask them about their immigration state.
But the court rang a decidedly different note on Monday when he ruled for the Trump administration and cleared the way to stop and question Latinos that may be illegally here. Through a 6-3 vote, the judges set aside the temporary restriction order of a Los Angeles judge who prohibited agents from preventing people from based on their breed or apparent ethnicity.
“The apparent ethnicity alone cannot provide reasonable suspicions,” Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said. “However, it can be a relevant factor when it is considered other outstanding factors.”
The critics of the ruling said he had opened the door to authorize racial and ethnic bias.
The UCLA Law professor, Aulanantham Ahilan, described him as “shocking and frightening. I do not know any recent decision like this that would authorize racial discrimination.”
Aulanaantham said that Kavanaugh's writings speak only for justice, and that the full court did not explain its ruling on a case that came through its emergency file.
On the contrary, he and others pointed out that the Court under the Supreme Court John G. Roberts Jr. prohibited the use of race or ethnicity as a factor in university admissions.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating everything,” Roberts wrote for a majority of 6-3 in 2023. That decision annulled affirmative action policies in Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
“Today, the Supreme Court took a step in a bad guideline,” wrote Ilya Somin, law professor at George Mason's University, in Volokh's conspiracy blog. “It makes no sense to conclude that racial and ethnic discrimination is generally unconstitutional, but also that its use is” reasonable “under the 4th amendment.”
The reports had already arisen before the decision of the ICE agents who faced American citizens and permanent legal residents before they could prove their status, which forced many to begin documentation at all times.
In New York on Monday, a man outside a federal court was pushed by ICE agents before being able to show them their identification. They let him go.
He asked for the Times to respond to a growing concern among American citizens, they could be swept into expanded ice raids as a result of the ruling, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Tuesday that people should not be worried.
He added that immigration agents carry out specific operations with the use of the intelligence of application of the law.
“The Supreme Court confirmed the right of Trump administration to stop people in Los Angeles to briefly question them with respect to their legal status, because the law allows this, and this has been the practice of the federal government for decades,” Leavitt said. “The immigration and nationality law establishes that immigration officers can briefly stop an individual to question it about their immigration state, if the officer has reasonable suspicions that the individual is illegally present in the United States. And reasonable suspicion is not based only on the race, but is based on a totality of the circumstances.”
In X, the National Security Committee of the House of Representatives responded to Leavitt's comments, writing: “ICE has imprisoned US citizens. Trump's administrator is defending the racial profile. No one is sure when 'looking Hispanic' is treated as probable cause.”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent pointed out that almost half of the residents of the great Los Angeles are Latin and can speak Spanish.
“Innumerable people in the Los Angeles area have been seized, thrown to the ground and handcuffed due to their appearance, their accents and the fact that they make a living doing manual work,” he wrote. “Today, the court unnecessarily submits innumerable more to these same indignities.”
In question in the case was the meaning of “reasonable suspicion.”
For decades, the court has said that the police and federal agents can stop and question someone if they see something specific that suggests that they can be violating the law.
But the two parties did not agree on whether agents can stop people because they seem to be Latin and work as day workers, in car washed or other low -salaries.
President Trump's lawyers, as well as Kavanaugh, said agents can make stops based on “all circumstances” and that can include where people work and their ethnic origin. They also pointed out the data that suggests that approximately 10% of people in the Los Angeles area are illegally in the United States.
Tom Homan, the Border Advisor of the White House, said that the legal standard of reasonable suspicion “has a group of factors that must take into account,” he added: “The racial profile is not happening at all.”
It is a “false narrative that pushes,” Homan told MSNBC in an interview, praising the decision of the Supreme Court. “We do not arrest someone or stop someone without reasonable suspicions.”
