Washington – It is likely that the case of immigration more of this year decides if immigration agents in Los Angeles are free to stop, question and arrest the Latinos they suspect are illegally here.
President Trump promised the “largest mass deportation operation” in the history of the United States, and decided to start aggressive street sweeps in Los Angeles in early June.
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Area is “the zero zone for the purposes of the border crisis,” their lawyers told the Supreme Court this month. “Almost 2 million illegal foreigners, outside an area of 20 million, are illegally encouraged, encouraged by the policies of the sanctuary city and the declared objective of local officials to frustrate federal federal application efforts.”
The “vast majority of illegal foreigners in the [Central] District [of California] They come from Mexico or Central America and many only speak Spanish, ”they added.
His rapidly appeal urged judges to confirm that immigration agents have “reasonable suspicions” of stopping and questioning Latinos who work in companies or occupations that attract many undocumented workers.
No one questions that the United States immigration agents can arrest migrants with a criminal record or a final removal order. But the Trump administration lawyers say that agents also have the authority to stop and question, and sometimes handcuff and arrest, otherwise, Latinos respectful of the law that have lived and worked here for years.
They could do so based not on evidence that the particular person lacks legal status, but in the event that they see and work like others that are illegally here.
“The reasonable suspicion is a low bar, well below the probable cause,” said the administration's lawyers. “The apparent ethnic group can be a factor that supports reasonable suspicions,” they added, pointing out that this standard assumes “legal stops of innocent people can occur.”
If the court rules for Trump, “it could be greatly consistent” in Los Angeles and throughout the country, said UCLA Professor Ahilan Alamanantham, co -director of the Center for Law and Immigration Policy. “The Government would read this as giving immigration application agents a license to question and detain people without individualized suspicions. It would probably establish a pattern that could be used in other parts of the country.”
In their response to the appeal, the defenders of the rights of immigrants said that the court should not “bless a regime that can catch in an immigration network to millions of people … that they are US citizens or that otherwise they legally have the right to be in this country and are Latin, they speak Spanish” and work under construction, food services or agriculture and can be seen in bus stop Retail parking.
The case now before the Superior Court began on June 18, when Pedro Vásquez Perdomo and two other Pasadena residents were arrested in a bus stop where they expected them to pick them up for a job. They said that the heavily armed men who wore masks grabbed them, handcuffed them and put them in a car and led to a detention center.
If “he felt as a kidnapping,” said Vásquez Perdomo.
The plaintiffs include people who were handcuffed, arrested and taken to the facilities even though they were American citizens.
They joined a lawsuit with unions and immigrant rights groups, as well as others who said they faced masked agents who shouted commands and, in some cases, pushed them to the ground.
However, the demand quickly focused on the aggressive form and sometimes violent of the arrests, but on the legality of the stops.
The American district judge Maame Ewusi-Menah Frimpong said that the arrests seemed to violate the prohibition of the 4th amendment for irrazonable searches and seizures.
It is “illegal to perform itinerant patrols that identify people based on the alone breed, question them aggressively and then stop them without a court order, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicions that they have no status,” he said on July 11.
The crucial phrase is “reasonable suspicion.”
For decades, the Supreme Court has said that police officers and federal agents can stop and briefly question people if they see something that gives them reasons to suspect a violation of the law. That is why, for example, an officer can stop a motorist whose car has deviated on the road.
But it was not clear that the United States immigration agents can affirm that they have reasonable suspicions to stop and question people based on their appearance if they are sitting in a bus stop in Pasadena, working on a wash of cars or unemployed with others outside a home.
Frimpong did not prohibit agents from stopping and interrogating people who may be illegally, but she set limits on their authority.
She said that agents may not stop people “only” in four factors: their apparent breed or ethnicity, the fact that they speak Spanish, the type of work they do or their location, such as a day work collection site or a car wash.
On August 1, the 9th Court of Appeals of the United States Circuit refused to lift the judge's temporary restriction order. The four factors “describe only a broad profile that does not supply the reasonable suspicion to justify a detention stop,” the judges said by a 3-0 vote.
The order of the district judge is applied in the Central District of California, which includes the counties of Los Angeles and Orange, as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Bárbara and San Luis Obispo.
The 9th circuit said that these seven counties have an estimated population of 19,233,598, of which 47% or 9,096,334 are identified as “Hispanics or Latinos.”
Like Frimpong, the three appeal judges were appointed Democrats.
A week later, Trump administration lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court in Noem vs. Perdomo. They said that the judge's order was preventing the president's effort to enforce immigration laws.
They urged the court to set aside the judge's order and to clear the way for agents to make stops if they suspect that the person can be in the country illegally.
Agents do not need evidence of legal violation, they said. In addition, the demography of Los Angeles only supplies reasonable suspicions.
“All this reflects common sense: the reasonable suspension threshold is low, and the number of people who are illegally present and subject to detention and elimination under immigration laws in the (the area of seven counties in southern California) is extraordinarily high,” wrote lawyer Gen. D. John Sauer. “The high prevalence of illegal foreigners should allow agents to stop a relatively wide range of individuals.”
He said that the government is not “extolling the racial profile”, but that “apparent ethnicity can be relevant to reasonable suspicions, especially in the application of immigration.”
In the past, the court has said that the police can make stops based on “all circumstances” or the full image. That should help administration because agents can point out the large number of undocumented workers in certain companies.
But past decisions have also said that officers need some reason to suspect that a specific person may be violating the law.
The Supreme Court could act at any time, but it can also spend several weeks before an order is issued. The decision can come with little or no explanation.
In recent weeks, the conservatives of the court have regularly put on Trump and against the judges of the Federal District who have been filed in their way. The brief decisions have often been followed by an angry and long dissent of the three liberals.
Immigration rights defenders said the court should not defend “an extraordinarily expansive drag network, placing millions of respectful people of the law at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”
They said that the daily patrols “have thrown a slap on the district, where millions comply with the wide demographic profile of the government and, therefore, reasonably fear that they can be trapped in the government's drag network, and perhaps they move away from their long -term families, every time they venture outside their own homes.”
