Problem is, not withstanding DHS’s endless lies to contrary, most of the people rounded up in these sweeps are NOT criminals.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the Trump administration’s operation of the Los Angeles immigration raids, vowing not to stand idly by while the United States’ “constitutional freedoms are lost.”
On Sept. 8, the Supreme Court lifted a restraining order from a federal judge in LA who had restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from conducting stops without reasonable suspicion.
In July, US District Judge Maame Frimpong of the Central District of California said the government can’t rely solely on the person’s race, the language they speak, the work they perform, and whether they’re at a particular location, such as a pickup site for day laborers.
However, the Sept. 8 reversal by the Supreme Court’s mostly conservative majority gave the Trump administration another victory, as Sotomayor condemned the vote.
“That decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” Sotomayor wrote in a blistering, 21-page dissent on Sept. 8. “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.”
Sotomayor called the order “unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees.”
The justice, an Obama appointee, ripped her high court conservative colleagues and the government over the ruling. Sotomayor declared that all Latinos, whether they are 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.”oss California by broadening its scope from those only with criminal records to anyone in the United States without proper authorization. The crackdown ignited protests, prompting Trump to call in the National Guard and eventually the Marines to diffuse the outrage.
In June, the Trump administration ramped up immigration raids across California by broadening its scope from those only with criminal records to anyone in the United States without proper authorization. The crackdown ignited protests, prompting Trump to call in the National Guard and eventually the Marines to diffuse the outrage.
Sotomayor takes exception to Kavanaugh’s explanation
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who agreed with the Trump administration, said in his concurrence on Sept. 8 that the District Court overreached in limiting ICE’s authority to briefly stop people and ask them about their immigration status.
“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 said.
He added, “Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of US immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations.”Despite fears, still looking for work:
Sotomayor took exception to Kavanaugh’s comments. She said ICE agents are not simply just questioning people, they are seizing people by using firearms and physical violence.
Sotomayor added that the Fourth Amendment, which is meant to protect “every individual’s constitutional right,” from search and seizure, might be in jeopardy.
“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers,'” Sotomayor said. “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”
The Trump administration is vowing to “FLOOD THE ZONE” after the Supreme Court opened the door for federal law enforcement officers to roam the streets of Los Angeles to make immigration arrests based on racially profiling suspects.
A 6-3 decision from the nation’s high court Monday overturned an injunction that blocked federal agents from carrying out sweeps in southern California after a judge determined they were indiscriminately targeting people based on race and whether they spoke Spanish, among other factors.
The court’s conservative majority did not provide a reason for the decision, which is typical for opinions on the court’s emergency docket.
In a concurring opinion, Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but it can be a “relevant factor” for immigration enforcement.
Attorney General Pam Bondi called the ruling a “massive victory” that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to “continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement.”
The Department of Homeland Security said its officers “will continue to FLOOD THE ZONE in Los Angeles” following the court’s order.
“This decision is a victory for the safety of Americans in California and for the rule of law,” the agency said in a statement accusing Democrat Mayor Karen Bass of “protecting” immigrants who have committed crimes.
Federal law enforcement “will not be slowed down and will continue to arrest and remove the murderers, rapists, gang members and other criminal illegal aliens that Karen Bass continues to give safe harbor,” according to Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
The court’s opinion drew a forceful rebuke from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the bench, who accused the conservative justices of ignoring the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful protects against unlawful searches and seizures
“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,” she wrote in a dissenting opinion.
“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be “free from arbitrary interference by law officers,’” she added. “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”
Immigration raids throughout the Los Angeles area in June sparked massive protests demanding the Trump administration withdraw ICE and federal agents from patrolling immigrant communities.
In response, Trump federalized National Guard troops and sent in hundreds of Marines despite objections from Democratic city and state officials. The administration deployed roughly 5,000 National Guard soldiers and Marines to the Los Angeles area, assisting with more than 170 law enforcement operations carried out by federal agencies, according to the Department of Defense.
The Pentagon has ended most of those operations, but hundreds of National Guard members remain active in southern California.
California Governor Gavin Newsom sued the administration, alleging the president illegally deployed the troops in violation of a 140-year-old law that prohibits the military from performing domestic law enforcement operations.
ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang, representing groups who sued to block indiscriminate raids in Los Angeles, said the Supreme Court order “puts people at grave risk.”
The order allows federal agents “to target individuals because of their race, how they speak, the jobs they work, or just being at a bus stop or the car wash when ICE agents decide to raid a place,” she said.
“For anyone perceived as Latino by an ICE agent, this means living in a fearful ‘papers please’ regime, with risks of violent ICE arrests and detention,” Wang added.
In his lengthy concurring opinion, Kavanaugh suggested that the demographics of southern California and the estimated 2 million people without legal permission living in the state support ICE’s sweeping operations.
He also argued that because Latino immigrants without legal status “tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work,” work in construction, and may not speak English, officers have a “reasonable suspicion” to believe they are violating immigration law.
Sotomayor criticized Kavanaugh’s assessment that ICE was merely performing “brief stops for questioning.”
“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 labor,” she wrote. “Today, the court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”
Because the court did not provide a reasoning behind the ruling, it is difficult to discern whether the justices intend for the order to have wider effect, giving Donald Trump a powerful tool to execute his commands for millions of arrests for his mass deportation agenda.
Bass warned that the ruling could have sweeping consequences.
“I want the entire nation to hear me when I say this isn’t just an attack on the people of Los Angeles, this is an attack on every person in every city in this country,” she said in a statement.
After weeks of vowing to deploy National Guard troops to fight crime in Chicago, the Trump administration said on Monday it had launched a deportation crackdown in Illinois targeting hardened criminals among immigrants in the U.S. without legal status.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in an online statement that “Operation Midway Blitz” was being conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, but details about its scope and nature were not immediately made clear.
It remained to be seen whether President Donald Trump would send National Guard soldiers into Chicago to accompany ICE and other federal law enforcement officers, as he has in and around Los Angeles and the District of Columbia.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, each said their offices had received no official notice from federal authorities about the operation, which they decried as a political stunt designed to intimidate.
Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric about expanding federal law enforcement and National Guard presence in Democratic-led cities and states, casting the use of presidential power as an urgent effort to confront crime even as local officials cite declines in homicides and other violent offenses.
DHS said its latest ICE operation was necessary because of city and state “sanctuary” laws that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the crackdown was aimed at convicted gang members, rapists, kidnappers and drug traffickers who she called “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago.”
The press release cited 11 cases of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, most from Mexico and Venezuela, who DHS said had records of arrest or convictions for serious crimes and were released from local jails rather than turned over to federal immigration officials.
City Alderwoman Jeylu Gutierrez, who represents the predominantly Hispanic 14th Ward on Chicago’s southwest side, said at least five members of her community had been detained in what she called a “federal assault.”
Among those arrested, Gutierrez said, was a flower vendor taken into custody on the job, while others were detained as they waited for a bus or walked on the sidewalk.
‘THIS ISN’T ABOUT FIGHTING CRIME’
“This was never about arresting the worst of the worst, this is about terrorizing our communities,” Gutierrez, a Mexican immigrant, told a press conference.
Pritzker, widely seen as a potential 2028 candidate for the White House, also disputed the crime-fighting rationale that Trump voiced last Tuesday when he said he would send National Guard troops to Chicago, the nation’s third most populous city and a Democratic stronghold.
“This isn’t about fighting crime,” Pritzker said on social media platform X on Monday. “That requires support and coordination — yet we’ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks.”
Pritzker has suggested Trump’s National Guard deployments might be a dress rehearsal for using the military to manipulate the 2026 midterm congressional elections.
Johnson said he was concerned about “potential militarized immigration enforcement without due process,” citing “ICE’s track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees.”
In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump cited recent murders and shootings in Chicago and blamed Pritzker for making no requests for assistance from the Trump administration.
“I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them,” Trump wrote. “Only the Criminals will be hurt! We can move fast and stop this madness.”
In a separate post on Saturday, Trump posted a meme based on the 1979 Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now” that showed an image of the Chicago skyline with flames and helicopters, reminiscent of the deadly helicopter attack on a Vietnamese village in the film.
The Trump administration launched a parallel immigration enforcement operation in Boston in recent days, an ICE official confirmed on Monday.
ICE also said on Monday that its Houston-based agents had arrested 822 “criminal aliens, transnational gang members, child predators, foreign fugitives and other egregious offenders” during a week-long operation last month in southeastern Texas.
Previously, DHS said ICE had arrested nearly 1,500 immigration offenders during a month-long enforcement surge in Massachusetts in May and early June.
The latest ICE operation in Chicago was announced the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision allowing federal agents in Southern California to proceed with immigration raids that detain people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, language or accent, even without “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally.
A man from Mexico in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody died last week at a hospital in Arizona, the federal agency said.
He had been detained at the Central Arizona Correctional Complex, in the town of Florence, and was pronounced dead by a doctor at the Mountain Vista Medical Center, near Phoenix, on the morning of Aug. 31, according to ICE. The agency said his cause of death was unknown and remained under investigation.
Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas, 32, was a citizen of Mexico who had been arrested by Flagstaff police on Aug. 2 and charged with possession and use of drug paraphernalia, which is a felony. Immigration enforcement agents said they took Vargas into custody in Phoenix before transferring him to the detention center in Florence.
Vargas had been arrested at least twice before by Flagstaff police, according to ICE. The agency said he was convicted by the Flagstaff Municipal Court of driving under the influence in 2018 and 2024, with the latter conviction resulting in a sentence of 10 days in confinement.
ICE said its agents notified the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Inspector General, and the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility of Vargas’ death, which is required by agency policies. They also notified the Mexican Embassy.
“ICE remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments. Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay,” the agency said, adding, “At no time during detention is a detained illegal alien denied emergent care.”
Asked for any updates on the investigation into Vargas’ death, a spokesperson for ICE told CBS News in an email Sunday that the agency would post more information to its website once it becomes available.
Fourteen people, including Vargas, have died at immigration detention centers across the U.S. since the beginning of the year, according to ICE.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexican-man-dies-ice-custody-arizona-detention-center
The Trump administration has launched an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Massachusetts, saying it would target what it called “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens” in the state.
The Department of Homeland Security provided few details on the scale of the latest operation, called Patriot 2.0. But in a statement Saturday, the department said that it followed “the success of Operation Patriot in May.” The earlier ICE raids resulted in nearly 1,500 arrests across Massachusetts, including dozens of migrant workers on Martha’s Vineyard.
“If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return,” the statement said.
The Massachusetts operation comes as the Trump administration has signaled it is preparing to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago — a move that local leaders have strongly opposed.
On Thursday, the administration sued Boston and its leaders for allegedly refusing to cooperate with immigration authorities, adding to a string of similar lawsuits against so-called “sanctuary cities.”
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has defended the city’s laws, describing the lawsuit Thursday as an “unconstitutional attack on our city.” The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ICE operation Saturday.
In its statement Saturday, DHS said “sanctuary policies like those pushed by Mayor Wu not only attract and harbor criminals but also place these public safety threats above the interests of law-abiding American citizens.”
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan vowed last week to increase immigration enforcement across sanctuary cities, saying the administration was planning to “flood the zone” with thousands of agents.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has repeatedly said that immigration officers are arresting the “worst of the worst.” But a Washington Post analysis of ICE data from June found the administration is increasingly targeting unauthorized immigrants with no criminal record as it ramps up arrests.
Federal authorities said the Massachusetts arrests in May included an alleged MS-13 gang member and someone described as a “child sex offender.” But according to community members, most of the migrants had no criminal record and were stopped on their way to work.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said federal officials disappeared from a Navy base near Chicago on Friday after Democrats announced they would tour the facility ahead of the arrival of immigration officers.
In an interview with host Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Duckworth said when she joined fellow Illinois Democrats Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Brad Schneider for a tour of the Naval Station Great Lakes, Department of Homeland Security officials had given staff the day off, “locked the doors and left the base.”
“Basically, they fled the base,” Duckworth said. Naval Station Great Lakes, which opened in 1911, is the site for boot camp for Naval trainees.
Officials last week said that up to 300 ICE agents would be operating out of the Great Lakes Naval Base as President Donald Trump ramps up his efforts against Democratic-controlled sanctuary cities. Trump also said the administration will deploy the National Guard to the city, drawing outrage from Democrats including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Ahead of the lawmakers’ trip to the base, Duckworth said, she and her colleagues asked DHS if they could come tour the facility to have a “better understanding of what your operations are.”
DHS officials, she said, replied no.
“This is not the action of someone that’s doing something legal or that they’re- that they’re proud of,” said Duckworth.
“We certainly have sent the administration multiple inquiries about what they are planning on doing. Who are they bringing into Chicago? Are they planning to bring the National Guard in? They’ve none of that. They’ve not even reached out to local law enforcement to try to coordinate,” she added. “And we’ve not gotten any communications or feedback from the administration, whatsoever.”
Navy officials that were on the base during the Democrats’ tour told them that the assistance they’ve been requested to provide so far is only office space for ICE, Duckworth added.
While it is unclear when ICE officials or the National Guard will be sent to Chicago, Trump on Saturday said his administration will go to “WAR” with the city of Chicago.
“Chicago [is] about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, referring to the Department of Defense’s planned name change.
Illinois officials quickly responded to the post, calling the president a “tyrant” and a “declaration of war.”
“I take what the President of the United States says very seriously, because that is the respect you have to give to the office,” Duckworth said on Sunday. “And if that’s what he’s declaring, then let me make it clear, it would be an illegal order to declare war on a major city, any city within the United States, by the President of the United States.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/07/duckworth-dhs-fled-naval-base-visit-00549536
Hundreds of federal agents descended on a sprawling site where Hyundai manufactures electric vehicles in Georgia and detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals.
This is the latest in a long line of workplace raids conducted as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. But the one on Thursday is especially distinct because of its large size and the fact that it targeted a manufacturing site state officials have long called Georgia’s largest economic development project.
The detainment of South Korean nationals also sets it apart, as they are rarely caught up in immigration enforcement compared to other nationalities.
Video released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday showed a caravan of vehicles driving up to the site and then federal agents directing workers to line up outside. Some detainees were ordered to put their hands up against a bus as they were frisked and then shackled around their hands, ankles and waist. Others had plastic ties around their wrists as they boarded a Georgia inmate-transfer bus.
Here are some things to know about the raid and the people impacted:
The workers detained
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Saturday that more than 300 South Koreans were among the 475 people detained.
Some of them worked for the battery plant operated by HL-GA Battery Co., a joint venture by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution that is slated to open next year, while others were employed by contractors and subcontractors at the construction site, according to Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations.
He said that some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others had entered the country legally but had expired visas or had entered on a visa waiver that prohibited them from working.
But an immigration attorney representing two of the detained workers said his clients arrived from South Korea under a visa waiver program that enables them to travel for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa.
Attorney Charles Kuck said one of his clients has been in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, while the other has been in the country for about 45 days, adding that they had been planning to return home soon.
The detainees also included a lawful permanent resident who was kept in custody for having a prior record involving firearm and drug offenses, since committing a crime of “moral turpitude” can put their status in jeopardy, Lindsay Williams, a public affairs officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Saturday.
Williams denied reports that U.S. citizens had been detained at the site since “once citizens have identified themselves, we have no authority.”
Hyundai Motor Company said in a statement Friday that none of its employees had been detained as far as it knew and that it is reviewing its practices to make sure suppliers and subcontractors follow U.S. employment laws. LG told The Associated Press that it couldn’t immediately confirm how many of its employees or Hyundai workers had been detained.
The South Korean government expressed “concern and regret” over the operation targeting its citizens and is sending diplomats to the site.
“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of U.S. law enforcement,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong said in a televised statement from Seoul.
Most of the people detained have been taken to an immigration detention center in Folkston, Georgia, near the Florida state line. None of them have been charged with any crimes yet, Schrank said, but the investigation is ongoing.
Family members and friends of the detainees were having a hard time locating them or figuring out how to get in touch with them, James Woo, communications director for the advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said Saturday in an email.
Woo added that many of the families were in South Korea because many of the detainees were in the United States only for business purposes.
Raid is the result of a monthslong investigation
The raid was the result of a monthslong investigation into allegations of illegal hiring at the site, Schrank said.
In a search warrant and related affidavits, agents sought everything from employment records for current and former workers and timecards to video and photos of workers.
Court records filed this week indicated that prosecutors do not know who hired what it called “hundreds of illegal aliens.” The identity of the “actual company or contractor hiring the illegal aliens is currently unknown,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a Thursday court filing.
The sprawling manufacturing site
The raid targeted a manufacturing site widely considered one of Georgia’s largest and most high profile.
Hyundai Motor Group started manufacturing EVs at the $7.6 billion plant a year ago. Today, the site employs about 1,200 people in a largely rural area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Savannah.
Agents specifically honed in on an adjacent plant that is still under construction at which Hyundai has partnered with LG Energy Solution to produce batteries that power EVs.
The Hyundai site is in Bryan County, which saw its population increase by more than a quarter in the early 2020s and stood at almost 47,000 residents in 2023, the most recent year data is available. The county’s Asian population went from 1.5% in 2018 to 2.2% in 2023, and the growth was primarily among people of Indian descent, according to Census Bureau figures.
Raid was the ‘largest single site enforcement operation’
From farms and construction sites to restaurants and auto repair shops, there have been a wide array of workplace raids undertaken in this administration. But most have been smaller, including a raid the same day as the Georgia one in which federal officers took away dozens of workers from a snack-bar manufacturer in Cato, New York.
Other recent high-profile raids have included one in July targeting a legal marijuana farm northwest of Los Angeles. More than 360 people were arrested in one of the largest raids since Trump took office in January. Another one took place at an Omaha. Nebraska, meat production plant and involved dozens of workers being taken away.
Schrank described the one in Georgia as the “largest single site enforcement operation” in the agency’s two-decade history.
The majority of the people detained are Koreans. During the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2024, only 46 Koreans were deported during out of more than 270,000 removals for all nationalities, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Community members and advocates have mixed reactions
Kemp and other Georgia Republican officials, who had courted Hyundai and celebrated the EV plant’s opening, issued statements Friday saying all employers in the state were expected to follow the law.
The nonprofit legal advocacy organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta described the raid in a joint statement as “unacceptable.”
“Our communities know the workers targeted at Hyundai are everyday people who are trying to feed their families, build stronger communities, and work toward a better future,” the statement said.
Sammie Rentz opened the Viet Huong Supermarket less than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the Hyundai site six months ago and said he worries business may not bounce back after falling off sharply since the raid.
“I’m concerned. Koreans are very proud people, and I bet they’re not appreciating what just happened. I’m worried about them cutting and running, or starting an exit strategy,” he said.
Ellabell resident Tanya Cox, who lives less than a mile from the Hyundai site, said she had no ill feelings toward Korean nationals or other immigrant workers at the site. But few neighbors were employed there, and she felt like more construction jobs at the battery plant should have gone to local residents.
“I don’t see how it’s brought a lot of jobs to our community or nearby communities,” Cox said.
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-raid-hyundai-plant-4dd1a6b2ad66d27567b2463c5f3c97bb
