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.
