Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the Supreme Court’s decision to allow wide-scale ICE raids and immigration stops in Los Angeles to continue on Monday. In a scathing dissent, she said the court was giving the Department of Homeland Security a green light to “seize anyone who looks Latino.”
The Monday ruling lifted an injunction on “roving” ICE actions in Southern California. That order from a lower court judge barred agents from carrying out detentions based on ethnicity, languages being spoken, employment or location.
While the Supreme Court’s ruling was unsigned, it appeared to be supported along partisan lines as all three liberals dissented. Writing for the liberal justices, Sotomayor called the order “unconscionable” and said it made Latinos throughout the region “fair game.”
“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 wrote.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring with the unnamed majority, said ethnicity was a “a ‘relevant factor’” for ICE agents to consider. He added that “many” undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area “do not speak much English,” and work low-wage, manual labor jobs.
“Under this Court’s precedents, not mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote.
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In her dissent, Sotomayor raised concerns about how the ruling could impact constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be free from arbitrary interference by law officers,” she wrote. “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.”
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