By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - The US Supreme Court allowed the Donald Trump administration to resume roving immigration patrols in Los Angeles, and stops of individuals they suspect of being in the US illegally.
The case remains pending before an appeals court, but the Supreme Court's short ruling, authored by Trump-appointee Justice Brett Kavanaugh, lifts a lower court's restraining order that prevented agents from making stops based on where an individual is working, what language they are speaking and their race.
Kavanaugh wrote that "immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U.S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations." He noted that "reasonable suspicion" is a low bar, and depends on "the totality of the circumstances."
"Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English," he wrote.
"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," he added.
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first and only Latino on the top court, wrote a blistering 21-page dissent for the court's three liberal justices in which she called the ruling " yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket."
"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. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities," she wrote.
"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. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent," she added.