Supreme Court Sides with ICE, Removes Safeguards After LA Raids Detain Americans

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration operations in Los Angeles, the latest victory for President Donald Trump’s administration at the high court.

The conservative majority lifted a restraining order from a judge who found that “roving patrols” were conducting indiscriminate arrests in LA. The order had barred agents from stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.

Trump’s Republican administration argued the order wrongly restricted agents carrying out its widespread crackdown on illegal immigration.

US District Judge Maame E. Frimpong in Los Angeles had found a “mountain of evidence” that enforcement tactics were violating the Constitution. The plaintiffs included U.S. citizens swept up in immigration stops. An appeals court had left Frimpong’s ruling in place.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents also step up enforcement in Washington amid Trump’s unprecedented federal takeover of the capital city’s law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard.

The lawsuit will now continue to unfold in California. It was filed by immigrant advocacy groups that accused Trump’s administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people during his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration in the Los Angeles area.

In a stinging dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “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.”

Department of Homeland Security attorneys have said immigration officers target people based on illegal presence in the U.S., not skin color, race or ethnicity. Even so, the Justice Department argued that the order wrongly restricted the factors that ICE agents can use when deciding who to stop.