US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.
In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen. He also said that border patrol would be starting operations back up again today.
“We are going hard in Los Angeles today and are hitting a location as I write this,” Bovino wrote.
Immigration officers were forced to pause their sweeping immigration raids after advocacy groups sued the Trump administration for systemically racially profiling brown-skinned people. US district judge in Los Angeles Maame E Frimpong granted the groups a temporary restraining order after finding a “mountain of evidence” that the immigration enforcement tactics were violating the constitution.
But the supreme court ruled 6-3 to lift those restrictions on Monday. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted to approve the stay on the order, wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act allows immigration officers to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States”. While “ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” it can be used as a “relevant” factor, he wrote.
He also contended that if a US citizen or someone who is legally in the country is stopped, “questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States”. This would require citizens and anyone who is at risk of being profiled under this new order to carry around proof of their citizenship.
Department of Homeland Security called the supreme court decision a victory and vowed to continue to “flood the zone” in Los Angeles while accusing LA mayor Karen Bass of “protecting” immigrants. “DHS law enforcement will continue to FLOOD THE ZONE in Los Angeles. This decision is a victory for the safety of Americans in California and for the rule of law. DHS will continue to arrest and remove the criminal illegal aliens that @MayorOfLA is protecting,” read the social media post.
Already, several US citizens have been swept up in immigration raids across the country and detained or, in some cases, deported. In Los Angeles, for instance, US citizen and 32-year-old Andrea Velez was arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency during a June raid. Charges against her were ultimately dismissed and she was released.
Kavanaugh also wrote that illegal immigration is “especially pronounced in the Los Angeles area” and that it’s not surprising then that the administration has prioritized the city as part of its nationwide immigration crackdown.
While the administration is increasing its federal enforcement in cities such as Washington DC and Chicago, Los Angeles has been a center point of its immigration crackdown. Federal agents, as well as the national guard, were deployed to Los Angeles sparking fear among communities across the city. Immigration agents have targeted schools, workplaces and Home Depot locations. During a recent Ice raid at a Home Depot in LA-suburb, Monrovia, a man was hit by a car and killed when he was trying to get away from immigration officers.
In its order granting the reversal of the restraining order, the supreme court said it was customary for the government to stop people working in roles like landscaping or construction because those jobs “often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English”.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that people in Los Angeles “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,” her dissent continued.
