On Monday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to use racial profiling in its militarized immigration raids across Los Angeles, halting an injunction that had barred officers from targeting Latinos based on ethnicity. The court did not explain the reason for its shadow docket order, which appeared to split 6–3 along ideological lines. In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the decision was “unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees,” opening the door to violent persecution of Latinos—including American citizens—by “masked agents with guns.” The majority did not respond to this extraordinary charge, perhaps because it is so obviously true.
Monday’s case, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, revolves around the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration dragnet in and around L.A., dubbed Operation at Large. The government deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to arrest anyone suspected of lacking legal status; many of those officers wore masks, refused to identify themselves as law enforcement, and carried handguns or assault weapons. They targeted locations where Latinos frequently congregated, including Home Depots, car washes, bus stops, churches, and parks. And they targeted individuals who “appeared” Latino and spoke Spanish, arresting them first, then determining their citizenship status later. (The arrests were often gratuitously brutal, with agents throwing targets against the ground or a wall for no reason.) As a result, a number of American citizens found themselves physically assaulted and held at gunpoint until they could produce documentation.
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