Critics appoint the Supreme Court for having allowed immigration judgments which consider the race and the ethnicity

Washington – Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court unanimously judged that agents of the American border patrol had violated the Constitution when they stopped a car on a highway near San Clemente because its occupants seemed to be “Mexican ancestry”.

The 4th amendment protects the Americans against unreasonable research, said judges, and the “Mexican appearance” of a motorist does not justify arresting them to ask questions about their immigration status.

But the court sounded a resolutely different note on Monday when he ruled for the Trump administration and paved the way for stopping and questioning the Latinos which could be here illegally. By a vote of 6-3, the judges put aside the temporary ban on a Los Angeles judge who prohibited agents from preventing people in part on their face or apparent ethnicity.

“Apparent ethnicity alone cannot provide reasonable suspicion,” said Brett judge Mr. Kavanaugh. “However, this can be a relevant factor when considered with other protruding factors.”

Critics of the decision said they had opened the door to the authorization of racial and ethnic prejudices.

UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham, called him “shocking and appalling. I do not know any recent decision like this which authorized racial discrimination ”.

Arulanantham noted that the writings of Kavanaugh speak for justice alone and that the full court did not explain its decision on a case which went through its emergency file.

On the other hand, he and others stressed that the court of chief judge John G. Roberts Jr. prohibited the use of race or ethnicity as a factor in university admissions.

“The elimination of racial discrimination means eliminating all of this,” Roberts wrote for a majority 6-3 in 2023. This decision canceled positive action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

“Today, the Supreme Court has taken a step in the wrong direction,” wrote Ilya Somin, law professor at George Mason University, on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. “This has no sense to conclude that racial and ethnic discrimination is generally unconstitutional, but also that its use is” reasonable “under the 4th amendment.”

Reports had already emerged before the decision of ice agents confronted with American citizens and legal permanent residents before having been able to prove their status, forcing a lot to start transporting documents at any time.

In New York on Monday, a man outside a federal court was pushed by ICE agents before being able to show them his identification. He was released.

Questioned by the Times to respond to growing concern among American citizens, they could be swept away in enlarged ice raids following the decision, the press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday that individuals should not worry.

She added that immigration agents carry out targeted operations with the use of intelligence from the police.

“The Supreme Court has confirmed the right of the Trump administration to arrest the individuals of Los Angeles to question them briefly concerning their legal status, because the law allows, and this has been the practice of the federal government for decades,” said Leavitt. “The Immigration and Nationality Act states that immigration agents can briefly prevent an individual from questioning them about their immigration status, if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States. And that reasonable suspicions are not only based on the breed – it is based on a whole of the circumstances. ”

On X, the Democrats of the House’s internal security committee responded to Leavitt’s comments, writing: “Ice imprisoned American citizens. Trump’s administrator defends racial profiling. No one is safe when “his Hispanic” is treated as a probable cause. “

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, stressed that almost half of the Grand Los Angeles residents are Latinos and can speak Spanish.

“Innumerable people in the Los Angeles region have been seized, thrown to the ground and handcuffed because of their appearance, their accents and the fact that they earn their lives by doing manual work,” she wrote. “Today, the Court unnecessarily submits countless others to these same unworthiness.”

In question in the case, the sense of “reasonable suspicion”.

For decades, the court said that the police and federal agents can arrest and question someone if they see something specific that suggests that they could violate the law.

But the two parties did not agree to find out if the agents can stop people because they seem to be the Latinos and work as day workers, in car washes or other low -wage jobs.

President Trump’s lawyers as well as Kavanaugh said agents could make stops based on “all circumstances” and this may include where people work and their ethnicity. They also underlined the data that suggests that around 10% of the inhabitants of the Los Angeles region are illegally in the United States.

Tom Homan, the border adviser of the White House, said that the legal standard of reasonable suspicion “has a group of factors that you must take into consideration”, adding that “racial profiling does not occur at all.”

It is a “false story pushed,” said Homan to MSNBC in an interview, praising the decision of the Supreme Court. “We do not stop someone or hold someone without reasonable suspicion.”