Supreme Court: Green light to discrimination against Latinos

Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:

Although it is evident that ICE uses racial profiling in its immigration raids in Los Angeles, the Supreme Court validated the practice by temporarily lifting restrictions imposed on agents by lower courts. The order allows the Trump administration to conduct indiscriminate arrests and raids based on factors such as race or ethnicity, the language people speak, whether they speak English with an accent, the work they do, or where they are at the time of the operation.

The order is not a final ruling, but it is not surprising either, as the conservative-majority Supreme Court has become a rubber stamp for the Trump administration, endorsing some of its most extreme policies. And it is outrageous that a Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump, minimizes the use of racial profiling, saying that considering ethnicity a “relevant factor” for “reasonable suspicion” is “common sense.”

He went further: “For stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the 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.” But that’s not how it goes in the real world.

In other words, ICE has carte blanche to violate the Constitution and the protections against unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment. And it can continue to use racial profiling in Los Angeles with its 8 million Hispanics who speak English, with and without accents, and work in all kinds of jobs.

Furthermore, it is to be expected that discrimination will not be limited to Los Angeles because ICE operations are carried out across the country. The Supreme Court’s action is an assault on Latinos across the country, whether they are citizens or not.

Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the Central District of California had ruled that ICE agents must have “reasonable suspicion” that a person is undocumented without relying solely on their skin color or whether they speak Spanish. She thus prohibited agents from using racial profiling while a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups and authorized citizens and residents who were detained as part of Trump’s indiscriminate raids proceeds in court.

The high court blocked Frimpong’s ruling while the lawsuit proceeds and the case makes its way back to the Supreme Court for a decision on the merits of the case.

But it is clear which way the balance is tipping.

Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California who represents the plaintiffs, said the decision “is a devastating setback for our plaintiffs and communities, who for months have been subjected to immigration checks because of the color of their skin, their occupation, or the language they speak.”

The ruling adds fuel to the fire at a time when the Trump administration has intensified its raids not only in Los Angeles but in other parts of the country, and when its campaign to exercise military control in Democratic cities under the guise of fighting crime has expanded to Chicago and Baltimore.

Thus, Trump has not only declared war on Democratic cities but also on Latinos, who will be the most affected by the use of racial profiling.

The three liberal judges on the court opposed the decision, and it was the only Hispanic judge on the high court, Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote that “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.”

The original Spanish version is here.