Supreme Court upholds ‘roving patrols’ for immigration arrests in Los Angeles

Washington – The Supreme Court ruled on Monday for the Trump administration and agreed that American immigration agents could stop and hold anyone who suspects is in the United States illegally on the basis of a little more than working in car washing, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.

During a 6-3 vote, the judges granted an emergency appeal and raised the ordinance of a Los Angeles judge who prohibited “itinerant patrols” from tearing him away from the streets of southern California according to their appearance, the language they speak, the work they do or where they are.

In a concordant opinion, the Brett judge Mr. Kavanaugh said that federal law said that “immigration agents” could briefly have “an individual” to question “if they have” a reasonable suspicion, on the basis of specific articular facts, that the person questioned … is an illegally foreigner in the United States “.”

“Immigration judgments based on reasonable suspicions of illegal presence have been an important component of the application of American immigration for decades, in several presidential administrations,” he said.

The three liberal judges dissident.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor described the decision “another serious abusive use of our emergency file. We must not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone Latino, speaks Spanish and seems to work with low wages. Rather than staying lazily while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissipate myself. ”

“The government … almost said that all Latinos, American citizens or not, who occupy low -wage jobs are a fair game at any time, removed from work and held until they provide proof of their legal status to agents’ satisfaction,” wrote Sotomayor.

Sotomayor also disagreed with Kavanaugh’s claims.

“Immigration agents do not lead” brief judgments to question “, as the occurrence would like to believe. They enter people who use firearms, physical violence and warehouse detention, “she wrote. “Undreable immigrants are not the only the only harmful by the conduct of the government. The citizens of the United States are also seized, drawn from their jobs and prevented from working to support themselves and their families. ”

The decision is an important victory for President Trump, opening the way to his “greatest mass deportation operation” often promising in American history.

From the beginning of June, the people appointed by Trump targeted Los Angeles with aggressive street sweeping which have taken the absence of longtime residents, legal immigrants and even American citizens.

A coalition of civil rights groups and local lawyers challenged the cases of three immigrants and two American citizens caught in chaotic arrests, claiming that they had been seized without reasonable suspicion – a violation of the 4th amendment to the unreasonable searches and seizures.

On July 11, the American district judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary prohibition order prohibiting judgments based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location or employment, alone or in combination.

On July 28, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

The case remains in its first phases, with audiences fixed for a preliminary injunction this month. But the Ministry of Justice has even asserted a brief limit of mass arrests constituted an “irreparable injury” to the government.

A few days later, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to put aside the Frimpong prescription. They said agents should be allowed to act by assuming that the Spanish -speaking Latinos working as day workers, in car washes or in landscaping and agriculture are likely to lack legal status.

“Reasonable suspicions are a low bar – well below the probable cause,” wrote General D. John Sauer in his call. Agents can consider “all circumstances” during judgments, he said, including that “illegal presence is widespread in the central district [of California]where 1 in 10 people is an illegal foreigner. »»

The two parties said that the various demographic data in the region support their vision of the law. In a request to join the trial, Los Angeles and 20 other municipalities in southern California argued that “half of the population of the central district” now meets the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicions.

About 10 million Latinos live in the seven counties covered by order, and almost as much speak a language other than English at home.

Sauer also wondered if the complainants who continued were standing because they were not likely to be arrested.

This argument was the subject of a clear and extended interrogation in the 9th circuit, where a panel of three judges finally rejected it.

“The agents made numerous stops in the Los Angeles region in a few weeks, not years, some on several occasions in the same place,” wrote the panel in his opinion on July 28 denying the stay.

An applicant was arrested twice in the space of 10 days, evidence of a “real and immediate threat”, which he or one of the others could be arrested, said the 9th circuit.

A few days after this decision, strongly armed border patrol agents came from the back of a Penske moving truck, tearing the workers from the parking lot from a Westlake Home depot in apparent contempt.

The defenders of immigrant rights had urged judges not to intervene.

“The raids have followed an unconstitutional scheme that the officials have promised to continue,” they said. Trump’s decision would authorize “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of people who are respectful of the imminent risk laws of detention by federal agents”.

The judge’s order had applied itself in an area which included the counties of Los Angeles and Orange as well as in the counties of Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

Savage reported Washington, Sharp de Los Angeles.