Two months after a federal judge halted what she called “a policy and pattern of unlawful stops and arrests” in the Los Angeles area, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is allowing deportation agents to resume detaining people based solely on their ethnicity or for speaking Spanish.
On Monday, the high court removed a temporary restraining order that had stopped Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from conducting raids that singled out people because of the color of their skin or speaking in English with a foreign accent.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh criticized what he called “after-the-fact judicial second-guessing” of ICE agents, warning that “contempt proceedings will inevitably chill lawful immigration enforcement efforts.” He reasoned that the high court intervention was justified because the Trump administration would suffer “irreparable injury … particularly given the millions of individuals illegally in the United States [and] the myriad ‘significant economic and social problems’ caused by illegal immigration,” repeating a common conservative talking point on the issue.