US ... Supreme Court Enables Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement

 

Supreme Court Enables Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement

On September 8, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that should alarm anyone committed to constitutional rights and equal treatment under the law. In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the Court lifted a federal judge's injunction that had prohibited Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from stopping people based solely on their race, ethnicity, language, or type of work.

Federal District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong had issued a temporary restraining order in July, recognizing what seemed constitutionally obvious: that stopping people based on their apparent ethnicity, speaking Spanish or accented English, their presence at certain locations like day-laborer sites, or their type of work violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The judge's order was grounded in established precedent—the Fourth Amendment requires that government agents have reasonable suspicion based on individualized factors before detaining someone, not broad demographic characteristics that "describe a very large category of presumably innocent people."

The Court's majority provided no reasoning for their decision—an increasingly common practice that Justice Sotomayor criticized as "troubling" and "entirely unexplained." Only Justice Brett Kavanaugh offered a concurring opinion defending the ruling, arguing that demographic realities in Los Angeles justified the enforcement tactics.

Kavanaugh's reasoning is particularly concerning. He noted that "about 10 percent of people in the Los Angeles region are illegally in the United States" and that unauthorized immigrants often work in certain industries and come from Mexico or Central America. This logic essentially treats an entire population's ethnic characteristics as grounds for suspicion—a dangerous precedent in any democracy.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a forceful dissent that captured the gravity of the situation: "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."

The dissent highlighted how the ruling forces "an entire class of American citizens—those who look, talk or work in ways associated with undocumented immigrants—to the indignity of having to carry documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely."

Unfortunately, a stark pattern emerges when examining who sided with constitutional protections versus broader enforcement powers. Every jurist defending constitutional rights—Judge Frimpong, the three appeals court judges, and the three Supreme Court dissenters—received appointments from Democratic presidents. Meanwhile, every justice supporting expanded enforcement was appointed by Republicans.

Such partisan alignment on constitutional rights represents something fundamentally new and troubling in American jurisprudence. Basic protections against racial profiling now depend more on political ideology than legal principle—a development that would have shocked previous generations of legal scholars across the political spectrum.

While legal experts debate constitutional nuances, real people face immediate consequences. Jason Brian Gavidia, an American citizen born in East Los Angeles, discovered this firsthand when a masked agent stopped him while working on his car outside a tow yard. After he identified himself as American, agents still slammed him against a metal gate, twisted his arm, seized his phone and ID. Although they eventually released him twenty minutes later, they never returned his identification.

Now, thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling, such encounters aren't just possible—they're legally sanctioned. Countless American citizens of Hispanic descent must now consider carrying documentation wherever they go, simply to prove they belong in their own country.

Unfortunately, this decision reflects something larger than immigration policy—it represents a systematic erosion of constitutional protections that once seemed inviolable. When America's highest court enables racial profiling, we're forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: our democratic institutions may not be as resilient as we once believed.

Looking at the broader context, this ruling allows what critics accurately describe as "roving patrols of masked agents" to continue operations that have already resulted in thousands of stops based primarily on how people look or sound. Such practices would have been unthinkable in mainstream American politics just a few years ago.

Justice Sotomayor's dissent offers a sobering conclusion: "Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent." Her words remind us that in moments when democratic norms crumble, principled dissent becomes not just important—it becomes essential for preserving whatever remains of our founding ideals.

Moving forward, Americans must grapple with a fundamental question: will other institutions—Congress, state governments, civil society, and ultimately the people themselves—step up to defend constitutional principles that the Supreme Court seems increasingly willing to abandon? History will judge not just this Court's failures, but how the rest of us responded when constitutional protections hung in the balance.

* Texto produzido com base no que foi publicado nos meios de comunicação dos EUA e o pouco que foi divulgado pela Suprema Corte sobre a decisão.