The lower court said federal agents need a reasonable doubt that someone is illegally in the country and that they cannot rely on factors such as ethnicity.
LA County evacuates pets after immigrant raids
The LA County Animal Control Department is urging families to plan their pets in case owners are affected by deportation.
WASHINGTON – The divided Supreme Court on September 8 said the Trump administration could reopen indiscriminate immigration-related stops in Los Angeles for now.
On the three liberal justice challenges, the court blocked the judge’s ruling that federal agents need reasonable doubts that the person they question is illegally in the country.
US District Judge Mame Frimon of the Central District of California said the government cannot rely on the language they speak, such as the ethnicity of a person, the language they speak, the day lab pickup site, etc.
Frimpong issued its temporary order in July in response to a class action lawsuit filed by a group of Latinos, including US citizens involved in the 2025 ice attack in Southern California.
The administration questioned the challenger’s legal rights to the case, and the judge said it inappropriately raised the Fourth Amendment “rover” due to reasonable doubts about the search and seizures. That means the government has done nothing wrong, the Justice Department said.
In areas where a significant portion of the population is undocumented, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that “reasonable doubts stop suspicious illegal aliens will inevitably encompass a reasonable broad profile.”
The government estimates that 10% of the population in Southern California and Central California is undocumented, which is why the Los Angeles region is a top priority.
The Trump administration has stepped up immigrant raids across California since June, focusing on a wider sweep from people with criminal history to anyone in the country without approval.
The crackdown sparked protests, which led to Trump sending out National Guard troops and Marines to suppress them.
The challenger’s lawyer said many U.S. citizens and others legally in the country have harmed some, including those who suffered severe physical injuries. People are afraid to leave the house.
“The extraordinary government claim that the number of Latinos that is not legally present is a constitutional attitude, and that it can be very close to justifying the seizure of Latinos in the Central District,” they told the Supreme Court. “And more generally, the courts have made it clear that there is no reasonable doubt from the facts explaining the broad sash of a law-abiding population.”
In opposition to the three liberals in the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority decision was “another serious misuse in our emergency.”
“There shouldn’t be a need for governments to grab people who look like Latino, speak Spanish and do low-paid jobs,” Sotomayor wrote. “I disagree, rather than standing vaguely while our constitutional freedom is lost.”
The concise, unsigned order of the majority did not include legal reasoning for the decision.
However, Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote to explain his views.
Kavanaugh said there is no good basis to believe that Latinos challenging the stop will be questioned again by law enforcement. And even if they do so, he said the government is likely to win the legal challenge after the government is fully sued.
Ethnicity alone is not the basis of reasonable doubt, but it can be related to being considered other factors, he said.
“Under this court precedent, not to mention common sense,” Kavanaugh wrote.
