Federal agents can now detain persons based on the social-coloring of their skin. A recent Supreme Court decision now allows immigration stops based on race and ethnicity.
The Supreme Court issued a temporary order that overturned a lower court’s restriction on immigration enforcement practices. This lower court order had barred federal agents from stopping and detaining people based solely on factors like their race, language or work type.
The Supreme Court’s decision did not provide an explanation, leaving the issue in flux for now. But critics claim the decision “authoriz(es) racial and ethnic bias.”
Racial profiling is unconstitutional and violates the Fourteenth Amendment‘s Equal Protection Clause by denying equal protection under the law as well as the Fourth Amendment‘s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Instead, racial profiling relies on suspicion based on race rather than individualized suspicion of criminal activity. Courts have found that targeting individuals based on race rather than specific, articulable facts violates these constitutional principles.
Still, the Trump administration continues to manufacture “racial terror” wherein his divisive words become decisive actions, including ICE raids on marginalized communities. Watch what you say because you can now be targeted if you speak Spanish or English “with an accent.”
“We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, who speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to legalize racial profiling for immigration patrols in Los Angeles in the case of Noem vs. Perdomo.
The city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said the Supreme Court “has now given the green light for law enforcement to profile and detain Angelenos based on their race.” Bass agreed with Sotomayor’s dissent. “We all dissent because from the beginning, we have known that Los Angeles has been used as a test case for total dominance and unchecked power by the federal government.”
This news follows the announcement of “Operation Midway Blitz,” a 30-day immigration enforcement surge in the Chicago area, by the Department of Homeland Security. It comes at the end of aggressive immigration enforcement in Washington, D.C. and the federal takeover of the city’s police.
“The federal takeover has been a cover to do federal immigration enforcement,” Austin Rose, a managing attorney at Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, an advocacy group, said. “It became pretty clear early on that this was a major campaign of immigration enforcement.”
Last year, Donald Trump campaigned on strengthening border enforcement, conducting mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and prioritizing the interests of American workers. However, this hardline approach has also included rhetoric linking immigration to crime.
His repeated use of dehumanizing descriptions like “animals,” “killers,” “migrant criminals” and “gang members” works to normalize the word associations and criminalize this population. Trump began reading from this playbook in 2015, which included talking points on unsupported claims of a crime wave. For some, it appears the Supreme Court and Donald Trump are on the same page.
“Xenophobia threatens national unity,” Erica Lee wrote in America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States. “It allows white supremacy and white nationalism to come to the forefront of American politics and culture.”
This Supreme Court decision erodes social trust and maintains an us-versus-them relational dynamic that relies on generalizations and stereotypes rather than an individualized suspicion of criminal activity. The use of “in-groups” and “out-groups” creates hostility toward immigrants and other perceived outsiders. It also diminishes the understanding needed for a cohesive society.
On the Department of Homeland Security’s webpage, a response to the decision begins, “The Supreme Court ruled the Trump Administration can continue operations in Los Angeles to remove dangerous criminal illegal aliens from the streets.” Notice the language: “dangerous criminal illegal aliens.” This is a denial of personhood and a disgusting example of othering.
Racial profiling has deep historical roots in the United States that precede modern policing and continue today, despite legal advancements. Supreme Court rulings have both affirmed protections against discrimination and, at times, legitimized practices that allow for racial bias in law enforcement actions. Consequently, these legal safeguards are as secure as the persons interpreting them, so the back and forth will continue.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
