Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent to Monday’s Supreme Court docket ruling authorizing immigration brokers’ use of racial profiling, saying it’s “unconscionably irreconcilable” with the U.S. Structure.
“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,” Sotomayor wrote.
Her dissent is peppered with documented situations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers in Los Angeles this 12 months utilizing bodily drive to cease individuals they suspected of being within the U.S. illegally due to their location, jobs, obvious race or spoken language.
“Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor,” she continued. “Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”
President Donald Trump’s administration, and now the nation’s highest courtroom, have all however declared that “all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Sotomayor wrote in her response to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion for the 6-3 resolution.
The case, filed partly by people ICE stopped throughout immigration raids, got here earlier than the excessive courtroom after a U.S. district decide discovered that the raids had violated the Fourth Modification, which protects in opposition to unreasonable searches and seizures by the federal government. The Trump administration appealed the choice, and the conservative-majority courtroom ― which incorporates three justices picked by Trump ― took it on its as a part of its emergency, or “shadow,” docket final month.
In her dissent, Sotomayor referred to as out Kavanaugh immediately for characterizing the ICE raids in his opinion as “brief stops for questioning.” The fact is that brokers are “seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” Sotomayor wrote. That features U.S. residents who’re “being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families,” she continued.
“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.”
– U.S. Supreme Court docket Justice Sonia Sotomayor
She concurred that the Fourth Modification prohibits the federal government’s actions throughout the raids, saying Monday’s resolution improperly encumbers individuals residing within the U.S.
“[I]t is the Government’s burden to prove that it has reasonable suspicion to stop someone,” she wrote. “The concurrence improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.”
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined in Sotomayor’s dissent.
