Supreme Court OK’s LA immigration raids: What we know now

U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrest a person Photo courtesy of the Department of Homeland Prevention The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers can resume sweeping raids in Los Angeles of the kind that prompted mass protests in June The ruling reverses an earlier restraining order that was intended to limit sweeping ICE raids in the region It s the latest in a series of twists in immigration cases nationwide and future rulings may change the picture further Here s an understanding of its impact as of Monday What the matter is about In July a judge in a California District Court granted a restraining order against federal agents roving patrols In her decision judge Maame E Frimpong wrote that the ICE arrests violated the Fourth Amendment because they were motivated by the race language or occupation of the people detained Because ICE agents are now encouraged to meet a quota of arrests per day the majority of the people they detain have no criminal record But the legal situation claimed they went even further arguing that people were being stopped solely because of where they were and what they looked like The request for the restraining order also included cases of U S citizens who were arrested by ICE and held in immigration detention for a multitude of hours In her decision Frimpong disclosed there was a mountain of evidence that these people were unjustly detained absolutely because they were Latino and worked manual labor jobs Special document What happens when ICE arrests U S citizens What happened after the restraining order In concept the order by the district court halted ICE raids in the area But in practice the reaction to the restraining order from the Trump administration was blatant disregard with Department of Homeland Precaution Secretary Kristi Noem saying the raids would continue despite the order and calling Frimpong an idiot Through August DHS officers arrested day laborers at Home Depot stores across the city among other raids Now the Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration overturning Frimpong s order Reaction to Monday s ruling The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of racial profiling A dark shadow has been cast over this country s Constitution and its future Armando Gudino executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Infrastructure reported in a announcement The Supreme Court has now sided with the Trump administration cases in a row Through the stroke of a pen the court has written off decades of Fourth Amendment law Annie Lai director of the Immigrant and Racial Justice Solidarity Clinic at the UC Irvine School of Law wrote in a declaration In the meantime President Donald J Trump declared in a press conference on Monday morning that emboldened by the court s decision he plans to flood the zone with ICE agents in Los Angeles and could do the same in Chicago and New York In a message Teresa Romero president of United Farmworkers disclosed the decision puts every Californian who looks or sounds like they might be an immigrant in greater danger Is this the final decision on ICE raids Not likely This situation will continue to weave its way through lower courts and could come before the Supreme Court again This is not the only blow to immigrants in the past scant days On Friday a Justice Department appeals panel upended decades of precedent by ruling that anyone who entered the country without authorization no matter how long they have lived in the United States is ineligible for a bond and will need to endure mandatory detention while their deportation cases move through immigration court which could take years Up until now people who had arrived in the past two years could be placed in expedited removal while people who had been in the U S for longer could appeal for a bond to remain free while awaiting a deportation hearing This decision changes that In a message American Immigration Lawyers Association executive director Ben Johnson reported this decision will cause irreparable harm forcing people a great number of of whom paid taxes in the United States and lived in the country for decades to languish in inhumane conditions in immigration detention centers for years Despite these setbacks immigration advocacy organizations vow to continue their fight to stop ICE raids in California with the American Civil Liberties Union among other groups saying their response is to go back to court and try again We will continue fighting ACLU SoCal wrote Lillian Perlmutter covers immigration for Times of San Diego and NEWSWELL