Kavanaugh, stop!
The government cannot rely on "reasonable suspicion"
to justify taking an individual into custody.
But six conservative Supreme Court justices have sufficiently muddied the waters
that most people won’t know DHS is lying when it claims that
“the Supreme Court has already vindicated us on this position.”
That’s an apparent reference to a shadow docket ruling in a case called
"Noem v. Vazquez Perdom",
which overturned an injunction blocking DHS from making what are effectively Terry stops based on racial stereotypes.
In its raids on Los Angeles,
DHS raided car washes, factories, and places where immigrants tend to congregate,
barring the door,
and demanding proof of citizenship from every non-white person.
This is clearly racial profiling,
since the detentions weren’t based on reasonable suspicion that any individual present was undocumented
— it was a pure demographic classification.
But in 1975,
the Supreme Court held that driving while Mexican near the border did NOT constitute reasonable suspicion to detain someone and inquire about their citizenship.
So Judge Maame Frimpong barred the government from using a person’s race,
language, job, or location
“alone or in combination”
as a basis for
“detentive stops in this District
unless the agent or officer has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of US immigration law.”
The Trump administration raced to the Supreme Court,
as is its habit.
And the six conservative justices bailed him out again, as is their habit.
Five of those justices were smart enough to remain silent on their reasoning,
since it’s better to be thought a racist than to open your mouth and confirm it.
Only Justice #Kavanaugh was oblivious enough to shout to the world that the Supreme Court was legalizing racial profiling.
He said it was merely “common sense” that non-white people who
“work in certain kinds of jobs”
are probably undocumented.
Kavanaugh fantasized about a cheerful exchange where ICE agents
“briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status.”
“If the person is a US citizen
or otherwise lawfully in the United States,
that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter,”
he blathered.
“Only if the person is illegally in the United States may the stop lead to further immigration proceedings.”
This was preposterous back in September,
when the country had only witnessed DHS’s invasion of Los Angeles and Portland.
But five months of ICE snatching random brown people off the street,
including many US citizens,
highlights the cruelty of Kavanaugh’s facile characterization.
(2/3)
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/dhs-violating-fourth-amendment
