On Sept. 8, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority granted the Trump administration’s emergency application to resume indiscriminate immigration-related stops in the Los Angeles area after lower courts halted the practice earlier this year.
Darryl Morin, national president of Forward Latino, a Latino advocacy group based in Franklin, Wisconsin, said the decision erodes Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Though the ruling deals principally with immigration stops in and around Los Angeles, Morin said it sets a “dangerous precedent” across the country that affects all residents regardless of immigration status.
“This morning, we awoke in a fundamentally different America than the one we woke up in yesterday,” Morin said. “One’s rights and conditions are now based upon race and ethnicity.”
Morin said Forward Latino is at an “elevated state of readiness” in the event federal immigration officials come to Milwaukee. The organization has hired more staff to provide assistance for residents and encourages residents to know their rights when being questioned or detained, he said.
Milwaukee-area civil rights organizations, faith leaders and city officials condemned the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent stay order lifting restrictions on immigration-related stops as a “direct violation” of constitutional rights at a press conference Sept. 9.
A U.S. District Court judge in July barred the government from including someone’s race or ethnicity, whether thy speak Spanish or accented English, or what type of job they hold as factors determining whether to stop someone for immigration-related questioning in the Los Angeles area.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that immigration agents can use those factors when determining who to stop. Furthermore, though a person’s ethnicity can’t be used as the sole factor to stop them, it can be considered along with other factors.
NAACP Milwaukee Branch President Clarence Nicholas said the ruling effectively legalizes “racial profiling under the guise of immigration enforcement.”
“According to Justice Kavanaugh, merely speaking Spanish, living in a Latino neighborhood, frequenting a Latino-owned business or holding certain jobs, if combined with one’s ethnicity, is enough to justify detention by the federal government. This is nonsensical,” Morin added.
The rest of the six-member majority did not provide an explanation for their ruling. The Supreme Court has increasingly ruled on the Trump administration’s emergency applications without giving any explanation for its decisions.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Local civil rights groups condemn Supreme Court removing limits on immigration stops
Reporting by Francesca Pica, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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