Supreme Court allows Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration raids in Los Angeles

Pedro Santiago, 37, a construction worker, sat on a tree stump under the shade Monday afternoon, kitty corner from a food stall near a Home Depot store in Hollywood.

Santiago, who is living in the country illegally, said he was disappointed when he heard about the Supreme Court ruling but not surprised.

“As Latinos, we know that this country can be crooked sometimes,” he said. “There’s a lot of racism and hate toward Latinos.”

Santiago said it’s getting hard to live in the U.S. and to make his monthly $1,400 rent. He said construction work is decreasing as well as the amount that employers pay. He said he use to get paid more than $200 at constructions sites, now it’s dropped down as low as $140 or less.

Be said he continued to show up at the Home Depot despite the frequent raids for one reason and one reason only: necessity.

“Some workers come here because they have to buy material for jobs,” he said

Santiago said to stay safe he and other workers communicate through messaging apps, alerting each other of suspicious vehicles or people. They also help each other gather up money and pay to send back belongings to workers who have been detained and deported.

“We try to look out for one another,” he said.

Still he said with an escalation of raids that will now come he thinks it’s time to leave.

“But even going back home isn’t any different that what we’re going through here,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Monday saying that the Trump administration had landed a major legal victory when the Supreme Court issued a stay in the case of Perdomo v. Noem.

“This is a win for the safety of Californians and the rule of law,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “DHS law enforcement will not be slowed down and will continue to arrest and remove the murderers, rapists, gang members, and other criminal illegal aliens that Karen Bass continues to give safe harbor.”

The DHS statement went on to say that “to the mainstream media’s chagrin, there are no ‘indiscriminate stops’ being made. The Supreme Court simply applied longstanding precedent regarding what qualifies as ‘reasonable suspicion’ under the Fourth Amendment. What makes someone a target of ICE is if they are illegally in the U.S. DHS enforces federal immigration law without fear, favor, or prejudice.”

Hours after federal immigration agents conducted a raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood, at least one customer there lamented the Supreme Court’s sanctioning of “roving patrols.”

Alfonso Barragan, 62, who installs televisions and sets up sound systems, arrived at the Home Depot Monday morning to buy material for work.

“It’s a setback for all Latinos and for all immigrants,” he said of the high court decision. “The Supreme Court is turning a blind eye to the injustice that’s happening to immigrants, who are essential workers in the U.S.”

Barragan, an American citizen, said the decision takes away the due process rights that immigrants have by allowing federal agents to snatch people up simply because of the color of their skin or how they talk.

“They’re allowing the [federal immigration agents] to break the law.”

He said the only way to stop the immigration raids and other hurtful policies by the Trump administration is to vote against the Republican Party.

“Every Latino should be concerned, every immigrant should be concerned, every person should be concerned,” he said. “America, wake up, this is the U.S. and we’re better than that.”

He said the raids are not targeting criminals like Trump said, but rather workers who are essential to America’s economy.

He said farmers in Arkansas are suffering because they do not have a workforce to tend to the agricultural fields. Tourism, he said, is also down in Las Vegas and other major cities.

He said the immigrants who work and earn a living are not going out to spend money because they’re afraid to go out.

Sitting on a foldout chair, Juan Hernandez, 43, construction worker, ate his lunch while his friend Jose Bonilla, 38, also a construction worker, sat next to him near a Home Depot in Hollywood Monday.

The men had come to look for work and even though both are U.S. citizens they worried about federal immigration agents showing up and grabbing them because they’re Latino.

“There’s going to be more immigration enforcement activity here,” Bonilla said.

Hernandez said the agents have shown up at least five times at the home improvement store.

The most recent was on Sunday, he said.

Bonilla said to stay safe people will have to be more on alert, and not go out as much. He said people should learn their basic rights, even if the federal immigration agent appeared to be violating them.

“At the very least you can fight your case in court,” he said.

Even if the men are not taken by federal immigration agents, they said they feel horrible even when see other workers being taken.

“It’s awful,” Hernandez said.

President Trump on Monday continued to flirt with the idea of mobilizing National Guard troops to combat crime in Chicago, just a day after he had to clarify that he has no intent to “go to war” with the American city.

The push to militarize local law enforcement operations has been an ongoing fixation for the president, who on Saturday used war imagery and a reference to the movie “Apocalypse Now” to suggest that the newly rebranded Department of War could descend upon the Democrat-run city.

The parking lot of the Home Depot in Hollywood, just off Sunset Boulevard and the 101 Freeway, was packed with cars and trucks. Day laborers stood by their vehicles, quietly asking potential customers if they needed help with a home improvement projects, others were more obvious, standing by the driveway.

The busy parking lot showed almost no sign that an immigration sweep had taken place here on Sunday, if not for the immigrant rights advocates standing at the store entrances.

The advocates wore red vests with block letters that read “Auto Defensa.” They were equipped with walkie talkies, whistles and a bullhorn. A red canopy and booth along St. Andrews Place sat across the store. Several signs hung from the canopy, with slogans like: “keep families together,” “show up for your neighbors, protect immigrants” and “ICE melts in East Hollywood”

On a fold out table, sat flyers about how to spot federal immigration vehicles and sign up for rent assistance.

Not far away, selling chicken soup, Juan, who decline to give his last name out fear he may be targeted, drank coffee from a foam cup.

Upon hearing about the Supreme Court ruling from a reporter, he shook his head and let out a sigh.

“So they’re going to start again?” He said of the roving immigration raids. “Basically if you look Latino they’re going to just take you.”

A customer took a spoon of chicken soup into his mouth, used a napkin to wipe his mouth and shook his head.

“I’m legally in the country and my children are born here,” he said. “But none of that matters. [the Government] doesn’t really respect people’s rights. And this is the same country that speaks about civil rights and rule of law”

Juan worries that now he and his sons will be targeted just because they’re Latino.

“It’s a horrible time for our people,” he said.

Juan leaned in, pounded his fist on a fold out table, expressing anger against Latin American presidents who were not defending their own people, he was angry at the U.S., that they had allowed illegal immigration’s to take root out of greed and cheap labor.

“And now they’re punishing us for it?” Juan said.

California’s top law enforcement official has weighed in on Monday‘s controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on immigration enforcement.

Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta condemned the decision, which clears the way for immigration agents to stop and question people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally based solely on information such as their perceived race or place of employment.

One of the striking elements in the Supreme Court order on the stopping and questioning people suspected of being in the country illegally is how such stops were portrayed in the ruling and a stinging dissent.

On Monday the court ruled 6-to-3 that various factors — such as working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin — could justify immigration agents questioning a person.

The unsigned ruling lifted a Los Angeles’ judge’s order that barred “roving patrols” of immigration agents from stopping people suspected of being in the country illegally.

“The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence, “to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs; who work or appear to work in jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, or car washes that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English.”

Kavanaugh later added: “Moreover, as for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U. S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.”

In her dissent, Sotomayor challenged Kavanaugh’s description of the stops as “typically brief.”

“They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” she wrote of immigration agents. “Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.”

Sotomayor also zeroed in on Kavanaugh’s assertion that people stopped by immigration agents were free to go once they showed they are citizens or legally in the United States.

“That blinks reality,” Sotomayor wrote. “Two plaintiffs in this very case tried to explain that they are U. S. citizens; one was then pushed against a fence with his arms twisted behind his back, and the other was taken away from his job to a warehouse for further questioning.”

Sotomayor added, “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. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for federal authorities to double down on immigration raids in L.A.

This could mean a return to numerous arrests at workplaces such as home improvement stores, car washes, manufacturing businesses and other locations.

So what are your rights in the wake of the high court decision?

The executive director of the California Immigration Policy Center decried Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, suggesting future generations will view it as a great injustice.

“There is nothing just in today’s Supreme Court ruling, just as there was nothing just in the Court’s past rulings that allowed Japanese Americans to be rounded up in internment camps or that upheld the Muslim Ban,” said CIPC Executive Director Masih Fouladi in a prepared statement.

“History will remember this moment. When federal agencies are allowed to operate like a secret police force — stopping, arresting, and detaining people based on race, language, or occupation — the constitutional rights of all people are at risk. Americans of every background must demand accountability from Congress and denounce these attacks.”

As an immigration rights group based in Los Angeles, the organization said it has “witnessed firsthand the terror the mass and roving immigration raids have unleashed on our communities. Thousands of families have been torn apart.”

“Children, workers, parents, permanent residents, U.S. citizens, veterans, and labor leaders have all been targeted, attacked, and detained by armed and unidentifiable federal agents. People of every background now live in fear of simply going to work, dropping their kids off at school, buying groceries, or seeking medical care or emergency services. The militarized immigration raids do not make us safer — they target and endanger people based on their ethnicity or race, language or occupation.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said the high court ruling “isn’t just an attack on the people of Los Angeles, this is an attack on every person in every city in this country.”

“Today, the highest court in the country ruled that the White House and masked federal agents can racially profile Angelenos with no due process, snatch them off the street with no evidence or warrant, and take them away with no explanation. This decision will lead to more working families being torn apart and fear of the very institutions meant to protect — not persecute — our people,” she said in a statement.

“Let me be clear: we will not allow the White House, nor the Supreme Court, to divide us. And to all Angelenos, I will never stop fighting for your rights, your dignity, and your safety, despite this administration’s efforts to threaten them. We will stand united.”

The 6-3 decision brought a strong rebuke from one justice.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. 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. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

“The Government ... has all but 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.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, said in July said she found a sufficient amount of evidence that agents were using race, language, a person’s vocation or the location they are at, such as a car wash, Home Depot, swap meet or row of street vendors, to form “reasonable suspicion” — the legal standard needed to detain someone. Frimpong said the reliance on those factors, either alone or in combination does not meet the requirements of the 4th Amendment.

“What the federal government would have this Court believe in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case is that none of this is actually happening,” she said.

Frimpong ordered federal agents not to use those factors to establish reasonable suspicion to detain people. And that all those in custody at a downtown detention facility known as B-18 must be given 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of several immigrant rights groups, three immigrants picked up at a bus stop and two U.S. citizens, one of whom was held despite showing agents his identification.

The plaintiffs argued in their complaint that immigration agents cornered brown-skinned people in Home Depot parking lots, at carwashes and at bus stops across Southern California in a show of force without establishing reasonable suspicion that they had violated immigration laws. They allege agents didn’t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful warrantless arrests.

A Trump administration policy to deny bond hearings to immigrants who entered the country without authorization was upheld by an immigration appellate board Friday, expanding mandatory detention to thousands of people already behind bars and potentially millions more nationwide.

Although the policy is being challenged in federal court, the ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals is likely to send an immediate chill through immigration courts where judges for decades have released individuals on bond whom they did not deem a flight risk or danger.