{"id":134064,"date":"2025-09-29T09:21:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T17:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/29\/scotus-blessed-kavanaugh-stops-will-they-also-give-thumbs-up-to-roberts-residencies\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T09:21:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T17:21:02","slug":"scotus-blessed-kavanaugh-stops-will-they-also-give-thumbs-up-to-roberts-residencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/29\/scotus-blessed-kavanaugh-stops-will-they-also-give-thumbs-up-to-roberts-residencies\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS Blessed \u2018Kavanaugh Stops.\u2019 Will They Also Give Thumbs Up To \u2018Roberts Residencies?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On September 8, the Supreme Court effectively legalized racial profiling. Naturally, they did it on the shadow docket, in a <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/24pdf\/25a169_5h25.pdf\">one-paragraph order<\/a> in which five of the six conservative justices voted to stay a trial judge\u2019s order \u201cpending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought.\u201d So far, so <em>blahblahblah<\/em>. But Justice Kavanaugh, likely stinging from criticism of the Supreme Court\u2019s unexplained shadow docket rulings, took it upon himself to explain that the conservative justices are <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.publicnotice.co\/p\/kavanaugh-ice-racial-profiling\">very definitely greenlighting racial profiling<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Kavanaugh imagined a cheerful exchange, wherein ICE agents politely ask for confirmation of citizenship and are quickly on their way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 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,\u201d he insisted, despite extensive evidence that ICE agents are tackling every brown person they see and locking up a lot of citizens who fail to \u201cmake clear\u201d their right to walk down the street in a fashion that satisfies a pack of glorified bounty hunters.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-bluesky-social wp-block-embed-bluesky-social\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"bluesky-embed\" data-bluesky-uri=\"at:\/\/did:plc:ejihld4sywvvqwe67cdkn4jq\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3lzqtkkgpns2x\" data-bluesky-cid=\"bafyreigsn6vrg44aopmde6dd32k2z5bhnvieghbexlh6q3j7faaxqygztm\">\n<p lang=\"en\">NEW: ICE agents violently arrested a man in a busy Hyattsville, MD intersection this week, at one point brandishing guns and pointing them at bystanders. I spoke to multiple witnesses\u2014including a local priest whose church is a sanctuary for undocumented people: www.thehandbasket.co\/p\/ice-agents\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/did:plc:ejihld4sywvvqwe67cdkn4jq?ref_src=embed\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social)<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/did:plc:ejihld4sywvvqwe67cdkn4jq\/post\/3lzqtkkgpns2x?ref_src=embed\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2025-09-26T16:00:04.668Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Apparently the Fourth Amendment no longer applies to \u201cdetentive stops,\u201d since all that\u2019s required for reasonable suspicion of a crime these days is speaking Spanish at Home Depot. So now plaintiffs have filed a new lawsuit pointing out that what ICE is doing is not, in fact, briefly detaining people. It\u2019s arresting them, without probable cause and illegally holding them for days on end.<\/p>\n<p>How will SCOTUS justify that one?<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em><strong>Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n<p>The Supreme Court\u2019s racial profiling order stayed an injunction by US District Judge Maame Frimpong, who worked from the uncontroversial premise that ICE agents cannot detain an individual without reasonable suspicion that he committed a crime. All parties agree that race alone cannot form the basis for reasonable suspicion. But Judge Frimpong disagreed with the government\u2019s position that mixing race with some other general characteristic, like working in construction, miraculously transforms it into a legal basis for reasonable suspicion.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically she <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351\/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351.87.0_4.pdf\">barred<\/a> DHS from detaining people based on these four factors \u201calone or in combination\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>i. Apparent race or ethnicity;<\/p>\n<p>ii. Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent;<\/p>\n<p>iii. Presence at a particular location (e.g. bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.); or<\/p>\n<p>iv. The type of work one does<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But Justice Kavanaugh said that RACE + LOCATION (OR LAWN MOWER) makes it legal for ICE to grab up every brown person outside a Home Depot.<\/p>\n<p>He began by stating as fact that one in ten people in Los Angeles is an undocumented immigrant and that immigrants cause \u201csignificant economic and social problems.\u201d He cited no evidence for the first, and the second is dicta from a fifty-year-old Supreme Court case called <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/422\/873\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><em>US v. Brignoni-Ponce<\/em><\/a> \u2014 fair evidence that Kavanaugh knows he\u2019s building his house on a pack of racist cards. Having established his bigot bona fides, he went on to reason that ICE goons need not have reasonable suspicion that an individual is an undocumented immigrant; a mere collection of demographic probabilities will do the trick.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Brignoni-Ponce<\/em>, the Court held that \u201cDriving While Mexican\u201d <em>could not<\/em> amount to reasonable suspicion for a traffic stop because it \u201cwould subject the residents of these and other areas to potentially unlimited interference with their use of the highways, solely at the discretion of Border Patrol officers.\u201d But Kavanaugh was unbothered, blithely asserting that, under \u201cthis Court\u2019s precedents, not to mention common sense,\u201d ICE can legally stop someone for being a Hispanic landscaper and demand proof of citizenship.<\/p>\n<p>This is clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment, and so Kavanaugh took pains to downplay the interaction as a mere collegial inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter,\u201d he simpered. \u201cOnly if the person is illegally in the United States may the stop lead to further immigration proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was horseshit when he wrote it, and it\u2019s horseshit now. The complaint in <em>Vasquez Perdomo<\/em> records multiple instances of ICE physically attacking US citizens and locking them up for hours or even days. That\u2019s not a \u201cbrief\u201d detention \u2014 it\u2019s an arrest without anything like probable cause.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Frimpong described Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, a US citizen, being arrested and held without charge for at least two days:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>In the early morning of June 18, 2025, in Pasadena, California, Vasquez Perdomo was waiting at a bus stop across the street from Winchell\u2019s Donuts with several co-workers to be picked up for a job. About four cars converged on his location, and about half a dozen masked agents jumped out on either side of him. They had weapons and masks, and did not identify themselves. Vasquez Perdomo tried to leave but was surrounded, grabbed, handcuffed, and put into one of the vehicles. No warrant was shown. It was only after he was brought to a nearby CVS parking lot that agents checked Vasquez Perdomo\u2019s identification. Agents did not inform Vasquez Perdomo that they were immigration officers authorized to make an arrest or of the basis for his arrest. At the time this action was filed, Vasquez Perdomo had been transported to and was being held at B-18. There, he experienced extremely crowded and unsanitary conditions, was given little to eat or drink, and slept on the floor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In fact, hundreds of American citizens have been brutalized and arrested in these supposedly \u201cbrief investigative stops.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They include: Army veteran George Retes, who was <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2025\/09\/george-retes-ice-detained-us-citizen\/684152\/\">detained in California<\/a> for three days without being allowed to speak to a lawyer or even take a shower to wash off the pepper spray police soaked him with after he said \u201cI\u2019m a citizen;\u201d 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who was <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/popular.info\/p\/federal-immigration-authorities-wrongfully\">detained for ten days<\/a> in Arizona for the crime of walking around without ID while Latino; and Illinois man Julio Noriega, who was <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/immigrantjustice.org\/sites\/default\/files\/uploaded-files\/no-content-type\/2025-03\/164-Nava-v-DHS_Motion-to-Enforce-the-Settlement_03-13-25.pdf?eType=EmailBlastContent&amp;eId=c43640f5-51ba-4e85-ba4d-ab6f4307cbc9\">cuffed and thrown into a van<\/a> without anyone even asking about his citizenship, and only released ten hours later after ICE bothered to look in Noriega\u2019s confiscated wallet and found his ID.<\/p>\n<p>US citizens have no obligation to walk around with our \u201cpapers,\u201d not even if we are Hispanic and work \u201cin certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants,\u201d as Justice Kavanaugh put it. None of this is legal, regardless of the citizenship status of the victim. And, by the by, Kavanaugh\u2019s imagined binary \u2014 citizen or \u201cillegal\u201d immigrant \u2014 ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of non-citizens are living in this country with legal status as students, or green card holders, or asylum seekers. How are they supposed to prove their right to walk down the street unmolested in this friendly chat of Kavanaugh\u2019s daydreams?<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em>Escobar Molina v. Department of Homeland Security<\/em><\/h4>\n<p>A <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.285268\/gov.uscourts.dcd.285268.1.0_2.pdf\">lawsuit<\/a> filed Friday in DC dispenses with the justice\u2019s creative fiction that ICE is making a \u201cdetentive stop\u201d when it snatches up every non-white person who can\u2019t immediately \u201cprove\u201d their citizenship status and carts them off in shackles. The lead plaintiff, Jos\u00e9 Escobar Molina, is a Salvadoran immigrant with legal status who was walking to work in DC on August 21 when \u201cagents arrested him without a warrant and without asking for his name, his identification, or anything about his immigration status.\u201d He was taken to Virginia and held overnight until ICE finally realized that he was legal and released him. That is clearly an arrest which requires probable cause to believe that the person is in the US without legal status <em>and<\/em> that he is likely to flee in the time that it takes to get an arrest warrant.<\/p>\n<p>See <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/uscode.house.gov\/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1357&amp;num=0&amp;edition=prelim\">8 USC \u00a7 1357(a)(2)<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant \u2026. to arrest any alien who in his presence or view is entering or attempting to enter the United States in violation of any law or regulation made in pursuance of law regulating the admission, exclusion, expulsion, or removal of aliens, or to arrest any alien in the United States, if he has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest, but the alien arrested shall be taken without unnecessary delay for examination before an officer of the Service having authority to examine aliens as to their right to enter or remain in the United States;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The plaintiffs have essentially called Kavanaugh\u2019s bluff: If the Court won\u2019t protect immigrants from unlawful detentions, then let\u2019s dispense with the charade that these are \u201cbrief\u201d stops and acknowledge that they are dragnets designed to arrest every non-white person in a particular location and figure out at some future hour whether they have committed a \u201ccrime.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">STFU, Brett<\/h4>\n<p>Perhaps Justice Kavanaugh will learn to keep his mouth shut next time his pals try to put out an indefensible shadow docket order. But despite the fact that none of his fellow conservatives signed on to Kavanaugh\u2019s concurrence, Kristi Noem\u2019s pack of mangy dogs is taking it as carte blanche to run riot in the streets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s decision is evidence of the fact Border Patrol follows the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment,\u201d smirked Gregory Bovino, the Customs and Border Patrol official who supervised the ICE dragnets in California. The <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/26\/us\/trump-fires-us-attorney-california-immigration.html\">New York Times<\/a> reports that Michele Beckwith, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of California, was fired after reminding Bovino that he\u2019d need reasonable suspicion to detain people in his raid on Sacramento. Within five hours of warning Bovino that she expected \u201ccompliance with court orders and the Constitution,\u201d Beckwith was terminated from the office she\u2019d worked in for 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile on BlueSky, lawyers are <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/akalhan.bsky.social\/post\/3lzt2hikyd22h\">calling<\/a> the daily barrage of violent ICE attacks \u201cKavanaugh stops,\u201d after the man who explained that they were very cool and very legal. Let\u2019s see whether Kavanaugh sticks his neck out again to explain why courts are simply powerless to stop the government from locking up US citizens without charge for days on end, but it\u2019s <em>fine, really because actually \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Nope, we are not creative (or evil) enough to come up with a way to paint locking human beings in a dungeon is merely a civil exchange of pleasantries. <em>Over to you, Brett.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em><strong><em><strong><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/lizdye.bsky.social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Liz Dye<\/a>\u00a0produces the Law and Chaos\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawandchaospod.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Substack\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/law-and-chaos\/id1727769913\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em> <em><strong>You can subscribe to her Substack by clicking the logo:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawandchaospod.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"300\" height=\"153\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1163974 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/06\/law-and-chaos-logo-liz-dye-300x153.jpg?resize=300%2C153&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><\/a><\/strong><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawandchaospod.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2025\/09\/scotus-blessed-kavanaugh-stops-will-they-also-give-thumbs-up-to-roberts-residencies\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SCOTUS Blessed \u2018Kavanaugh Stops.\u2019 Will They Also Give Thumbs Up To \u2018Roberts Residencies?\u2019<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-single__featured-image post-single__featured-image--medium alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/09\/GettyImages-1041982968-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><figcaption class=\"post-single__featured-image-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by Andrew Harnik-Pool\/Getty Images)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On September 8, the Supreme Court effectively legalized racial profiling. Naturally, they did it on the shadow docket, in a <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/24pdf\/25a169_5h25.pdf\">one-paragraph order<\/a> in which five of the six conservative justices voted to stay a trial judge\u2019s order \u201cpending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought.\u201d So far, so <em>blahblahblah<\/em>. But Justice Kavanaugh, likely stinging from criticism of the Supreme Court\u2019s unexplained shadow docket rulings, took it upon himself to explain that the conservative justices are <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.publicnotice.co\/p\/kavanaugh-ice-racial-profiling\">very definitely greenlighting racial profiling<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Kavanaugh imagined a cheerful exchange, wherein ICE agents politely ask for confirmation of citizenship and are quickly on their way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 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,\u201d he insisted, despite extensive evidence that ICE agents are tackling every brown person they see and locking up a lot of citizens who fail to \u201cmake clear\u201d their right to walk down the street in a fashion that satisfies a pack of glorified bounty hunters.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently the Fourth Amendment no longer applies to \u201cdetentive stops,\u201d since all that\u2019s required for reasonable suspicion of a crime these days is speaking Spanish at Home Depot. So now plaintiffs have filed a new lawsuit pointing out that what ICE is doing is not, in fact, briefly detaining people. It\u2019s arresting them, without probable cause and illegally holding them for days on end.<\/p>\n<p>How will SCOTUS justify that one?<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court\u2019s racial profiling order stayed an injunction by US District Judge Maame Frimpong, who worked from the uncontroversial premise that ICE agents cannot detain an individual without reasonable suspicion that he committed a crime. All parties agree that race alone cannot form the basis for reasonable suspicion. But Judge Frimpong disagreed with the government\u2019s position that mixing race with some other general characteristic, like working in construction, miraculously transforms it into a legal basis for reasonable suspicion.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically she <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351\/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351.87.0_4.pdf\">barred<\/a> DHS from detaining people based on these four factors \u201calone or in combination\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>i. Apparent race or ethnicity;<\/p>\n<p>ii. Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent;<\/p>\n<p>iii. Presence at a particular location (e.g. bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.); or<\/p>\n<p>iv. The type of work one does<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But Justice Kavanaugh said that RACE + LOCATION (OR LAWN MOWER) makes it legal for ICE to grab up every brown person outside a Home Depot.<\/p>\n<p>He began by stating as fact that one in ten people in Los Angeles is an undocumented immigrant and that immigrants cause \u201csignificant economic and social problems.\u201d He cited no evidence for the first, and the second is dicta from a fifty-year-old Supreme Court case called <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/422\/873\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><em>US v. Brignoni-Ponce<\/em><\/a> \u2014 fair evidence that Kavanaugh knows he\u2019s building his house on a pack of racist cards. Having established his bigot bona fides, he went on to reason that ICE goons need not have reasonable suspicion that an individual is an undocumented immigrant; a mere collection of demographic probabilities will do the trick.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Brignoni-Ponce<\/em>, the Court held that \u201cDriving While Mexican\u201d <em>could not<\/em> amount to reasonable suspicion for a traffic stop because it \u201cwould subject the residents of these and other areas to potentially unlimited interference with their use of the highways, solely at the discretion of Border Patrol officers.\u201d But Kavanaugh was unbothered, blithely asserting that, under \u201cthis Court\u2019s precedents, not to mention common sense,\u201d ICE can legally stop someone for being a Hispanic landscaper and demand proof of citizenship.<\/p>\n<p>This is clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment, and so Kavanaugh took pains to downplay the interaction as a mere collegial inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter,\u201d he simpered. \u201cOnly if the person is illegally in the United States may the stop lead to further immigration proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was horseshit when he wrote it, and it\u2019s horseshit now. The complaint in <em>Vasquez Perdomo<\/em> records multiple instances of ICE physically attacking US citizens and locking them up for hours or even days. That\u2019s not a \u201cbrief\u201d detention \u2014 it\u2019s an arrest without anything like probable cause.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Frimpong described Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, a US citizen, being arrested and held without charge for at least two days:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>In the early morning of June 18, 2025, in Pasadena, California, Vasquez Perdomo was waiting at a bus stop across the street from Winchell\u2019s Donuts with several co-workers to be picked up for a job. About four cars converged on his location, and about half a dozen masked agents jumped out on either side of him. They had weapons and masks, and did not identify themselves. Vasquez Perdomo tried to leave but was surrounded, grabbed, handcuffed, and put into one of the vehicles. No warrant was shown. It was only after he was brought to a nearby CVS parking lot that agents checked Vasquez Perdomo\u2019s identification. Agents did not inform Vasquez Perdomo that they were immigration officers authorized to make an arrest or of the basis for his arrest. At the time this action was filed, Vasquez Perdomo had been transported to and was being held at B-18. There, he experienced extremely crowded and unsanitary conditions, was given little to eat or drink, and slept on the floor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In fact, hundreds of American citizens have been brutalized and arrested in these supposedly \u201cbrief investigative stops.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They include: Army veteran George Retes, who was <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2025\/09\/george-retes-ice-detained-us-citizen\/684152\/\">detained in California<\/a> for three days without being allowed to speak to a lawyer or even take a shower to wash off the pepper spray police soaked him with after he said \u201cI\u2019m a citizen;\u201d 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who was <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/popular.info\/p\/federal-immigration-authorities-wrongfully\">detained for ten days<\/a> in Arizona for the crime of walking around without ID while Latino; and Illinois man Julio Noriega, who was <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/immigrantjustice.org\/sites\/default\/files\/uploaded-files\/no-content-type\/2025-03\/164-Nava-v-DHS_Motion-to-Enforce-the-Settlement_03-13-25.pdf?eType=EmailBlastContent&amp;eId=c43640f5-51ba-4e85-ba4d-ab6f4307cbc9\">cuffed and thrown into a van<\/a> without anyone even asking about his citizenship, and only released ten hours later after ICE bothered to look in Noriega\u2019s confiscated wallet and found his ID.<\/p>\n<p>US citizens have no obligation to walk around with our \u201cpapers,\u201d not even if we are Hispanic and work \u201cin certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants,\u201d as Justice Kavanaugh put it. None of this is legal, regardless of the citizenship status of the victim. And, by the by, Kavanaugh\u2019s imagined binary \u2014 citizen or \u201cillegal\u201d immigrant \u2014 ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of non-citizens are living in this country with legal status as students, or green card holders, or asylum seekers. How are they supposed to prove their right to walk down the street unmolested in this friendly chat of Kavanaugh\u2019s daydreams?<\/p>\n<p>A <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.285268\/gov.uscourts.dcd.285268.1.0_2.pdf\">lawsuit<\/a> filed Friday in DC dispenses with the justice\u2019s creative fiction that ICE is making a \u201cdetentive stop\u201d when it snatches up every non-white person who can\u2019t immediately \u201cprove\u201d their citizenship status and carts them off in shackles. The lead plaintiff, Jos\u00e9 Escobar Molina, is a Salvadoran immigrant with legal status who was walking to work in DC on August 21 when \u201cagents arrested him without a warrant and without asking for his name, his identification, or anything about his immigration status.\u201d He was taken to Virginia and held overnight until ICE finally realized that he was legal and released him. That is clearly an arrest which requires probable cause to believe that the person is in the US without legal status <em>and<\/em> that he is likely to flee in the time that it takes to get an arrest warrant.<\/p>\n<p>See <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/uscode.house.gov\/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1357&amp;num=0&amp;edition=prelim\">8 USC \u00a7 1357(a)(2)<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant \u2026. to arrest any alien who in his presence or view is entering or attempting to enter the United States in violation of any law or regulation made in pursuance of law regulating the admission, exclusion, expulsion, or removal of aliens, or to arrest any alien in the United States, if he has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest, but the alien arrested shall be taken without unnecessary delay for examination before an officer of the Service having authority to examine aliens as to their right to enter or remain in the United States;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The plaintiffs have essentially called Kavanaugh\u2019s bluff: If the Court won\u2019t protect immigrants from unlawful detentions, then let\u2019s dispense with the charade that these are \u201cbrief\u201d stops and acknowledge that they are dragnets designed to arrest every non-white person in a particular location and figure out at some future hour whether they have committed a \u201ccrime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps Justice Kavanaugh will learn to keep his mouth shut next time his pals try to put out an indefensible shadow docket order. But despite the fact that none of his fellow conservatives signed on to Kavanaugh\u2019s concurrence, Kristi Noem\u2019s pack of mangy dogs is taking it as carte blanche to run riot in the streets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s decision is evidence of the fact Border Patrol follows the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment,\u201d smirked Gregory Bovino, the Customs and Border Patrol official who supervised the ICE dragnets in California. The <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/26\/us\/trump-fires-us-attorney-california-immigration.html\">New York Times<\/a> reports that Michele Beckwith, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of California, was fired after reminding Bovino that he\u2019d need reasonable suspicion to detain people in his raid on Sacramento. Within five hours of warning Bovino that she expected \u201ccompliance with court orders and the Constitution,\u201d Beckwith was terminated from the office she\u2019d worked in for 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile on BlueSky, lawyers are <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/akalhan.bsky.social\/post\/3lzt2hikyd22h\">calling<\/a> the daily barrage of violent ICE attacks \u201cKavanaugh stops,\u201d after the man who explained that they were very cool and very legal. Let\u2019s see whether Kavanaugh sticks his neck out again to explain why courts are simply powerless to stop the government from locking up US citizens without charge for days on end, but it\u2019s <em>fine, really because actually \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Nope, we are not creative (or evil) enough to come up with a way to paint locking human beings in a dungeon is merely a civil exchange of pleasantries. <em>Over to you, Brett.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em><strong><em><strong><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/lizdye.bsky.social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Liz Dye<\/a>\u00a0produces the Law and Chaos\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawandchaospod.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Substack\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/law-and-chaos\/id1727769913\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em> <em><strong>You can subscribe to her Substack by clicking the logo:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawandchaospod.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"153\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1163974 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/06\/law-and-chaos-logo-liz-dye-300x153.jpg?resize=300%2C153&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On September 8, the Supreme Court effectively legalized racial profiling. Naturally, they did it on the shadow docket, in a one-paragraph order in which five of the six conservative justices voted to stay a trial judge\u2019s order \u201cpending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":134065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/law-and-chaos-logo-liz-dye-300x153-Aud96D.jpg?fit=300%2C153&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}