TRUMP WINS: Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions On ‘Roving’ ICE raids In L.A.

The U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated limits that kept the Trump administration from raiding homes in the Los Angeles region for immigration-related reasons based on broad criteria like speaking Spanish or meeting at places where day laborers typically gather.

The judges, who were reportedly split 6-3 along ideological lines, placed on hold a federal district judge’s ruling that limited what critics dubbed “roving” sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The judge said that the practices were probably unconstitutional since agents were using stereotypes to stop people at car washes, bus stops, and Home Depot parking lots without good reason.

The majority of the high court did not explain why they agreed to the Trump administration’s emergency petition to stop the district judge’s ruling.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, on the other hand, wrote separately in support of the ruling. He stated that it is appropriate to conduct brief interviews with individuals who meet several “common sense” criteria for being in the country illegally, including those who work in day labor or construction and do not speak English well.

Three liberal justices of the court disagreed.

“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,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

Last month, the Justice Department filed an emergency appeal in which they said that the court-ordered limits were like “a straitjacket” for police officers carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation policy.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong said in July that ICE agents were “roving patrols” of L.A. and arresting people without “reasonable suspicion” that they were in the country unlawfully. Instead, she said, they seemed to be using color, accent, and line of work as variables that were not legally sound and “seem no more indicative of illegal presence in the country than of legal presence.”

Frimpong, who was appointed by Biden, told immigration officials in the Los Angeles area that they could not use those factors to identify people to enforce.

The Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop Frimpong’s injunction while they appeal, but a three-judge panel unanimously turned down that request, making only a modest change to Frimpong’s ruling.

The appeals judges were especially worried by allegations that the White House had established a goal of 3,000 immigration arrests every day and that this goal might be leading to illegal arrests.

The Justice Department told the court that there was no such quota, even though Stephen Miller, the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House, said in a Fox News interview in May that the goal was to arrest 3,000 people.

Frimpong wanted to stop the “roving” raids that were happening in the middle of a bigger fight over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

For example, Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops to the city, even though California Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t want them there.

Another federal judge said the deployment was against the law, but the 9th Circuit put that ruling on hold. There is currently an appeal of a separate verdict that said those troops were illegally enforcing the legislation.

Trump picked up another Supreme Court win earlier on Monday.

President Trump has received approval from the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The Trump administration requested an emergency injunction from the Supreme Court last week to halt the lower court’s decisions and expedite Slaughter’s removal. The government has also asked the court to hear the entire case to settle the constitutional issue of whether a president can fire the heads of independent agencies.

The Justice Department said in its filing that the FTC’s powers had grown a lot since 1935, and that the president can now fire its commissioners, giving them a lot of executive power.