Supreme court backs Trump on aggressive immigration raids

The Guardian - The Supreme Court has again backed Donald Trump’s hardline approach toward immigration today, allowing federal agents to proceed with raids in southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language.

The court granted a justice department request to put on hold a federal judge’s order temporarily barring agents from stopping or detaining people without “reasonable suspicion” they are in the country illegally, by relying on race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent, among other factors.

The court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision.

Los Angeles-based US district judge Maame Frimpong had issued the order on 11 July, finding that the Trump administration’s actions probably violated the constitution’s fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The order applied to her court’s jurisdiction covering much of southern California.

The lawsuit alleged a pattern of “roving” patrols by masked and heavily armed agents conducting interrogations and detentions based on racial profiling that resemble “brazen, midday kidnappings”.

One plaintiff, Jason Gavidia, claimed that agents roughed him up after disbelieving his statements to them that he is a US citizen, demanding to know the name of the hospital where he was born.

“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from,” the lawsuit stated.

Newsweek -   Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered a stinging rebuke of the Supreme Court's decision to clear the way to allow sweeping immigration operations in Los Angeles.

"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," Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, joined by her two liberal colleagues.