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With the Perdomo Decision, the Supreme Court's Republicans Are Enablers of Racism
The shadow-docket ruling means ICE will be free to ramp up its roving masked raids in Los Angeles and other cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. There are no longer any safe zones.
Sep 19, 2025
In what may be its most reactionary ruling since Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decided on September 8 to allow the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to resume overt racial profiling in immigration raids in Los Angeles. The raids, which began in June under the title of Operation At Large, have resulted in some 5,000 arrests.
The order was handed down in the case of Noem v. Perdomo on the court’s emergency, or “shadow,” docket, which consists of cases decided on an expedited basis—without comprehensive briefing and without oral arguments—outside of the normal “merits docket.” The order lifts a lower-court injunction that had barred the administration from detaining suspected undocumented immigrants based solely on their ethnicity, language, geographic location, and occupations.
Like most shadow docket rulings, the Perdomo order is bare-bones, comprising a single paragraph that fails to explain the court’s rationale for its decision. Nonetheless, it sends a clear message: If you are Latino, you’d better start carrying your identification papers with you—and they had better be in order. Otherwise, you will be subject to detention, and you might just find yourself on a deportation flight to El Salvador, South Sudan, or Uganda.
The Perdomo litigation originated with a lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of immigration advocacy organizations and five individuals, including two US citizens who contend they were detained by ICE during Operation At Large in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. On July 11, Los Angeles District Court Judge Maame E. Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order against the administration, finding that a “mountain of evidence” supported the plaintiffs’ claims that “roving patrols” of masked federal agents were conducting indiscriminate and sometimes violent dragnet-style immigration raids of workplaces and communities.
The court’s quick overturning of Frimpong’s TRO comes as no surprise. Although the court has a long history of entertaining emergency appeals that bypass the normal appeals process—such as last-minute requests for stays of execution in death penalty cases—no president has relied on the shadow docket more than Donald Trump. According to Georgetown University law professor and shadow docket scholar Steve Vladeck, the first Trump administration sought emergency relief 41 times. By comparison, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations filed a combined total of eight emergency relief requests over a 16-year period while the Biden administration filed 19 applications across four years.
During its recently completed 2024-25 term, the court’s shadow docket exploded to more than 100 cases, fueled by the second Trump administration’s authoritarian power grab. In addition to Perdomo, the court has issued pro-Trump shadow docket orders permitting noncitizens to be deported to third-party countries with histories of egregious human rights violations; barring transgender people from serving in the military; withholding $65 million in teacher training grants to states that include diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in their operations and curriculums; and endorsing the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to Social Security Administration records, to cite just a few instances.
And while shadow docket decisions are technically “interim” in nature—operating to remand cases to the lower courts for additional proceedings and leaving space for a possible return to the Supreme Court—they have enduring practical consequences. Unless and until the Supreme Court takes up the Perdomo case again, for example, ICE will be free to ramp up its roving masked raids in Los Angeles and other cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. There are no longer any safe zones.
Of the high court’s six Republican ideologues, only Brett Kavanaugh explained his reasoning in Perdomo. In a poorly crafted opinion filled with misstatements of fact and law, Kavanaugh cited provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act and a 1975 Supreme Court case (United States v. Brignoni-Ponce) that authorize immigration agents to briefly detain and question individuals if they have a “reasonable suspicion” (less than probable cause but more than a hunch) that the person being questioned is an alien illegally in the country. From there, however, Kavanaugh dropped the proverbial ball by remarking, without any citations to the trial court’s evidentiary record:
The Government estimates that at least 15 million people are in the United States illegally. Many millions illegally entered (or illegally overstayed) just in the last few years.
Illegal immigration is especially pronounced in the Los Angeles area, among other locales in the United States. About 10% of the people in the Los Angeles region are illegally in the United States—meaning about 2 million illegal immigrants out of a total population of 20 million.
Not surprisingly given those extraordinary numbers, US immigration officers have prioritized immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area. The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops 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. If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go. If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiate the process for removal.
Given what he took for granted as the outsized illegal alien population in greater Los Angeles, Kavanaugh reasoned that it is “common sense” (his words, trust me) for ICE agents to detain any Latinos who fit the government’s criteria of suspicion based on their race, language, or employment in low wage jobs.
In a blistering 21-page dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by fellow Democrats Elena Kaga and Ketanji Brown Jackson, took Kavanaugh to school, instructing the former Yale frat boy that the reasonable suspicion standard requires:
“… an individualized suspicion that a particular citizen was engaged in a particular crime” beyond just a “demographic profile...”
The Fourth Amendment thus prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that ‘describe[s] a very large category of presumably innocent’ people… As the District Court correctly held, the four factors [the administration relies on]—apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, location, and type of work—are no more indicative of illegal presence in the country than of legal presence.
Sotomayor also educated Kavanaugh on the harsh on-the-ground realities of Operation At Large, noting several examples from the trial court record of violence and intimidation. In the LA suburb of Glendale, for instance:
…nearly a dozen masked agents with guns “jumped out of… cars” at a Home Depot, and began “chasing and tackl[ing] Latino day laborers without “identify[ing] themselves as ICE or police, ask[ing] questions, or say[ing] anything else… In downtown Los Angeles, agents “jumped out of a van, rushed up to [a tamale vendor], surrounded him, and handled him violently,” all “[w]ithout asking… any questions.
In still another Home Depot encounter drawn from the evidentiary record, masked agents wearing bulletproof vests got out of a car and tear-gassed a crowd that had gathered to witness a raid. Far from being polite and respectful, Sotomayor continued, Operation At Large has sparked “panic and fear” across Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. “Countless people in the Los Angeles area,” she observed, “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.”
The Fourth Amendment, she reminded her Republican colleagues, “protects every individual’s constitutional right to be free from arbitrary interference by law officers.” Sadly, she concluded, after the Perdomo ruling, “that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”
As a Supreme Court justice constrained by the need for collegiality on the bench, Sotomayor stopped short of denouncing Kavanaugh and the court’s Republicans as enablers of racism. There is no reason for the rest of us to feel so reserved.
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Another Gift to Trump: Supreme Court Lifts Lower Court Ban on 'Blatant Racial Profiling' by ICE Agents
"The court has opened the door to profiling practices that will expose millions of Latinos to harassment, wrongful detention, and fear in their daily lives," said one organization.
Sep 08, 2025
The US Supreme Court on Monday gave its approval for federal immigration agents to stop and detain anyone in the Los Angeles area based on factors including "the type of work one does," a person's use of Spanish or accented English, or their "apparent race or ethnicity"—allowing what critics called "blatant racial profiling" to be used to carry out President Donald Trump's mass detention and deportation plan.
The court's three liberal justices dissented, but the right-wing majority sided with the Department of Homeland Security, whose agents in recent months have carried out sweeping raids across the Los Angeles area, including in incidents that have been caught on video and appear to be armed roundups of large randomized groups of Latino people—not operations targeted at arresting violent criminals, as the Trump administration has previously suggested.
The court did not provide an explanation of its reasoning, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a separate opinion expressing agreement with the ruling, saying the court was simply allowing immigration agents to use "commonsense" criteria for stopping and detaining people, including their English proficiency and the type of work they do.
In their dissenting opinion, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, "We should not have to live in a country where then 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," wrote Sotomayor.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council (AIC) said the ruling by the right-wing majority has troubling implications.
"Because a sizeable portion of Los Angeles's low-income Latino community is undocumented," he said, the court believes "it is inherently acceptable for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to stop and question any Latino working a low-wage job that is seen seeking Spanish."
Civil rights groups joined several individuals in filing a lawsuit against the administration earlier this year, arguing that thousands of people in Los Angeles have been wrongly arrested in unconstitutional, "indiscriminate immigration operations."
"Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force," the plaintiffs argued, "and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents have been violating the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment, they said, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
In July, Judge Maame E. Frimpong in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, ordered agents not to stop or arrest people in the Los Angeles area based on factors including race and ethnicity, language spoken, or their involvement in particular kinds of work including at day-laborer or farming sites.
The Trump administration later appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the lower court's order had unlawfully interfered with ICE operations and claiming agents use discretion to ensure they don't wrongfully include people in immigration sweeps.
The plaintiffs argued that the administration's "roving patrols have routinely stopped US citizens... without an individualized assessment of reasonable suspicion," including plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia, who was approached by masked agents outside a tow yard and told them he was an American as they slammed him against a metal fence and took his phone and ID, demanding to know what hospital he'd been born at.
The Los Angeles Times reported in July that the majority of people arrested by ICE and other immigration agents have no criminal record.
The case the Supreme Court ruled on Monday is still pending before a federal appeals court, which could again restrict the administration's ability to racially profile residents.
But for now, AIC policy director Nayna Gupta said the Supreme Court ruling "greenlights the worst ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] practices we are seeing against Latino communities around the country."
"We can expect this racist enforcement to expand rapidly," said Gupta.
The ACLU of Southern California called the Supreme Court ruling "a devastating setback for communities" across the Los Angeles area.
Today, in a devastating setback for communities in the southland, SCOTUS granted the Trump administration’s request to resume its racist raids across Southern California while our case continues. We’re prepared to continue fighting for our immigrant loved ones and the Constitution.
— ACLU SoCal (@aclusocal.bsky.social) September 8, 2025 at 1:18 PM
A bipartisan group of the executive committee of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials called the decision "a troubling setback for civil rights and constitutional protections."
"The Constitution does not allow Americans to be stopped simply for speaking Spanish, waiting for work, or looking Latino. Reasonable suspicion must be based on evidence, not ethnicity," said the officials. "By siding with the administration, the court has opened the door to profiling practices that will expose millions of Latinos to harassment, wrongful detention, and fear in their daily lives. Whether at bus stops, workplaces, or public spaces, Latino communities will face the risk of being treated as suspects simply because of who they are or what they look like."
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Is Trump Inciting a Civil War 2.0 to Steal the Midterms?
Both JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom have explicitly said that they believe Trump is preparing to use troops for voter suppression in blue areas of the country during the 2026 elections to prevent Democrats from taking Congress.
Sep 08, 2025
Last week, US President Donald Trump posted a stolen valor war meme on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site, with the bonespurs-draft-dodger wearing a US Army Cavalry hat and the slogan, paraphrased from the movie Apocalypse Now:
’ I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker replied on BlueSky:
The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.
So, how could this play out? It’s important to begin the conversation—and planning—for what appears to be the Civil War 2.0 that Trump’s apparently trying to incite.
First, there’s precedent for the federal government to send federal troops into a state to enforce the law as ordered by a court.
JFK did it in the 1962 Ole Miss crisis to enforce the Supreme Court’s Brown v Board decision, mobilizing up to 31,000 federal troops, including the 503rd Military Police Battalion, the 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment, and soldiers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. Kennedy also sent federal troops and readied thousands near Birmingham, Alabama during violent resistance to those same federally mandated desegregation efforts.
To accomplish this, Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, which is actually a series of laws passed over a two-decade period, that constitute a virtual blank check for presidential power.
Particularly problematic is Section 253 of the law that allows the president to use troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”
As the Brennan Center for Justice explains:
This provision is so bafflingly broad that it cannot possibly mean what it says, or else it authorizes the president to use the military against any two people conspiring to break federal law.
Adding to Trump’s potential power, in 1827 the Supreme Court ruled that “the authority to decide whether [a crisis requiring the militia to be called out] has arisen belongs exclusively to the President, and... his decision is conclusive upon all other persons.”
Both JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom have explicitly said that they believe much of this is Trump preparing to use troops for voter suppression in blue areas of the country during the 2026 elections to prevent Democrats from taking Congress.
Pritzker said voters “should understand that he [Trump] has other aims, other than fighting crime” and that this is part of a plan to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections.”
Newsom pointed out, “Interestingly, we still have federalized National Guard assigned through Election Day. Is that a coincidence? Through Election Day?!”
Additionally, the governors of 19 blue states issued a statement saying:
Instead of actually addressing crime, President Trump cut federal funding for law enforcement that states rely on and continues to politicize our military by trying to undermine the executive authority of governors as commanders in chief of their state’s National Guard…
Whether it’s Illinois, Maryland, and New York or another state tomorrow, the president’s threats and efforts to deploy a state’s National Guard without the request and consent of that state’s governor is an alarming abuse of power, ineffective, and undermines the mission of our service members. This chaotic federal interference in our states’ National Guard must come to an end.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner went a step further, saying he was willing to actually arrest federal agents who exceed or break the law:
Let’s be clear: If the National Guard comes to Philadelphia and commits crimes, they will be prosecuted locally and Donald Trump cannot pardon them.
So, how does this play out?
Trump is already reportedly positioning Texas National Guard troops and other federal officers at the Naval Station Great Lakes, just north of Chicago, presumably preparing for an invasion of that city as soon as this week.
The vision of former Confederate-state troops seizing control of the largest city in a former Union state is explosive and may well provide Trump with the violence he’d hoped for but didn’t get in LA and DC. Violence he could use to justify invoking the Insurrection Act like Kennedy did, and then using that to lock down the 2026 elections.
If this happens, will Pritzker follow Krasner’s model and begin arresting federal agents and Texas National Guard members if they’re found breaking Illinois or Chicago law? Or will he sue at federal court the way Newsom did? Or both?
If he does the former, it could literally kick off a second American Civil War; if he does the latter, Trump may win Civil War 2.0 without a shot fired, particularly if the six corrupt on-the-take Republicans on the US Supreme Court overrule the lower courts and endorse Trump’s actions.
Now is the critical time for all Americans to get educated about what’s going on and prepare for the eventuality of a totally locked-down police state being imposed on multiple blue cities, particularly in states where not counting the urban vote can flip the entire state red.
And if Pritzker and Newsom are right, all of this is being done—along with extreme gerrymandering—as part of the widespread Republican effort to rig the 2026 election so Democrats can’t take back the House and begin subpoena-based investigations of Trump’s crimes from the Epstein era to his recent murder of 11 immigrants in a boat off the coast of Venezuela.
Meanwhile, as Trump pits Americans against each other, dismantles our federal government, ensures future epidemics, and grifts billions in cybercurrencies, China and Russia are pulling the rest of the world together against America. It’s almost as if Russian President Vladimir Putin was giving Trump weekly directions, a dystopian Manchurian Candidate notion that seems more credible with every passing day.
He’s systematically weakening America while boosting Vladimir Putin. By shutting down Voice of America, dismantling defenses against Russian election interference, ignoring Ukraine, and bungling diplomacy with tariffs and summits that drive allies toward Moscow, he’s handed Putin victories that come at the direct expense of US power and security.
In the face of this, Trump is doing everything he can to ramp up tensions and provoke people in blue cities to violence which he can then exploit to increase his power and further crack down on elections, particularly next year.
All, apparently, in service of converting America from a historic liberal democracy into a one-man personality-driven dictatorship that’s increasingly aligned with—and following the model of—other tyrants around the world.
As a result, now is the critical time for all Americans to get educated about what’s going on and prepare for the eventuality of a totally locked-down police state being imposed on multiple blue cities, particularly in states where not counting the urban vote can flip the entire state red (which is most Blue states).
Trump is trying to take down American democracy for good. This is not a drill. Organize, educate, call your representatives, and prepare to show up in the streets.
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