Photo of Lady Liberty via Wikipedia Commons. Image of la pinche migra from the US government
On 8 September 2025, the United States Supreme Court eased restrictions against aggressive immigration enforcement tactics by federal agents in Central California. This ruling came after two lower courts imposed a temporary restraining order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, having found that ICE had likely violated the Fourth Amendment by targeting suspects based primarily on race, ethnicity and native language.
Previously, on 1 August 2025, the ninth circuit court of appeals agreed with a federal judge's decision that a person speaking Spanish or having a foreign or foreign-sounding accent did not give ICE probable cause to stop and detain anybody.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with the decision, writing, "Apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion. Under this Court's case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a relevant factor.”
Inevitably, the Supreme Court’s liberal minority of three Justices expressed their opposition. "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," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
On X.com, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin wrote a post characterizing the Supreme Court's ruling as “A win for the safety of Californians and the rule of law.” She also declared, “[The Department of Homeland Security and] 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 [Los Angeles Mayor] Karen Bass continues to give safe harbor.”
However, on the day the Court made its ruling, Governor Gavin Newsom offered a statement condemning the ruling. "This isn’t about enforcing immigration laws -- it’s about targeting Latinos and anyone who doesn’t look or sound like [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller’s idea of an American, including U.S. citizens and children, to deliberately harm California’s families and small businesses…Trump's private police force now has a green light to come after your family -- and every person is now a target -- but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians.”
Meanwhile, research shows time and time again that in the United States, immigrants are less likely to perpetrate crimes, ostensibly in the interest of avoiding deportation. For example, information from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that in U.S. prisons, immigrants are greatly outnumbered by native-born convicts. Not only that, a study from the Cato Institute examining data from 2017 to 2023 showed that immigrants victimized by crime were 29 percent more likely than US-born victims to personally report violent crime to the police. As a result of the immigrants’ cooperation, law enforcement successfully made nearly half a million criminal arrests and about 300,000 arrests of violent offenders during the aforementioned timeframe.
