{"id":76037,"date":"2025-10-07T14:30:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T21:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76037"},"modified":"2025-10-07T14:30:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T21:30:48","slug":"how-scotus-sanctioned-a-national-assault-on-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76037","title":{"rendered":"How SCOTUS Sanctioned a \u2018National Assault on Community\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Edward Kissam<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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With 1 in 6 people in the U.S. an immigrant, SCOTUS’ ruling green lighting racial profiling in immigration stops is nothing short of a national assault on community life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On the night of September 30, residents of a Chicago apartment building woke to the sounds of federal agents storming the building, some allegedly landing on the roof from a Blackhawk helicopter whirring above. Doors were kicked in, homes tossed, whole families\u2014including citizens and babies\u2014were zip tied and marched to buses waiting outside.<\/p>\n

One eyewitness described the scene to CNN:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Administration, which has already deployed National Guard troops to the city, alleges without sharing any evidence that the building was a known hangout for members of the Tren de Aragua criminal group.<\/p>\n

Whatever the pretext, the operation makes clear that agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)\u2014both under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and involved in the Chicago raid\u2014now believe they can act with near total impunity, as an armed and unchecked wing of the Administration\u2019s mass deportation agenda.<\/p>\n

Worse yet, these tactics, first deployed in Los Angeles, have been sanctioned by the highest court in the land.<\/p>\n

On September 9th<\/sup>, in\u00a0Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo<\/em>, the Supreme Court green lighted the detention of individuals whenever CBP agents allege they have a \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d that the person is an unauthorized immigrant.<\/p>\n

The ruling means anyone, regardless of their citizenship status, is at risk if they fit the profile. Whether in time that profile extends to anyone who falls afoul of Trump\u2019s priorities is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

The immediate consequences, meanwhile, mean virtual occupation of communities with immigrants anywhere in the country, threatening widespread sweeps, workplace raids, and the ongoing detention of community residents at bus stops, flea markets, Sunday picnics in the park.<\/p>\n

It is nothing short of a national assault on community life, not just Los Angeles, or Portland, or Chicago, or Memphis, or Washington, DC; about one out of six people in the U.S. is an immigrant.<\/p>\n

As White House Deputy Chief of Staff\u00a0Stephen Miller recently proclaimed in Memphis<\/a>, ICE agents are now \u201cunleashed.\u201d<\/p>\n

What did the Supreme Court\u2019s 6-3 decision authorize? It overturned a federal District Court\u2019s stay blocking indiscriminate detentions based on apparent ethnicity, language, place of employment, and occupation in Los Angeles, and several other Southern California counties.<\/p>\n

In practice, as Justice Sotomayor argued in her widely reported dissent, the ruling establishes a \u201csecond-class citizenship status for Latinos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing in defense of the ruling, issued through the court\u2019s shadow docket\u2014which dispenses with the usual process for hearing cases, including, for example, oral arguments, while releasing often terse, unsigned decisions\u2014Justice Kavanaugh notes:<\/p>\n

U.S. immigration officers have prioritized immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area\u2026If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>\n

One of the U.S. citizen plaintiffs\u00a0in the Los Angeles case<\/a>, Jason Brian Gavidia, testified that he had been stopped by a masked agent, asked if he was a U.S. citizen by another agent and after answering yes, was pushed up against a metal gated fence, had his hands put behind his back and phone confiscated, because he didn\u2019t remember which hospital he was born in. After he showed the agents his Real ID, they kept it for 20 minutes, finally released him, and never returned it to him.<\/p>\n

According to Mr. Gavidia, it was one of the worst experiences in his life.<\/p>\n

Another plaintiff, Jorge Hernandez Viramontes, asked if agents in unmarked vehicles had a warrant to search the carwash where he worked. The reply that came back from the officers:\u00a0\u201cShut the f#@k up.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Viramontes, a citizen, was taken to a warehouse and detained by the agents for several hours.<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh goes on to argue that the citizen plaintiffs in the Los Angeles case had no basis to believe that they would be stopped again. Whether ignorance or expediency, the logic here is once again belied by facts on the ground.<\/p>\n

Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S.-born Latino citizen living in Alabama, had already been arrested twice in May in ICE sweeps of construction sites, just one of\u00a0scores of reports of unlawful detentions of US citizens<\/a>\u00a0across the country.<\/p>\n

Community trust<\/a>\u00a0in government is plummeting. Uncontrolled roving patrols of masked ICE agents in camouflage and unmarked cars, and unfounded declarations that politically targeted communities are war-torn and crime-infested are inevitably eroding public trust still further.<\/p>\n

While the Trump Administration argued before the court that it faced an emergency and would suffer irreparable harm if ICE was restrained, the real emergency is a Supreme Court ruling making immigrant communities\u2014and anyone who looks like an immigrant\u2014open targets for combat-style arrest, detention, and worse.<\/p>\n

Feature image published under\u00a0CC License 1.0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This story is part of \u201cAqu\u00ed Estamos\/Here We Stand<\/a>,\u201d a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and community news outlets statewide.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByEdward Kissam Oct 7, 2025 With...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76038,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76037\/revisions\/76038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}