The Supreme Court’s recent decision permitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain individuals based solely on race, language, occupation, or geographic location represents a troubling erosion of constitutional protections. What makes this decision particularly concerning is Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion, which provides additional justification for what amounts to institutionalized racial profiling.
The Decision
The Court’s ruling effectively grants ICE broad authority to conduct detention operations targeting individuals based on characteristics that have historically been used for discriminatory enforcement. This decision undermines the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and creates a dangerous precedent for law enforcement agencies across the country.
Kavanaugh’s Concurrence
Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion goes beyond the majority’s reasoning, offering additional support for these detention practices. His analysis suggests a troubling willingness to prioritize immigration enforcement over fundamental civil rights protections that have been central to American jurisprudence for decades.
The concurrence fails to adequately address the constitutional concerns raised by allowing detention based on immutable characteristics like race and language, or circumstantial factors like occupation and location. This reasoning could easily be extended to justify other forms of discriminatory law enforcement.
Constitutional Implications
This decision represents a significant departure from established civil rights precedent. The Court’s willingness to permit detention based on racial and linguistic characteristics echoes some of the darkest chapters in American legal history, when similar reasoning was used to justify internment and other discriminatory practices.
The Path Forward
This ruling underscores the urgent need for Supreme Court reform. When the highest court in the land sanctions what amounts to racial profiling by federal agencies, it demonstrates how far the current Court has strayed from protecting constitutional rights for all Americans.
The decision, bolstered by Kavanaugh’s concurrence, will likely embolden other discriminatory enforcement practices and make it more difficult for affected communities to seek legal recourse. It is a stark reminder of why reforming our judicial system is essential to preserving civil rights and equal justice under law.
The Direct Consequences
ICE agents are now deliberately targeting anyone and everyone they want to “based on how they look”. That’s not my interpretation of events - that’s from their own leaders.
From this point forward, we should be calling this Kavanaugh Stops.