In a case concerning the proper standards employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when detaining people suspected of being in the United States illegally, the ideologically split Supreme Court — acting on the 23rd emergency request filed since January 20 — handed another win to the Trump administration. Noem v. Perdomo (September 8, 2025). Lower federal courts had approved a temporary injunction to prevent roving patrols of armed and masked ICE officers from detaining people without satisfying the Constitution’s reasonable suspicion requirement. The Court’s majority — as it has too often — offered no explanation for its decision to vacate the injunction. Justice Sotomayor wrote a dissent, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. The result would appear to allow all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work at low-wage jobs to be seized at any time, taken from their workplace, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to ICE agents’ satisfaction. --------------------------------------------------------- Launching “Operation At Large” in early June, the government conducted large immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles and its surrounding counties. During the raids, teams of armed and masked agents pulled up to car washes, tow yards, farms, and parks and seized individuals on sight, often before asking a single question. As discussed in an earlier Common Sense article (August 12, 2025), a California federal District Court found that these raids were part of a pattern of conduct by the ICE agents that likely violated the Fourth Amendment requirement that any detention be premised upon facts that reasonably warrant the suspicion that the individual may be illegally in the country. Based on the evidence before it, the court found that the government was stopping individuals based solely on one or more of four factors: (1) their apparent race or ethnicity; (2) whether they spoke Spanish or English with an accent; (3) the type of location where they were found (such as a car wash or bus stop); and (4) the type of job they appeared to work. Concluding that stops based on any one of these four factors alone, or even when taken together, could not satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonable suspicion, the District Court temporarily enjoined the government from continuing its pattern of unlawful mass arrests while it decided if longer-term relief was appropriate. The District Court stated, the ICE “officers cannot rely solely on generalizations that, if accepted, would cast suspicion on large segments of the law-abiding population.” The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to interfere, noting that the government did not dispute that these detentive stops had been based solely on the four enumerated factors and did not challenge the District Court’s findings that those stops were part of a pattern of conduct that has apparent official approval. In the context of the Central District of California, the four factors, even when considered together, describe only a broad profile and do not demonstrate sufficient “reasonable suspicion” for any particular stop. The Trump administration sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court and on September 8, it received the relief it sought, thereby allowing continued stops based upon any one of these four factors alone. The votes of at least five justices would have been required for such an outcome but only one of those justices, Justice Kavanaugh, explained his vote. Kavanaugh asserted that the “high prevalence” of undocumented immigrants on the Central District would make it inevitable that immigration officers would target any Latino person, or any person speaking Spanish or any person in a low wage job. However, nearly 47% of the Central District’s population identifies as Hispanic or Latino. For that reason, as explained by Justice Sotomayor in her dissent, the Fourth Amendment prohibits exactly what the government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that would embrace a very large category of presumably innocent people. The four factors are no more indicative of illegal presence than of legal presence and surely in no way reflect the kind of individualized inquiry the Fourth Amendment demands. In deciding such an issue, the Court typically must also “explore the relative harms to both sides, as well as the interests of the public at large.” The government’s sole argument on this score was that the injunction “chills [its] enforcement efforts.” However, the injunction does not prevent the government from enforcing its immigration laws, provided it stops individuals based on additional facts on top of any one of all the four factors listed. Moreover, the on-the-ground reality appears to contradict the administration’s and Justice Kavanaugh’s claim of a chilling effect. Since the issuance of the injunction, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has called the district judge an “idiot” and vowed that “none of [the government’s] operations are going to change.” ICE’s chief patrol agent in the Central District has stated that his division will “turn and burn” and “go even harder now,” and has posted videos on social media touting his agents’ continued efforts “chasing, cuffing, and deporting” people at car washes. Balanced against the “chilling effect” claim, it is the people of Los Angeles and the Central District who will suffer. As characterized by Justice Sotomayor in her dissent, “countless people in the Los Angelos area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact that they make a living by doing manual labor.” Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families. As stated by Justice Sotomayor, the Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be “free from arbitrary interference by law officers.” In her opinion, the Court’s decision is “unconscionably irreconcilable” with our nation’s constitutional guarantees. John Christie was for many years a senior partner in a large Washington, D.C. law firm. He specialized in anti-trust litigation and developed a keen interest in the U.S. Supreme Court about which he lectures and writes.