US Supreme Court Approves Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement Activities
On September 8, 2025, the United States Supreme Court issued one of its most deplorable rulings ever, permitting racial profiling in immigration enforcement activities carried out by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
The ruling, KRISTI NOEM, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ET AL. v. PEDRO VASQUEZ PERDOMO, ET AL., overturned lower court orders that prohibited ICE agents in Los Angeles solely on factors considered to reflect racial profiling.
Three dissenting justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a 21-page opinion that highlighted and documented the error of the decision.
A Federal District Court found that these raids were part of a pattern of conduct by the Government that likely violated the Fourth Amendment. Based on the evidence before it, the court held that the Government was stopping individuals based solely on four factors: (1) their apparent race or ethnicity; (2) whether they spoke Spanish or English with an accent; (3) the type of location at which 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 these four factors alone, 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 considered whether longer-term relief was appropriate.
Instead of allowing the District Court to consider these troubling allegations in the normal course, a majority of this Court decides to take the once-extraordinary step of staying the District Court’s order. That decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. 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.
But stopping individuals for looking Latino, speaking Spanish or working in a low wage job were not exclusive to the ICE activities in Los Angeles. Earlier in the year, in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the United Farm Workers the plaintiffs documented the widespread racial profiling that took place in Customs and Border Patrol raids that were carried out in public locations in Kern County in January 2025, days before Donald Trump’s second administration began. The lawsuit argued:
In January 2025, Border Patrol agents based at the United States-Mexico border traveled over 300 miles north to Bakersfield to launch “Operation Return to Sender”—a nearly weeklong sweep through predominantly Latino areas of Kern County and the surrounding region to stop, detain, and arrest people of color who appeared to be farm workers or day laborers, regardless of their actual immigration status or individual circumstances.
In addition, it is argued in the document that violations to due process took place. Moreover, the raids also led to the detentions of United States citizens and permanent residents. The lawsuit presents several cases, including those of Ernesto Gutierrez Campos and Yolanda Aguilera Martinez, a citizen and a lawful resident, respectively.
On the morning of January 8, 2025, a Border Patrol agent pulled over Ernesto Campos Gutierrez, a U.S. citizen who works as a gardener and was hauling a trailer full of gardening equipment. When Mr. Campos Gutierrez declined to surrender his truck keys to the agent who had pulled him over, the agent slashed his tires. When his passenger did not immediately open the passenger-side door, the agent threatened to break the window. When the passenger lowered the window, the agent dragged his passenger from the vehicle. Border Patrol agents arrested both men.
Ernesto’s case became one of the most prominent cases of abuse by immigration enforcement agents and produced numerous media interviews, including mass media outlets in Mexico.
In the case of Yolanda Aguilera Martinez, the lawsuit informs the following:
That same afternoon, Border Patrol agents pulled over Plaintiff Yolanda Aguilera Martinez, a lawful permanent resident, for no discernable reason. When Ms. Aguilera Martinez showed Border Patrol agents her valid California driver’s license, they ordered her out of her car, threw her to the ground, and arrested her. On information and belief, in each of these stops—and across “Operation Return to Sender”—Border Patrol agents possessed no information about the person they seized, only an assumption that they fit a profile of an undocumented person based on their presumed race, ethnicity, or occupation.
These detentions began a pattern that has been repeated in numerous raids that have taken place during the second Trump administration. In historical terms, they are reminiscent of other eras in which the rights of Mexican immigrants and their U.S. born children were violated systematically. During the Great Depression, for example, hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants and U.S. citizens were deported to Mexico. According to a House of Representatives report, the repatriation or deportation program
was initiated in Southern California under the direction of the federal government, with state and local government support, and expanded throughout the Southwest. In 1931 alone, anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 individuals returned to Mexico. Los Angeles lost approximately one-third of its Mexican population during this period.49 Between 1929 and 1935, more than 400,000 people were repatriated to Mexico, including U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. Approximately 85,000 more Mexicans returned to Mexico voluntarily. Most repatriates continued to live in poverty.50 Some attempted to return to the United States, but they were denied entry by federal border authorities.
One academic source, echoing other studies, points out that it is difficult to estimate the actual number of Mexicans deported during the Great Depression, “but estimates range from least 350,000 to as high as 2 million, out of which 60% are believed to have been American citizens—most of them children.”
The historical reference to the 1929-35 repatriation has a contemporary counterpart in the current campaigns of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during the current Trump administration. On August 14, 2025, DHS Secretary, Kristy Noem, proudly declared:
In less than 200 days, 1.6 MILLION illegal immigrants have left the United States population[.] This is massive. This means safer streets, taxpayer savings, pressure off of schools and hospital services and better job opportunities for Americans. Thank you, President Trump!”
In its analysis of the September 8, 2025 Supreme Court decision, Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) offers a glimmer of hope:
[The September 8| Supreme Court order is not the end of the case. The case is still pending at the Ninth Circuit and that court will still hear the full appeal. The Supreme Court could later review the case on the merits. The fight to protect constitutional rights remains very much alive. Racial profiling is wrong and contrary to a free society. It dehumanizes people. It violates an individual’s human rights and also violates constitutional and international human rights law.
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