Los Angeles-area leaders, nonprofits and residents came together in outrage on Monday in the wake of SCOTUS’s ruling to grant a stay to the temporary restraining order against “roving” ICE agents – an order that was implemented in July.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision means that ICE can resume the raids and aggressive street sweeps based primarily on perceived race or ethnicity that began in June to comply with President Donald Trump’s mass deportation order.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is another devastating attack on civil rights and constitutionality. Six Justices have given immigration agents the green light to racially profile and terrorize our communities with roving patrols,” said District 1 Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez during a press conference held outside a Home Depot in Westlake where immigration agents had previously arrested numerous workers.
“You are sitting on the ground where people were tripped, trampled and beat up by these people,” Hernandez said to the crowd. “Tear gas was just right behind you, rubber bullets (and) pepper bullets were used in this area.”
The court’s stay reverses the judgement in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem that barred immigration agents from stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion and from “relying solely on four factors – alone or in combination – including apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in a particular location like a bus stop, car wash, or agricultural site; or the type of work a person does” according to a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) SoCal.
The legal push was set in motion in the weeks following June 18, when a handful of men, including Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto and Isaac Villegas Molina, were detained at a bus stop near Orange Grove Boulevard and Los Robles Avenue in Pasadena.
“SCOTUS’s stay is a win for the safety and security of the American people and the rule of law,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on X. “ Our brave @DHSGov law enforcement will continue our operations in L.A. to remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens that pose a danger to public safety.”
Many Southern California leaders did not agree.
“With the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court has undermined the rights of millions,” said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass on Monday. “We know that this is simply un-American.”
Los Angeles County had seen waves of these types of raids prior in recent months. Prime locations have been big-box home-improvement stores such as Home Depot, the bustling MacArthur Park neighborhood in Westlake plus myriad open-air markets and car washes in communities across the region.
“As of today, approximately 81 car washes have been raided,” said Flor Melendrez, executive director of the CLEAN Car Wash Workers Center, during Monday’s press conference. “Many of them, three or four times. Approximately 247 car wash workers have disappeared from our communities.”
Many of the speakers noted how lively and busy the area near the Westlake Home Depot used to be. But now it is empty with no open-air stands or pop-up vendors, they said.
According to Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, plaintiff and co-counsel in the case, this decision will stall construction, hospitality and other industries that rely on a workforce rich in migrant workers.
“It not just harm to immigrants,” he said. “It’s harm to the economy. You tell me how L.A.’s going to rebuild without a migrant workforce. Impossible.”
Attendees of the conference cried in outrage, alleging that friends and family members are losing their livelihoods and homes.
“When ICE grabbed me, they never showed a warrant or explained why. I was treated like I didn’t matter–locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that’s okay? That’s not justice. That’s racism with a badge,” said Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, a named plaintiff in the case, in a statement. “I joined this case because what happened to me is happening to others everyday just for being brown, speaking Spanish, or standing on a corner looking for work. The system failed us today, but I’m not staying silent. We’ll keep fighting because our lives are important.”
Other plaintiffs include Armando Gudino with the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, Angelica Salas with The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Alvaro Huerto with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Elizabeth Strater with United Farm Workers.
Strater emphasized the discrimination that farm workers are facing in the area.
“We’ve talked to farm workers who have been washing their cars every day after work because they don’t want their car to look like a farm worker’s,” Melendrez said. “They don’t want any dust or mud from the field on their car. They think about how they’re dressed so they don’t look like a farm worker.”
The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this month that more than 5,000 immigration arrests have been made since June 6.
“The officers are instructed to find reasonable suspicion before an arrest,” U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Jacob Roth told the appeals panel in oral arguments in front of the 9th Circuit court in August.
The agency said in a statement Monday that its teams plan to “continue to FLOOD THE ZONE in Los Angeles.” The region has been top priority for the Trump administration, and its hard-line immigration strategy has spurred widespread protests. Trump responded by deploying National Guard and Marine troops to the city’s streets.
Trump and his administration have long argued that the nation is witnessing an “invasion” of immigrants, with particular ire toward the Biden administration, which reversed many of the tough immigration policies of Trump’s first term.
The administration stands behind its immigration strategy, declaring it is ridding the nation of the “worst of the worst” criminal immigrants who are in the nation illegally.
Melendrez and others say that ICE is no longer targeting solely criminals or undocumented immigrants at this point. More than 70% of those who have been detained in recent months across the country have never been convicted of a crime, according to the Deportation Data Project.
“We know that there are citizens who are also collateral damage and there’s a point where you have to realize that when any one demographic begins to lose their very most basic rights that this country was founded on, once those rights begin to erode for one group, they begin to erode for everyone,” she said. “So when it happens to them, watch, because it will happen to you.”
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Mayor Bass has ordered all her departments to comply with the city’s law prohibiting the use of city resources to assist in immigration enforcement. She has also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the federal government to provide the information on where people are being taken and why.
“Today’s decision endorses and enables Trump’s authoritarian attacks on immigrants,” Alvarado said. “What happens next is up to all of us. The legal system is failing. But we, the people, must not fail. We call on all people of good will to show up for and with immigrant workers. To stand with day laborers, carwash workers, farmworkers, and all other immigrants who are working to keep this country running, even as they are now terrorized by Trump.”
The ACLU assured the community that they will be continuing with an injunction to ensure that the case continues as a class-action lawsuit. The case will be in front of the federal district court in Downtown L.A. on Sept. 24.
Staff writers Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Ryan Carter, Allyson Vergara, Mona Darwish, David Wilson, as well as The Associated Press and City News Service, contributed to this report.