The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can resume sweeping immigration raids in the city of Los Angeles, casting aside concerns over potential civil liberties violations.

In a 6-3 decision, the conservative-majority court rolled back restrictions on the administration’s aggressive approach to immigration raids, allowing agents to target people based on factors such as language and ethnicity.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

Writing a dissent for the liberal minority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the ruling “has all but declared that all Latinos, US citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction”.

The highest US court has rarely placed limits on the Trump administration’s assertions of executive authority. Monday’s ruling invalidates previous restrictions imposed by District Judge Maame Frimpong, who said there was a “mountain of evidence” that immigration agents were violating the constitutional rights of residents in Los Angeles.

Frimpong had ruled that immigration agents could not target people based on factors such as what language they were speaking or their ethnicity, type of job, or location. The Trump administration had argued that the ruling wrongly restrained immigration enforcement efforts, which have sometimes swept up and detained US citizens as well as people in the US without legal status.

“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from,” a lawsuit brought against the government by immigrant rights groups stated.

The Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda has often been driven by depictions – without evidence – of immigrants as an “invading” force. Government agencies and officials have adopted language previously restricted to hard-right anti-immigrant groups.

Advertisement

Earlier in the day, Trump shared a post on social media that called immigration a “weapon of mass destruction”.