Another Disturbing Regression
By Stephen Reeves
On Monday, the US Supreme Court issued an order allowing large scale ICE raids in LA to resume. The court voted to issue a stay of a district court order which halted the raids without an opinion explaining why. In a concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh determined that race or “apparent ethnicity… can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.” That’s much easier for a white guy to say, especially one who is unlikely to have any other “salient factors” like not speaking English or working a manual labor job.
The truth is that I, like most white men, have never feared an ICE raid. If you somehow doubt the racial bias in immigration policies, recall that our current president lamented too many immigrants from “S---hole” countries and wished more would come from Scandinavia.
On the one hand, it seems natural that if someone looks like they’re from another country they should arouse suspicion for ICE. My question is, what does an American citizen look like? Should all nonwhite citizens who work manual labor jobs and speak another language live in fear that they could be stopped by ICE, seized, or even deported? How brown does your skin have to be before you decide to start carrying copies of your passport or birth certificate?
This is not a hypothetical question. I’ve heard numerous stories of fearful citizens doing just that.
In my Constitutional Law class in law school I was called on to recite the facts of the Korematsu decision. That 1944 case upheld the right for the US to send citizens to internment camps during World War II just because they had Japanese ancestry. That decision is a stain on our nation, and it was not expressly repudiated by the court until 2018. I fear this ruling contains echoes of that tragic era.
In her brilliant dissent, Justice Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Jackson and Kagan, made plain the consequences of the ruling, “The Government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. 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.”
She also took on Justice Kavanaugh’s version of the facts, “Immigration agents are not conducting ‘brief stops for questioning,’ as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions. 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.” You can read in detail what some folks experienced in Los Angeles in her concurring opinion.
What may seem common sense to white Americans strikes fear in the hearts of so many of our brothers and sisters. Let us not remain silent when our policies, practices and judicial rulings deem some people subject to suspicion and seizure based even in part on the color of their skin. As Justice Sotomayor concluded, “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.”
