Yesterday six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court said ICE can detain anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, or works a blue-collar job. Not based on evidence of wrongdoing - based on identity. Justice Sotomayor called it what it is: state-sanctioned racial profiling.
This isn't just about immigration raids in my hometown of Los Angeles. This is about precedent. When the highest court in America says racial profiling is constitutional, every law enforcement agency in the country takes notes. Every future administration inherits this power.
We wrote laws after Watergate to constrain Nixon-style abuses. Those laws are failing to curb this administration because we didn't imagine someone would ignore them entirely. Now the Court is rewriting the constitutional floor itself, saying the Fourth Amendment has exceptions for people who look a certain way.
The red line is coming: when U.S. citizens are increasingly interdicted as part of the dragnet originally designed for undocumented immigrants.
If this isn't your idea of civil rights (and it shouldn't be) you can:
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