https://www.city-journal.org/article/ice-race-ruling-judge-maame-ewusi-mensah-frimpong?skip=1
The Justice Department just filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to vindicate its authority to enforce immigration law. A federal judge in Los Angeles had declared ICE’s questioning of suspected illegal aliens unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ruled on July 11 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had been impermissibly using race to decide whom to detain for questioning about immigration status. Yet Frimpong’s rules for litigating in her courtroom are themselves a violation of the principle of color-blindness.
According to the plaintiffs in Pedro Vasquez Perdomo v. Kristi Noem, ICE’s immigration operations in Southern California single out suspects based on race and three additional factors: a Spanish accent or inability to speak English; presence at a location, such as a day laborer pick-up site, known to harbor illegal aliens; and working at a job, such as at a car wash, known to be dominated by illegal aliens. Frimpong ruled that those four factors, alone or in combination with the other three, did not provide ground, known as “reasonable suspicion” in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, for stopping and questioning a suspect for illegal presence.
ICE had disputed the advocates’ characterization of its stops. Its officers have more particularized suspicion based on their experience and on additional observed facts about the setting and the suspect, ICE argued. Frimpong’s rushed briefing and hearing schedule had not provided the government sufficient time to make its defense, the Justice Department attorneys alleged, to no effect.
