I love going out without any papers. That’s because I am unlikely to be asked for them.
In a proper country, which is what we were until a few days ago, everyone has the right to walk around without papers — driver license, passport, birth certificate, Social Security card — unless they are necessary for the task at hand.
If I am driving, I take my license. If not, I don’t. But now, the United States Supreme Court has ruled, federal agents can stop and roust people based on their race, language, job or location. They can be asked for their papers, which, this being the freest, most open, most confident nation in the world, they don’t have to have.
Except that now they do. In Los Angeles, at least.
Supreme Court supermajority motto: “Today, L.A. Tomorrow, from California to the New York island. This land was made for me, and not for thee.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said a lower-court judge had gone too far in restricting how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can carry out brief stops for questioning.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it better: “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor,” she wrote in a dissent. “Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”
After the June immigration sweeps began here, U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong in Los Angeles ruled there was a “mountain of evidence” that enforcement tactics in the L.A. area were violating the Constitution. The plaintiffs included American citizens swept up in immigration stops. An appeals court then left Frimpong’s ruling in place without challenge.
The Associated Press reports that federal attorneys have said immigration officers target people based on illegal presence in the U.S., not skin color, race or ethnicity. Even so, the Justice Department argued that ICE agents can use at least some of those factors in combination with others, and Kavanaugh said apparent ethnicity could be a relevant factor for a stop.
Apparent ethnicity? Fully 48% of Los Angeles County’s 10 million residents identify as Latino or Hispanic. Another 14% are of Asian descent — please see the Georgia Hyundai plant for the relevance of that. That means the vast majority of Angelenos have an “apparent ethnicity” whose very existence gives the feds probable cause to shake them down.
ICE promised in an online post to “continue to FLOOD THE ZONE in Los Angeles” after the high court’s decision. Great. We are THE ZONE. Here comes the flood.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta pointed out that the Supreme Court recently ruled that race can’t be considered in college admissions. “They prevent the use of race (in college admissions) to tackle discrimination but allow the use of race to potentially discriminate,” Bonta said.
Plaintiff Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, an American citizen, said that when he was arrested, ICE agents never explained why they stopped him or showed a warrant.
“I was treated like I didn’t matter — locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that’s okay?” he said in a statement. “That’s not justice. That’s racism with a badge.”
Last week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief who has been leading the Los Angeles raids, said in a social media video that his team was “taking this show on the road” and trading “palm trees for some skyscrapers,” an apparent reference to the federal raids in Chicago, The New York Times reports. And here’s the kicker: He hopped up his reel with the audio accompaniment of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”
Oh really, chief? You want to ask Willie what he thinks of busting heads when a fellow can’t — or can — produce papers? Actually, we don’t have to ask: He’s called Trump’s immigration policies “outrageous.” And he cites the lyrics to his own song “Living in the Promiseland”: “Give us your daily bread, we have no shoes to wear, no place to call our own, only this cross to bear.”
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
