Trump admin says in court that speaking Spanish & working construction can heighten likelihood someone's unlawfully here [View all]

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Brian Schatz @brianschatz
This is what Trump Justice Department just said in court. "speaking Spanish or working in construction...can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States." This is explicitly racist and illegal.


___Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to pause a federal judge’s order prohibiting federal agents from making indiscriminate immigration-related stops in the Los Angeles area.

John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general and former attorney for President Donald Trump, asserted that a person "speaking Spanish or working construction" does not always rise to reasonable suspicion, but sometimes it does... in many situations, such factors—alone or in combination—can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States, above and beyond the 1-in-10 baseline odds in the District," the filing said. "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are entitled to rely on these factors when ramping up enforcement of immigration laws in the District."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/us/politics/trump-supreme-court-los-angeles-immigrants.html


___Trump administration's emergency demand for a stay has set the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court to allow or prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from stopping, questioning, detaining and potentially arresting people in a "roving" manner in California on the idea that an individual's Hispanic appearance, speaking in Spanish or speaking English with an accent, day labor occupation, and location amount to "reasonable suspicion" of unlawful presence in the country.

The petitioners, led by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, and represented by John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general and former attorney for President Donald Trump, are challenging U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong's block of sweeping and "roving" ICE raids on July 11.

In that temporary restraining order, Frimpong found that the plaintiffs were "likely to succeed in proving that the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion" — stopping people on the theory that Hispanic appearance, speaking Spanish, and line of work, factored individually or combined, were within the bounds of the law. In addition, the government had denied "access to lawyers," all against the backdrop of an administration "arrest quota of 3,000 arrests per day."

"The factors that defendants appear to rely on for reasonable suspicion seem no more indicative of illegal presence in the country than of legal presence — such as working at low-wage occupations such as car wash attendants and day laborers," the judge wrote.

read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-admin-begs-scotus-to-destroy-judges-potential-contempt-trap-and-let-ice-stop-question-spanish-speaking-day-laborers/