In an unsigned order Kristi Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, over dissents by the three democratic appointees, the Supreme Court has vacated an order by a California federal judge halting the ethnic profiling of suspected aliens in Los Angeles California undertaken by ICE under the label "Operation at Large".. Saying that "at least 15 million people are in the United States illegally"Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in a lengthy opinion. Kavanaguh observed:
To the extent that excessive force has been used, the Fourth Amendment prohibits such action, and remedies should be available in federal court. I agree with the dissent on that point. But to reiterate, this injunction against brief stops for questioning does not address the useof-force issue. In short, the balance of harms and equities favors the Government here.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf
But Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only Hispanic person ever to serve on the Court, filed a bitter dissent in which Justices Kagan and Brown-Jackson concurred:
In early June, the Government launched immigration enforcement raids across Los Angeles and its surrounding counties. During the raids, teams of armed and masked agents pulled up to car washes, tow yards, farms, and parks and began seizing individuals on sight, often before asking a single question. A Federal District Court found that these raids were part of a pattern of conduct by the Government that likely violated the Fourth Amendment. Based on the evidence before it, the court held that the Government was stopping individuals based solely on four factors: (1) their apparent race or ethnicity; (2) whether they spoke Spanish or English with an accent; (3) the type of location at which they were found (such as a car wash or bus stop); and (4) the type of job they appeared to work. Concluding that stops based on these four factors alone, even when taken together, could not satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonable suspicion, the District Court temporarily enjoined the Government from continuing its pattern of unlawful mass arrests while it considered whether longer-term relief was appropriate. Instead of allowing the District Court to consider these troubling allegations in the normal course, a majority of this Court decides to take the once-extraordinary step of staying the District Court’s order. That decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. 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. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.
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