FILE PHOTO: U.S. federal agents block a road leading to an agricultural facility where U.S. federal agents and immigration officers conducted an operation as tear gas is used to disperse protesters, in Camarillo, California, U.S., July 10, 2025. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court again backed President Donald Trump's hardline immigration approach on Monday, letting agents proceed with Southern California raids targeting people for deportation based on their race or language in a ruling its liberal justices said makes Latinos "fair game to be seized at any time."

The court granted a Justice Department request to put on hold a judge's order that had barred agents from stopping or detaining people without "reasonable suspicion" that they are in the country illegally, by relying on race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent, among other factors.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, denounced the court's decision in harsh terms.

"Trump's hand-picked Supreme Court majority just became the grand marshal for a parade of racial terror in Los Angeles," Newsom said in a statement, alluding to the fact that Trump appointed three of the six conservative justices serving on the nine-member court.

The court's brief and unsigned order, issued without any explanation, lifts the judge's restrictions while a legal challenge brought by a group of Latino people caught up in the raids plays out.

Trump's administration quickly vowed to continue "roving patrols." The Republican president returned to office in January promising to escalate deportations, and immigration raids by masked and armed federal agents triggered street protests in Los Angeles that led him to send military troops in June into the largest city in the most-populous U.S. state.

The administration "has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents' satisfaction," Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who in 2009 became the court's first Hispanic member, wrote in a dissent joined by the court's other two liberals.

"Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent," Sotomayor added.

Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong found on July 11 that the Trump administration's actions likely violated the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The judge's order applied in an area covering much of Southern California.

"This isn't about enforcing immigration laws - it's about targeting Latinos and anyone who doesn't look or sound like Stephen Miller's idea of an American, including U.S. citizens and children, to deliberately harm California's families and small businesses," Newsom said, referring to Trump's senior aide.

"Trump's private police force now has a green light to come after your family - and every person is now a target - but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians," Newsom added.

Miller, the architect of Trump's immigration crackdown, in May demanded that the leaders of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ramp up deportations, setting a goal of 3,000 daily arrests.

'JUDICIAL MICROMANAGEMENT'

Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called Monday's decision a "massive victory," writing on social media that immigration enforcement officers now can "continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement."

The plaintiffs, including some who are U.S. citizens, filed the proposed class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court in July.

"Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from," the lawsuit stated.

Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California who helps represent the plaintiffs, vowed to continue to fight the administration's "racist deportation scheme."

"This decision is a devastating setback for our plaintiffs and communities who, for months, have been subjected to immigration stops because of the color of their skin, occupation, or the language they speak," Tajsar said.

Concurring with Monday's decision, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that "apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion" but it can be a "'relevant factor' when considered along with other salient factors."

Kavanaugh added: "If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go."

Trump's administration has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court this year to allow it to proceed with policies that lower courts have impeded after casting doubt on their legality.

The court has backed Trump in most of these cases. For instance, it has allowed Trump to deport migrants to countries other than their own without offering a chance to show harms they may face and to revoke temporary legal status previously granted by the government on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Trump's immigration raids in Los Angeles and elsewhere have prompted panic in immigrant communities as well as protests, and have drawn lawsuits over aggressive tactics.

Trump's decision to send National Guard troops and U.S. Marines into Los Angeles in response to the protests represented an extraordinary use of military force within the United States to support civilian police operations. Newsom and local officials contested the deployment as unlawful and unnecessary.

Frimpong issued the temporary restraining order halting stops or arrests based on race, language, presence at a particular location such as a car wash or tow yard, or type of work to establish "reasonable suspicion" of illegality. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 1 declined to lift Frimpong's order.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)