Protesters confront armed federal immigration agents in Camarillo, California, on July 14, 2025.

WASHINGTON – A divided Supreme Court on Sept. 8 said the Trump administration can resume for now the indiscriminate immigration-related stops in Los Angeles that sparked protests and charges of racial profiling.

Over the objections of the three liberal justices, the court blocked a judge’s ruling that federal agents need a reasonable suspicion that the person they’re questioning is in the country illegally.

U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong of the Central District of California said the government can’t rely solely on the person’s ethnicity, what language they speak, whether they’re at a particular location, such as a pickup site for day laborers, or what type of work they do.

Frimpong issued that temporary order in July in response to a class action lawsuit filed by a group of Latinos, including U.S. citizens, caught up in the 2025 ICE raids in Southern California.

The administration questioned the legal right of the challengers to sue, and said the judge improperly elevated the Fourth Amendment’s “low bar” for reasonable suspicion for searches and seizures. That means the government isn’t doing anything wrong, the Justice Department said.

In a region where a significant share of residents may be undocumented, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court, “reasonable suspicion to stop suspected illegal aliens will necessarily encompass a reasonable broad profile.”

The government estimated that 10% of the population in parts of Southern and Central California is undocumented, which is why the Los Angeles area is a top enforcement priority.

The Trump administration ramped up immigration raids across California starting in June, widening its focus from those with criminal records to a broader sweep for anyone in the country without authorization.

The crackdown sparked protests, which Trump dispatched National Guard troops and Marines to quell.

Lawyers for the challengers said numerous U.S. citizens and others who are in the country legally have been harmed – including some who suffered serious physical injuries – and people are afraid to leave their homes.

“The government’s extraordinary claim that it can get very close to justifying a seizure of any Latino person in the Central District because of the asserted number of Latino people there who are not legally present is anathema to the Constitution,” they told the Supreme Court. “And, more generally, the Court has made clear that reasonable suspicion cannot arise from facts that would describe broad swaths of the law-abiding population.”

In her dissent for the court’s three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority’s 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,” Sotomayor wrote. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent."

The majority’s brief and unsigned order did not include legal reasoning for the decision.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote to explain his view.

Kavanaugh said that the Latinos challenging the stops have no good basis to believe they will be questioned again by law enforcement. And even if they did, he said, the government is likely to beat the legal challenge once it’s been fully litigated.

While ethnicity alone can’t be the basis for reasonable suspicion, it can be relevant when considered with other factors, he said.

“Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention commonsense,” Kavanaugh wrote, “those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States.”

If the officers learn that the person they've stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the country, he said, "they promptly let the individual go."

Attorney General Pam Bondi called the decision a "massive victory."

"Now, ICE can continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement," Bondi said on social media.

LA, Chicago immigrant communities slam decision, plan protests

Immigrant rights activists in Los Angeles told USA TODAY that the Supreme Court decision has renewed fears of aggressive immigration raids.

"We know they're going to be emboldened by the Supreme Court’s ruling today," said Marisol Marquez of Centro CSO, an LA immigrant rights group. Marquez said the ruling will lead to the same kind of indiscriminate immigration raids that sparked the LA protests Trump deployed the National Guard to quell in June.

Immigrant rights advocates around the country were planning to respond by staging protests around the country in late September "to show our anger," Marquez said.

The atmosphere in the city’s Latino neighborhoods has returned to normal since then, Marquez said, but she expects streets and businesses to empty out following the ruling.

"If it’s legal to racially profile us, of course people have every right to be scared," she said. "Local small businesses are suffering because of the terrorism enacted on us by law enforcement."

Immigration advocates in Chicago said the ruling has sparked similar fears in the city where the Trump administration just launched its "Operation Midway Blitz" immigration enforcement campaign.

"These abductions were seemingly random, with agents profiling and approaching community members on the street," said Rey Wences of the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, about the first federal immigration arrests to take place under the Trump blitz. "What we're experiencing today is not normal. People going out in the street and being snatched from their family members is not normal."

Immigration authorities said that they have arrested four people in Chicago so far and all face criminal charges. Trump has said he wants to target "the worst of the worst."

But Chicagoans say the arrests don’t inspire safety but instead make people scared to leave their homes.

"It’s never been about arresting the worst of the worst," Alderwoman Jeylú Gutiérrez, the City Council representative for Chicago’s 14th Ward, said at Monday’s news conference. Gutiérrez is an immigrant from Mexico. "It’s about terrorizing our communities. But we will not be intimidated."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: In a win for Trump, Supreme Court lifts restrictions on LA immigration stops

Reporting by Maureen Groppe and Michael Loria, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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