Great news for lovers of racism and hypocrisy!
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to get back to grabbing random Latino people in Home Depot parking lots in Los Angeles, effectively allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to racially profile people and ask them for their papers. I can’t think of a single time in history when that has ended poorly.
The Sept. 8 ruling suggests that any inconvenience a U.S. citizen who happens to be Latino might experience when accosted by federal agents while attempting to buy a weed whacker is no biggie. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.”
You see? No problem. Unless you’re one of the many U.S. citizens who’ve been swept up by masked ICE agents and hauled off to a detention center. Or unless you’re a U.S. citizen who doesn’t think the government should be allowed to ask you to show your damn papers.
Put another way, I’d like to hear from all the White people who would be fine with an ICE agent stopping them in a Home Depot parking lot on a Saturday afternoon and demanding to see identification. I’ll just sit here holding my breath.
