"Kavanaugh Stops." I never heard the term til just now. [View all]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/10/scotus-analysis-kavanaugh-stops-supreme-court-lawsuit.html

Gregory Bovino, the officer in charge of roving immigration enforcement in American cities, admitted this week that his agents arrest people based on “how they look.” Asked by a WBEZ reporter to elaborate, Bovino said the pertinent question was how “they” appear as “compared to” the reporter, a white man. Bovino’s candor stripped away any pretense: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are detaining individuals because they look Latino.

Three weeks ago, the Supreme Court greenlit that approach, effectively legalizing racial profiling in immigration enforcement by a 6–3 vote. Although the majority did not explain its decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh tried to muster a defense in a solo concurrence whose reasoning crumbled upon scrutiny. Kavanaugh insisted that ICE agents may use a person’s “apparent ethnicity” as a “relevant factor” when deciding whether to arrest them. But he assured readers that agents may use ethnicity only in combination with other, nonracial factors when deciding whom to target. He also insisted that these “immigration stops” are a minor inconvenience for “those individuals who are legally in the country,” writing: “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.”