Jason Brian Gavidia, a Trump supporter and U.S. citizen, has described how federal agents treated him during an immigration stop in June.
Gavidia runs an autobody shop in an eastern suburb of LA. One afternoon, a white unmarked van drove by, then did a sudden U-turn. Masked Border Patrol agents jumped out from all doors, carrying handguns and military style rifles.
Two agents approached Gavidia, pushed him up against a metal fence, and twisted his arm backward as they asked an odd question: What hospital was he born in?
Gavidia happened to be born in a neighborhood hospital, close by, so they were satisfied. But his friend and co-worker Javier Ramirez wasn’t so lucky.
Even though Ramirez, a U.S. citizen and father of four, approached the officers with his hands up to show he was no threat, two agents tackled him to the ground. They shoved him facedown, one agent kneeling on his back as he struggled.
Ramirez spent several days in detention. Still traumatized months later, he habitually looks over his shoulder in fear.
Luckily for both men, their ordeal was caught on video. Other recordings of incidents with worse outcomes have gone viral. They show federal immigration officers’ aggression and violence increasing in pursuit of Trump’s daily “detention quotas” to fill for-profit detention centers.
Before Trump
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Under clear 4th A precedent, reasonable suspicion is required before any person — U.S. citizen or not, documented or not — can be stopped by law enforcement. Under Terry v. Ohio, settled law since 1962, officers must have specific, articulable facts suggesting that someone is involved in or is about to be involved in criminal activity.
Skin color, a foreign accent, or a racist officer’s hunch were not enough.
The 14th Amendment prohibits the government from denying any person “equal protection of the laws,” meaning the government needs a valid reason before they can treat people differently.
Different conduct was always a valid reason. Different skin color was not.
Until now, both amendments forbade the government from using race as the motivating factor in any government action.
Masked federal agents could not jump out from behind a tree, or an unmarked van, to harass brown people. They couldn’t run up and demand to see their “papers.” They couldn’t throw people into an unmarked van for no reason other than not carrying the right documents in their pocket or purse.
Unequal protection
On July 11, following 4th and 14th Amendment law as it then existed, a District Court enjoined U. S. immigration officers from making investigative stops based on:
- presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, and agricultural sites
- the type of work one does
- speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent
- apparent race or ethnicity.
Two months later, six Trump-aligned Supreme Court justices lifted that injunction.
On September 8, in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Republican majority scoffed at significant evidence of racial profiling by ICE agents, similar to what Gavidia and Ramirez endured, and allowed it to continue.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a smug concurring opinion, rejecting plaintiffs’ standing, then clarifying that “ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” but could be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors.”
He never defined, explored, or explained what “other salient factors” might be, but seemed to think working in a low-paying job was one of them.
Kavanaugh stressed the significance of the government’s immigration enforcement efforts like he was a talking head on Fox News, while ignoring harms to plaintiffs.
In “close cases,” he wrote, citing Hollingsworth v. Perry, “the Court considers the balance of harms and equities to the parties, including the public interest.”
Kavanaugh presumed irreparable injury to the government any time it is “enjoined by a court from effectuating statutes,” without examining how the government effectuates those statutes.
Kavanaugh did not discuss harms caused to children when their parents don’t come home for days, weeks, or months.
He did not discuss fear, marginalization, or the psychological harm of being tackled to the ground by masked federal agents.
He did not weigh the corrosive harms to a nation that no longer trusts but fears the federal government.
Kavanaugh focused only on people who are in the country illegally, ignoring harms to US citizens and their families, writing, “The interests of individuals who are illegally in the country in avoiding being stopped by law enforcement for questioning is ultimately an interest in evading the law. That is not an especially weighty legal interest.”
He bypassed plaintiffs like Gavidia and Ramires, roughed up and wrongly detained for days, weeks and months even though they are citizens, writing blithely that although the fourth amendment still applied, excessive forces was not part of the underlying injunction.
What’s a brief attack among friends?
Kavanaugh indulged in the delusion that immigration stops are always “brief,” and that brief abuse at the hands of government is fine.
Demonstrating not only naivete but a complete disregard of the record before him, he wrote that when 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.”
He wrote multiple times that officers only stop people “briefly,” that “reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual,” and that “Individual(s) will be free to go after the brief encounter…”
The brevity of Gavidia’s encounter did not remove the harm, which may stay with him for the rest of his life. Ramirez’ encounter was not brief, but lasted for days. ICE has wrongly detained hundreds of US citizens for days, weeks, and months.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in the dissent, the Court has now “declared that all Latinos, US 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.”
Republicans on the high court did this after giving Donald Trump immunity for heinous crimes, as long as he’s carrying out ‘official’ duties, like murdering brown people in fishing boats.
The only silver lining is that when — not if — people start dying at ICE’s hands, ICE agents will not share Trump’s immunity. That must be why they wear masks.
- Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
