The conservative-majority high court has repeatedly upheld the Republican administration’s anti-immigrant policies, including mass deportations and the incarceration of people with no criminal record.

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A 6-3 ruling by the US Supreme Court on September 8 gave the green light to immigration enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles, where agents will be able to use “racial profiling, language, and ethnic origin” as criteria for arrests.

The high court subordinated concerns about civil liberties violations to compliance with the executive branch’s immigration policy. At the same time, it overturned the decision of a lower court (in this case, the Los Angeles court), a trend among the current members of the conservative-majority court.

In this case, the restrictions imposed by District Judge Maame Frimpong were overturned, citing a “mountain of evidence” that immigration agents had violated the constitutional rights of Los Angeles residents.

Frimpong had previously ruled that ICE agents could not discriminate against people based on factors such as their language of origin, type of work, or location; a measure the government deemed “inappropriate” because it “restricted immigration enforcement measures.”

For Justice Sonia Sotomayor, this high court ruling “virtually declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work in low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, removed from their jobs, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the satisfaction of agents.”

This is an order “outrageous because it includes no reasoning,” in the words of Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

This is not the first time the Supreme Court has overturned a judicial ruling protecting migrants.

In June, the court allowed the Trump administration to resume mass deportations to third countries without warning, accelerating deportations, suspending refugee admissions, and eliminating protections for more than 530,000 people. This suspended an order from federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts.

At the same time, they have ignored rulings that protected migrants from being transferred to potentially dangerous destinations. Previously, programs such as the so-called parole program, which granted humanitarian parole and temporary legal status to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, were dismantled.

This week, anti-immigrant operations began in Boston and Chicago, violating local policies protecting these communities. At the same time, the White House chief is threatening to also deploy the National Guard and military personnel, a measure denounced as “illegal” by experts and activists.

The United States Department of Justice recently sued Michelle Wu, the mayor of Massachusetts, over the migrant community protection policies implemented in that “sanctuary city,” which restrict cooperation with ICE.

According to Syracuse University researcher Austin Kocher—cited by EFE—the United States is holding more than 61,200 migrants behind bars, the highest number in several years. Nearly half of these, 45%, have no criminal record.

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