I was speaking to a lawyer friend of mine a few weeks back about the power of judges. He was a clerk working beneath a district judge, and he described how confident she (the judge) was when giving orders to her staff. In the court of law, the judge is a monarch. She directs and the staff follows, even when she is wrong. My friend observed to me that judges are the most powerful people in America. You can appeal a ruling, sure, but the appeals will only go so far. If a case reaches the Supreme Court, it can go no higher. The way that supreme court justices choose to “interpret” the law is more powerful than the written word of the law itself, because there is nobody behind a justice checking their work. Their version of a law is the final version, unless a future supreme court justice chooses to re-interpret the precedent or congress re-writes the law.
Today, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court order to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from stopping random people on the street and arresting them without just cause or due process. The lawsuit in question alleged that ICE was using masked and armed agents to make arrests on the street based on racial profiling. The suit states:
“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.”
One plaintiff in the case, Jason Gavidia (US Citizen), describes being pushed around and harshly restrained by ICE agents after they did not believe his claims that he was a citizen. They demanded to know the name of the hospital he was born in. I personally don’t remember the name of the hospital that I was born in. I probably have never been told it and have never needed a reason to ask. People across the country describe similar circumstances: unidentified agents in plain clothing suddenly surrounding them, demanding personal information, and making an arrest without cause or warrant. ICE agents on the street choose their targets, according to the lawsuit, by racial markers. An accent with poor English, brown skin, and working a labor job outside are signs of being an illegal immigrant that ICE uses to make an on-the-spot arrest.
The district judge that ordered the stay on ICE argued that this activity by federal law enforcement clearly breaches the 4th amendment of the US Constitution, which states that American citizen are not to be subjected to unlawful search and seizure. I would gather that it also breaks a number of other civil rights laws that ban discrimination based on race. The Department of Justice had responded that profiling using a “reasonably broad profile” is necessary in an area of the country where as many as “10%” of the population may be residing illegally.
Regardless of anyone’s opinion on this matter, the Supreme Court has made its own decision. In a 6-3 decision pitting the conservatives against the liberals, ICE is allowed to continue making random arrests using a race, language, and place of work as a legitimate criteria. This means that hispanic-looking people will continue to face random attacks and arrests by federal agents that, for all intents of purposes, look and act like thugs.
Justice Sotomayor wrote this in her public dissent: “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”
I do not need to state the danger of these developments. Our right to live free within this country is being challenged by thugs. Well paid and with little oversight, these ICE agents are free to roam the streets, roughing up citizens and immigrants alike with impunity while they pursue their own idea of public safety. What qualifications do ICE agents have to wield so much power over their fellow citizens? Their right to make arrests is stronger than that even of police officers, who must abide by the constitution and must not make an arrest based simply on whether a person’s skin is too dark.
And when did the American psyche become so closed, so violent? Why do we cheer when people are torn from their livelihoods under suspicion of being alien? Why is it such a crime at all to be born somewhere else, or by extension to *look like* you were born somewhere else in the eyes of a federal agent? By accepting racial profiling among law enforcement, we create a two-tiered Democracy where white-looking people are free while brown, black, or otherwise foreign-looking people are subject to harassment and distrust by the system of government supposedly created to serve them. it is a system that privileges one’s genetic traits in dealings with the law. It is a system of white supremacy, named or not. It is a reversion to the segregation era.
And why are we so eager to make an American future marked by apartheid? Why do we rush to build a country where we must all be ready to identify ourselves, to prove our place to birth with exactitude to please the curiosity of enforcers picking us out of crowds like wolves stalking a herd of sheep? The implication of an ICE-based system of law is that every person in this country is guilty of being an alien until proven innocent. Will there be checkpoints? Will a copy of my birth certificate have to be kept in my wallet at all times to be displayed at request? Do I need to pin my license to my lapel, un-obscured and plainly visible for the convenience of the cop? Freedom is the ability to walk down the street unhampered, unquestioned. To be innocent by default. Freedom is the right to be unworried outside, to be able to conduct your own business in your own time. Freedom is not having to worry that random acts of violence will be committed against you on the street, by agents of the government or otherwise.
Real police officers are proud to wear their uniforms. They display their badges openly so that all Americans can identify them and know they are being protected. ICE agents hide themselves. Whatever pride they have in their work is made by persecuting enemies created in their own minds. Hitler’s brown shirts were much the same. A thug is a thug.
“You got to be crazy, you gotta have a real need
Gotta sleep on your toes and when you’re on the street
Got to be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
Then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight
You got to strike when the moment is right without thinking” – Pink Floyd, “Dogs”