The U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 8 temporarily put on hold a lower court order restricting immigration stops in Southern California.

Three justices dissented from the new order.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) started its operations in the Los Angeles area on June 6. Local and state officials have strongly criticized the effort, saying the federal government is overstepping its legal authority. Several illegal immigrant advocacy groups are suing the Trump administration over the enforcement program.

The new high court order pauses a temporary restraining order that Judge Maame Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued on July 11 that limits the factors that law enforcement officials may use when making immigration-related stops and arrests.

Specifically, Frimpong barred the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from stopping or arresting individuals based exclusively on factors such as the language the person speaks or where the person works.

The federal government’s use of “roving patrols” that are “indiscriminately rounding up numerous individuals without reasonable suspicion” is unconstitutional, the judge said in her order. The DHS may not carry out “detentive stops” unless the law enforcement official “has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law.”

When deciding if they have reasonable suspicion to make a detentive stop, DHS agents “may not rely solely” on “apparent race or ethnicity,” “speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent,” “presence at a particular location (e.g. bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.),” or “the type of work one does,” according to Frimpong.

In the emergency application in Noem v. Perdomo, which was filed on Aug. 7, the Supreme Court on Sept. 8 granted the stay pending an appeal that is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed an opinion dissenting from the new order. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred in the dissent.

According to Sotomayor, when the government’s immigration enforcement operations began in greater Los Angeles, “teams of armed and masked agents pulled up to” various locations “and began seizing individuals on sight, often before asking a single question.”

Instead of giving the district court time to examine these “troubling allegations in the normal course,” the majority here has decided to take the “once-extraordinary step” of staying its order, she said.

“[This is] yet another grave disuse of our emergency docket,” Sotomayor said. “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”

The high court’s new order is “troubling” because it is “entirely unexplained,” she said.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed an opinion concurring with the stay order.

About 10 percent of people in the Los Angeles region are unlawfully present in the United States, which means that there are about 2 million illegal immigrants living among a population of 20 million, so it is not surprising that U.S. immigration officers are prioritizing enforcement in that area, Kavanaugh said.

“Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U.S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations,” he said.

Kavanaugh said that “apparent ethnicity alone” is not enough to establish the reasonable suspicion needed to justify an immigration stop, but it may be relevant to the issue.

The district court’s order goes too far, threatening contempt sanctions against immigration officers who carry out brief investigative stops if they are later determined to violate the order, he said.

“The prospect of such after-the-fact judicial second-guessing and contempt proceedings will inevitably chill lawful immigration enforcement efforts,” Kavanaugh said.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the Supreme Court ruling “a win for the safety of Californians and the rule of law.”

“DHS law enforcement will not be slowed down and will continue to arrest and remove the murderers, rapists, gang members, and other criminal illegal aliens,” McLaughlin said.

Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which was part of the legal team opposing the application, expressed disappointment over the ruling.

“Today’s Supreme Court order puts people at grave risk, allowing federal agents in Southern California to target individuals because of their race, how they speak, the jobs they work, or just being at a bus stop or the car wash when ICE agents decide to raid a place,” Wang said.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 8, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated Sept. 9, 2025.

Photo: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh