On Sept. 8, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned order (1) that allows ICE agents to stop or briefly detain people on the street for the way they look, speaking Spanish, speaking English with an accent, or their job.
Although ICE agents can’t stop someone just for their perceived race or ethnicity, they can briefly detain people for their race in combination with any of these other factors serving as reasonable suspicion of being in the country illegally. The unsigned order means that it is now legal for ICE agents to racially profile (2).
As stated in The Immigration and Nationality Act, immigration officers may “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States.”
The case Vazquez Perdomo v. Noem originated in Los Angeles, where immigration detainments and ICE patrols are high. It’s estimated that 2 million undocumented immigrants live in LA, out of a total population of 20 million. The plaintiffs (3) Pedro Vazquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto, and Isaac Villegas Molina were arrested at a bus stop on their way to work on June 18, 2025.
According to the plaintiffs, “… this operation had two key features, both of which were unconstitutional: ‘roving patrols’ indiscriminately rounding up numerous individuals without reasonable suspicion and, having done so, denying these individuals access to lawyers who could help them navigate the legal process they found themselves in.”
The 14th amendment states that no state should “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The plaintiffs claim states can’t take away someone’s liberties (4) without due process—the idea that the government must follow a preplanned set of rules and have a strong reason before taking away someone’s rights.
What does this mean for students at Enloe? Mr. West, a Spanish teacher at Enloe who teaches Spanish as a second language and heritage courses for students who speak Spanish at home, offers insight on the changes he has seen in his classrooms.
When asked how the threat of ICE crackdowns could impact the learning environment at Enloe, Mr. West said, “If something like that is on your mind, then school is not.”
Some students have taken drastic actions, “I have had students just stop coming over the last two years,” West added. “I’ve had students stop coming because either a family member lost a job and they had to move to another place in order to consolidate incomes, or a family member disappeared.”
Mr. West emphasizes that immigration crackdowns are not just happening in big, faraway cities like LA and New York. They’re happening all over America, and they affect our peers, teachers, friends, and family, “I have had one student [who was] deported.”
- Unsigned order: An unsigned opinion, written for the court as a whole by an unidentified justice, is called a per curiam opinion. (In Latin, “per curiam” means “by the court.”) Written dissents from per curiam opinions are signed. (Glossary of supreme court terms scotusblog.com)
- Racial Profiling: refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. (Racial profiling: definition ACLU.org)
- Secondary definition: use of race or ethnicity as a criterion in conducting stops, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures. (guidance regarding the use of race by federal law enforcement agencies dhs.gov)
- Plaintiff: a person who brings a legal action (merriam webster)
- Liberties: the quality or state of being free (merriam webster)
- Undocumented immigrants: individuals who have either illegally entered the United States without inspection, or legally entered the United States with valid nonimmigrant visas but those visas have expired. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/undocumented_immigrant)
Works Cited
United States District Court Central District of California. Pedro Vazquez Perdomo v. Kristi Noem, 8 September 2025, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351.87.0.pdf
Savage, Charlie. “The Supreme Court Decision on ICE and Racial Profiling, Explained.” The New York Times, 8 Sept. 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/us/politics/supreme-court-immigration-racial-profiling.html.
“NOEM v. VASQUEZ PERDOMO.” LII / Legal Information Institute, 2025, www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/25A169.
