The Supreme Court Has Basically Allowed Racial Profiling, and Now ICE Is Having a Field Day

2 min readAt my age, I didn't know there were any ethnic slurs with which I’d be unfamiliar. The creativity of bigotry knows no limit, I guess. From The New York Times:Now, body-camera footage, text messages, and other documents emerging from lawsuits around the country reveal how race and ethnicity have figured in the dragnets that unfolded in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and other U.S. cities. In several instances documented in court filings, federal agents referred to targets as “tonks”—a derogatory term typically used to refer to Mexican immigrants and intended to echo the sound of agents’ flashlights striking their heads. Migrants suspected of being undocumented were described as “wet,” shorthand for the slur wetback. And an agent who led an operation in Southern California later described the appearance of individuals he considered suspicious: “older Hispanic males.”Yet even as evidence of racial profiling has come to light, what seemed like settled law—that law enforcement officers could not question or detain someone solely based on their race or ethnicity—has turned out to be far more of an open question when it comes to immigration enforcement.Gee, I wonder why that is.Last year, the Supreme Court took a step toward upending a half-century of jurisprudence when Justice Brett Kavanaugh gave a provisional blessing to such racial profiling by agents seeking out undocumented immigrants. The government has maintained that their operations are constitutional. The lawsuit that led to the court’s temporary decision and other similar suits are still working their way through lower courts, and it could be months before they are resolved and years before the Supreme Court has a chance to say more.There we go.In one sworn declaration, a driver in a traffic stop in San Bernardino, California, said an officer told him he had been pulled over “because he looked like a ‘paisa,’” a slang term for a Mexican compatriot or newly arrived immigrant.Another new slur! You learn something every day.