The Trump administration’s urgent appeal for a stay has positioned the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether to permit or prohibit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from engaging in “roving” operations in California. These operations involve stopping, questioning, detaining, and potentially arresting individuals based on characteristics such as a Hispanic appearance, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, day labor occupation, and location, all considered as “reasonable suspicion” of illegal presence in the U.S.

The challengers, spearheaded by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, with representation by John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general and former attorney for President Trump, are disputing U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s injunction against the extensive “roving” ICE raids issued on July 11.

In issuing the temporary restraining order, Judge Frimpong noted that the plaintiffs are “likely to prove that the federal government is executing roving patrols without adequate suspicion” — detaining individuals based on traits such as Hispanic appearance, speaking Spanish, and certain employment, either alone or combined, all presumed to align with legal criteria. Furthermore, the government refused “access to attorneys,” all amidst a backdrop of an administrative “quota of 3,000 arrests daily.”

The plaintiffs include California residents Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto, Isaac Villegas Molina, Jorge Hernandez Viramontes, Jason Brian Gavidia, along with immigration organizations such as the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, and the United Farm Workers union.

The temporary restraining order highlighted that Perdomo, Osorto, and Molina faced arrests at a bus stop “while awaiting a job pick-up.” Viramontes, the judge noted, is a U.S. Citizen working at a car wash “frequented three times by immigration agents,” during which he was “questioned and detained by agents.” Gavidia similarly asserted multiple times at a tow yard that he is a U.S. Citizen, yet he was “stopped and questioned.”

Claims like these led Frimpong, an appointee of Joe Biden, to order the Trump administration to “stop” its “insufficient and impermissible” approach to establishing reasonable suspicion required under the Fourth Amendment.

“The factors that defendants appear to rely on for reasonable suspicion seem no more indicative of illegal presence in the country than of legal presence — such as working at low-wage occupations such as car wash attendants and day laborers,” the judge wrote.

After the loss in court, the Trump administration appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court for a stay and lost again.

The three-judge 9th Circuit panel — U.S. Circuit Judges Ronald M. Gould and Marsha S. Berzon, both Bill Clinton appointees, and U.S. Circuit Judge Jennifer Sung, a Biden appointee — penned a per curiam opinion agreeing with the lower court’s analysis that the Trump administration’s stops were unreasonable.

“We agree with the district court that, in the context of the Central District of California, the four enumerated factors at issue—apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent, particular location, and type of work, even when considered together—describe only a broad profile and ‘do not demonstrate reasonable suspicion for any particular stop.'”

The Trump administration has now reiterated its position before the Supreme Court, in a petition submitted to Justice Elena Kagan, requesting a swift halt to Frimpong’s order, through emergency relief in the form of an administrative stay and a stay pending appeal. Sauer insisted that having the government do more to establish reasonable suspicion and “under threat of contempt” is hampering ICE’s ability to enforce the law in a “major epicenter of the immigration crisis.”

“This case involves a district-court injunction that threatens to upend immigration officials’ ability to enforce the immigration laws in the Central District of California by hanging the prospect of contempt over every investigative stop of suspected illegal aliens,” the government’s application for a stay said. “Not only is the Central District the Nation’s most populous district overall; at best estimate, it harbors some 2 million illegal aliens out of its total population of nearly 20 million people, making it by far the largest destination for illegal aliens.”

Sauer said that a person “speaking Spanish or working construction” does not always rise to reasonable suspicion, but sometimes it does.

“But in many situations, such factors—alone or in combination—can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States, above and beyond the 1-in-10 baseline odds in the District,” the filing said. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are entitled to rely on these factors when ramping up enforcement of immigration laws in the District.”

The government cast it as absurd that ICE “cannot detain anyone in the District solely based on those factors—not even after encountering someone who speaks only Spanish and works as a day laborer at a worksite that has been cited 30 times for hiring illegal aliens as day laborers” and suggested they’re walking on eggshells after Frimpong’s “unlawful, blunderbuss” of an injunction and “attempted judicial usurpation of immigration-enforcement functions.”

“This injunction inflicts manifest irreparable harm on the government. The injunction wrongly brands countless lawful stops as unconstitutional, thereby hampering a basic law-enforcement tool, while turning every single stop in the District into a potential contempt trap,” the filing continued. “No agent can confidently enforce the law and engage in routine stops when the district court may later refuse to credit that the stop reflected additional, permissible factors and instead treat virtually any stop as contemptuous misconduct.”

The upshot here is that there’s yet another opportunity for the Supreme Court to intervene on the issue of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, judicial involvement that has gone for and against the president in deportation cases.