Fifteen U.S. Citizens Detained In Over 96 ‘Kavanaugh Stops,’ As Feds Disregard Legal Documentation

Today marks three months to the day since the Supreme Court not only removed a temporary restraining order in the Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo case that was supposed to pause federal immigration raids based on racial profiling, but also where Justice Kavanaugh laid out the framework for how racial profiling is permissible by federal agents leading to what has now been coined as the “Kavanaugh Stop,” by professor Anil Kalhan.  

Ninety days ago, on September 8th, Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the Supreme Court decision granting the official stay, in a vote of 6-3, as follows:

“To stop an individual for brief questioning about immigration status, the Government must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States . . .

Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances . . . Here, those circumstances include: That there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English . . .

To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors. Id., at 887.”

To summarize, Kavanaugh gave agents the authority to profile people based on the fact that they're living in the Los Angeles area, gathering in certain areas to look for work, working specific jobs like landscaping or construction, and having limited English proficiency. 

Since September 8th, L.A. Taco has documented, through our regular Daily Memo features, at least 96 confirmed Kavanaugh Stops, in which we confirmed that people were either stopped and questioned, or detained and released later in the day, or in a different neighborhood.

Of those 96 stopped, at least 15 were confirmed to be U.S. citizens who were detained for various reasons, including in a roving raid, those acting as community observers, or through targeted arrests. 

What’s not included is more than two dozen incidents in which agents were documented questioning people during vehicular stops, on sidewalks, or at Home Depots, though we don’t have any follow-up data on whether people were detained or let go. 

A few highlights of those incidents include an Army veteran who was detained on September 11th at a Home Depot and later let go a few miles down the road, an 18-year-old who was taken from a car wash in Orange County and later released behind a Regal Cinema a few miles away, and a father who was arrested at the Cypress Park Home Depot on Election night, November 4th, where Border Patrol drove off with his toddler in the back seat of his car. 

There are other incidents not included in these figures that also show a complete disregard for documentation. The Kavanaugh stops have not only led to question-and-release policies, but also to Border Patrol agents adopting an "arrest-first, verify later" approach to their roaming raids. 

On September 13th, for example, at the Bixby Knolls Car Wash in Long Beach, in a chaotic raid that included a woman being dragged into a vehicle after fainting, agents detained five workers who the car wash manager, Ramon Paz, asserted had legal status.

According to Paz, he witnessed federal immigration agents who were presented with documentation throw the papers away, calling them “fake.” In video footage, a man can be heard telling agents that one of the men they detained is a U.S. resident, to which the agent replied, “We’re gonna check, and if he’s good, we’ll bring him back.” 

In another instance, two car wash workers in Westminster were arrested on September 28th. One of them, a woman, went back to work hours later after being released the same day. 

In more recent examples, a construction worker who is a U.S. Citizen was profiled and detained while working at a residential job site on December 3 in Baldwin Park.

Bryan [last name withheld] was arrested for nearly half an hour before being released in a different neighborhood. That same day, at Fontana City Hall, agents also took a recently naturalized U.S. citizen who was responding to a notice regarding an issue with his Social Security. 

The most recent report L.A. TACO received of a U.S. citizen being detained was on December 4th, at the Village Auto Spa in Gardena. 

Including today, there have been a thousand confirmed kidnappings across Southern California since September 8th, when Justice Kavanaugh and the other five Supreme Court Justices green-lit racial profiling. 

Here’s the full list.