Hispanic, headed to LA? Best carry your ‘papers’

Consider this to be a public service notice as opposed to a news story.

Prior to this year, if this were being written, it would be satire, albeit not funny. Today, it’s fact, not fiction.

“What is?”

The fact that if you look Hispanic and go to the Los Angeles area today, tomorrow, next week, whenever, and you speak Spanish in public, or even English with a heavy accent, then ICE agents can stop you, detain you, and question you to see if you are in this country legally.

If you can’t immediately provide proof that you are in this country legally, or satisfactorily answer questions posed to you or your family members by a federal ICE agent, then they can cart you off to some undisclosed location where your family may, or may not, be able to locate either you or your grown kids.

“Come on, that’s not right.”

It may not be right, but it’s the truth.

“Reasonable suspicion” that someone has committed a crime (e.g. being in the U.S. illegally) has now, at least temporarily, been redefined.

Supreme Court Ruling

From a Reuters report filed this Monday, Sept. 8:

“The U.S. Supreme Court again backed President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration approach on Monday, letting agents proceed with Southern California raids targeting people for deportation based on their race or language in a ruling its liberal justices said makes Latinos “fair game to be seized at any time.”

More from the Reuters story that carried this headline – U.S. Supreme Court backs Trump on aggressive immigration raids:

“The court granted a U.S. Justice Department request to put on hold a judge’s order that had barred (ICE) agents from stopping or detaining people without ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they are in the country illegally, by relying on race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent, among other factors.”

Since approximately 90 percent of the RGV is comprised of Hispanics/Latinos, this news would seem important for those considering travel to Southern California. Hence, this public service notice.

For bilingual Valley residents, “Yo tengo hambre” just took on a whole new meaning when considering what language to speak when disembarking from the plane at LAX. Best to just say, “I’m hungry,” rather than draw any attention from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents who may be lurking nearby chomping down on a donut.

Never before in American history has anyone had to carry papers on or about their person to show proof of legitimacy, if you will.

Say hello to the New America.

From a story published Monday by the online magazine “Salon:”

“Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the Supreme Court’s decision to allow widescale ICE raids and immigration stops in Los Angeles to continue on Monday. In a scathing dissent, she said the court was giving the Department of Homeland Security a green light to ‘seize anyone who looks Latino.’”

Don’t forget the speaking- Spanish part or looking like a day laborer. That’s also part of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Sotomayor, age 71, the court’s first Hispanic justice and third female to serve on this land’s highest court, a Yale Law School grad, born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, was appointed to the court in 2009 by former President Obama.

Prior to that, former President George H. W. Bush nominated her to the U.S District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1991.

Now, Sotomayor represents only one of three so-called liberal justices on SCOTUS.

Monday’s vote to give ICE basically carte blanche in LA when it comes to stopping people based on the way they look, talk, wasn’t made public, but is presumed to have followed the 6-3 conservative-liberal court line-up, with the six backing the president in most high-stakes votes.

Sotomayor called the latest Supreme Court vote “unconscionable” and said it made Hispanics throughout the region fair game.

In her dissenting opinion, she wrote:

“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 ‘Conservative’ Counter

Not so, according to her whitebread fellow justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote that one’s ethnicity was “a relevant factor” for ICE agents to consider. He also added that “many undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area do not speak much English, and work low-wage, manual labor jobs.”

Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, also wrote that:

“Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States.” (Source: salon.com.)

Meaning, if one now looks a certain way, speaks Spanish, and works a low-end job, they are fair game for ICE agents to detain, question, and if one can’t convince the agent that they do have a legal right to be in the U.S., specifically the LA area for now, they can be detained and placed in a facility where they may remain out of sight for an indeterminate amount of time.

Monday’s ruling by SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) lifts an injunction on “roving” ICE agents looking for undocumented immigrants – “There’s one, get ‘em.”

That lower court ruling signed by a federal judge in LA July 11 barred federal agents from detaining people based on the way they looked (darker skin color), speaking Spanish, or even English with an accent, employment, and location of employment.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling Monday, however, ICE has once again been given the green light to patrol the streets of LA and its MSA (metropolitan statistical area) looking for just the right people to question.

Bottom line:

If you or a loved one are planning a trip to LA any time soon, best be prepared to answer questions if stopped by a federal agent, based solely on the way you may look and/or speak.

Also, best advize your primo in LA, who may or may not know of this latest court decision, to no longer hang out at the Home Depot looking for work, which has become a magnet for ICE agents.

Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, a U.S. citizen and plaintiff in a lawsuit against Homeland Security/ ICE, who was stopped by ICE agents this summer, criticized Monday’s SCOTUS decision, calling it “racism with a badge.”

Last bit of news — “On June 6, 2025, federal agents in Southern California began a sweeping series of raids — arresting people at homes, workplaces, and even schools. In the first month of these attacks on immigrant communities, at least 2,800 arrests were made. Instead of following the law, ICE and CBP began disappearing community members through (illegal) stops, racial profiling, and detention without access to counsel.” (Source: Immigrant Defenders Law Center.)

This is no joke and is intended as a legitimate public service.

If you and/or a family member live in the RGV and are traveling to the Los Angeles area any time soon, we would like to see you safely return home. Unscathed.