Appeal courts appear to line up with federal judges who are preventing immigrants from doing “roving patrols” to steal people from on the streets of Southern California, and perhaps setting up another Supreme Court showdown.
The discussion of the case took place Monday before a three-person judge panel in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where judges sometimes vehemently question Trump administration lawyers about the constitutionality of seemingly indiscriminate sweeps by US immigration and customs enforcement agents.
Seattle Judge Ronald M. Gould said:
Earlier this month, a lower court judge issued a temporary restraining order that halted offensive operations by masked federal agents, stating it was violating the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The Department of Justice was called the block ordered by US District Judge Mame Eusi Mensa Frimon in the federal authorities’ “wholesale judicial stolen.”
“It’s very serious to say that multiple federal agencies have policies that violate the Constitution,” Associate Assistant Atty. General Yakov M. Ross discussed on Monday. “We don’t think it happened, and we don’t think it’s fair to have been hit by this drastic injunction with an unfair and incomplete record.”
That debate appeared to wobble in front of the Ninth Circuit Panel. Judge Jennifer Son, Portland, Oregon, and Marsha S. Belzon of San Francisco, along with Gould, heard about the incident.
“If you actually find out that the district court is doing and you’re not doing what you ordered from what you do, it shouldn’t be harmful,” Song said.
By Frimon’s order, agents will cease to use race, ethnicity, language, accent, location, or employment as an excuse for immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. The judge found that, without other evidence, they failed to meet the Fourth Amendment, either on their criteria alone or in combination, due to reasonable doubt.
“They seem to randomly choose the positions people are looking for work and car washes because they are car washes,” Berzon says. “Is it your claim that what’s going on is okay, or is it your claim that it’s not happening?”
Ross largely circumvented the question, repeating it through a 90-minute hearing that the government didn’t have enough time to gather evidence of it following the constitution, and that the court had no power to restrict it during that time.
Discussion where the scope of the relief court rests on a pair of duel Golden State cases that can be provided under the Fourth Amendment.
“This is a breakwater for privacy protection for police,” said Professor Orin S. Kerr of Stanford Law School, whose work on the fourth amendment injunction was cited at the Department of Justice briefing. “What the government can do depends on the specific details, which makes it difficult for the courts to say there are things you can’t do.”
In the case of policing, every exception to the rule has its own exception, experts said.
The Justice Department has wagered its claims primarily on the City of Los Angeles vs. City of Lions, a Landmark 1983 Supreme Court decision on illegal chokeholds by the Los Angeles Police Department. In that case, the court opposed the comprehensive ban on lawsuits and found that the black driver who sued was unlikely to suffocate himself to police again.
“The plaintiff is standing here,” the Justice Department wrote.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union and its partners point to other precedents, including the San Diego biker case Easyriders Freedom Fight vs. Hannigan. The ruling, decided in the 1996 Ninth Circuit, provides residents of the American West with 4th Amendment protection over Texas, New York or Illinois.
In the case of Easyriders, 14 members of the Southland Motorcycle Club successfully blocked them from citing almost every biker who suspected the California Highway Patrol was wearing the wrong kind of helmet.
“The court said these motorcyclists were traveling in the state, so unless they allow this injunction to be made statewide, they cannot afford to buy the plaintiff’s full relief,” said Professor Jeffrey Kelman, who directs Loyola Law School’s 9th Circuit Appeals Clinic.
“In this situation, there is law enforcement throughout the large area and the plaintiffs themselves are moving through this wide area, so they inevitably need that broad injunction,” Kelman said.
Frimpong cited EasyRiders among other precedent cases in her ruling, saying she provided clear logic to the district-wide injunction. Alternatives – agents cleaning car washes and home depot parking stop to ask each person who grabs if they are plaintiffs in the lawsuit – “It’s going to be a fantasy,” she wrote.
Irwin Kemerinski, another expert on the dean of the Berkeley School of Law, California, said the Los Angeles Police Department Chalkhold case set the standard that litigants “have to show that it’s likely to happen to you in the future.”
However, he added: “The 9th Circuit says there’s a way for you to show it.”
Tests include asking whether contested enforcement is confined to small geographical areas, applies to a small group of people, or whether it is part of the policy.
“After the injunction here, the Secretary of Homeland Security said, ‘We’re trying to continue doing what we’re doing,'” Bellzon said. “Isn’t that a policy?”
Ross denied that there is an official policy promoting sweep.
“plaintiff [argue] Ross declared, “Yes, reasonable doubt is necessary beyond an agreement encounter.”
But Mohammad Tajsar of the ACLU in Southern California, argued that federal policy was clear, part of a coalition of civil rights groups and challenging cases between three immigrants and two U.S. citizens, asserted by a chaotic arrest.
“They said, ‘If it’s done with handcuffs, I’ll go outside,'” he told the panel. “There was a wink and nod to the agent on the ground who said, “Don’t be so strict about the law, send him out and everyone is there.” ”
He said it puts clients in his organization in a similar situation to bikers.
“The government has not offered an alternative to what an injunction looks like that. “It is fatal at any attempt they make to get out of this injunction.”
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics are “highly likely to seduce as many people as they have no status,” he said.
The Justice Department said the ICE is already in compliance with the Fourth Amendment and that the injunction puts a “cool effect” on legitimate arrests.
“If the ice is cold in violation of the constitution, it’s where they are supposed to be cooled,” Kemelinsky said.
A verdict is expected soon this week. Ross shows that if the appeal panel does not grant a stay, the administration is likely to appeal.
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