Kavanaugh's Racial Profiling Opinion Looks Sillier By the Day

Kavanaugh said that immigration agents “promptly” release people after determining that they are legal U.S. residents. They don’t.

By Madiba K. Dennie October 2, 2025

... Leo is trying to sue on behalf of people who are experiencing exactly what Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently claimed people don’t experience. On September 8, in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court order which had blocked federal immigration agents in Los Angeles from stopping people just because they look Latino. The three Democratic appointees dissented, and five of the Republicans did not even try to defend the indefensible. But in a solo concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh gave it his best shot, asserting that the government’s interest in enforcing immigration laws outweighs undocumented residents’ interest in evading immigration laws, and for legal residents, immigration stops are harmless.

For many reasons, Kavanaugh’s opinion is not good. Most relevant here, though, is that his argument relies on demonstrably false assumptions about ICE agents’ conduct. Juxtaposed with Leo’s lawsuit, and the unending horrors perpetrated by Trump’s goons in Alabama and elsewhere, Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Vasquez Perdomo becomes more preposterous with each passing day ...

According to Kavanaugh, the government “sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check the immigration status” of people who work or appear to work in construction jobs. According to Leo, armed men in camouflage charged at Latino workers and tackled them to the ground without even asking about their immigration status.

According to Kavanaugh, if the officers learn the person they stopped is a lawful resident, they “promptly let the individual go.” According to Leo, officers ignored the shouts of alarmed workers who offered proof of their citizenship, opting instead to chase and restrain every Latino worker on sight. They cuffed Leo and led him near the back of an unmarked car, where he stood for over an hour in the Alabama heat, insisting he was a citizen and asking the agents to check his Social Security number. Eventually, the agents placed a call, verified the number, and let Leo go.

According to Kavanaugh, Latino residents have “no good basis” to think they’ll be racially profiled, and “certainly no good basis” to think an unlawful stop is “imminent.” According to Leo, he was subjected to another immigration stop three weeks after the first one ...

https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/brett-kavanaugh-racial-profiling-opinion-leonardo-garcia-venegas-lawsuit/

There are fascists, and there are nitwits, and there are alcoholics. And unfortunately, drunk fascist nitwits also exist