Pasadena-Based National Day Labor Organizing Network Condemns Supreme Court

Hours after the Supreme Court struck down a restraining order preventing immigration agents from detaining people based on profiling, Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of Pasadena-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the high court “surrendered its legitimacy to [President] Trump’s strongman agenda.”

“It declared open season on immigrant workers – especially day laborers, who are among the most exposed and vulnerable targets of this regime,” Alvarado said, “Today’s decision endorses and enables Trump’s authoritarian attacks on immigrants.  It is a permission slip for racist assaults, lawless violence, and random terror – handed out to the administration from the highest court in the land.”

Monday, the Supreme Court action stayed (paused) a July 11 temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong that barred immigration stops based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location, or employment; it did not decide the case’s merits. The Ninth Circuit appeal and district-court proceedings continue for a final decision.

The Court did not authorize stops solely on race. In his majority opinion, conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was nominated to the high court by President Donald Trump in 2018, wrote that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but it can be relevant when considered along with other factors.

In the case, plaintiff Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, 54, a day laborer of Pasadena, says he was waiting to be picked up for a construction job at a Metro bus stop in front of a Winchell’s Donuts in Pasadena on June 18 when he and two others were surrounded by masked men with guns, arrested, and taken to a detention center in Los Angeles, where he remained for three weeks.

He has since been granted bond and released.

The men who took Vasquez Perdomo never identified themselves to the plaintiffs, never stated they were immigration officers authorized to make arrests, never stated that they had arrest warrants, and never informed the plaintiffs of the basis for their arrests, the lawsuit alleges.

“When ICE grabbed me, they never showed a warrant or explained why,” he is quoted as saying Monday in response to the ruling. “I was treated like I didn’t matter — locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that’s okay? That’s not justice. That’s racism with a badge. I joined this case because what happened to me is happening to others everyday just for being brown, speaking Spanish, or standing on a corner looking for work. The system failed us today, but I’m not staying silent. We’ll keep fighting because our lives are important.”

Pasadena and several other cities had also joined the lawsuit.

Federal law allows warrantless public arrests by immigration officers when they have “reason to believe” a person is unlawfully in the country and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.

“What happens next is up to all of us,” Alvarado said. “The legal system is failing. But we, the people, must not fail. We call on all people of goodwill to show up for and with immigrant workers. To stand with day laborers, carwash workers, farmworkers, and all other immigrants who are working to keep this country running, even as they are now terrorized by Trump.”