Monday · September 8, 2025

SCOTUS shadow-docket stay in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo permits ICE to use ethnicity, Spanish fluency, location, and occupation as reasonable-suspicion factors

confirmed Importance 9/10 ~2 min read 3 sources

Opening paragraph

On September 8, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo (No. 25A169) granted an emergency stay of a Central District of California preliminary injunction that had prohibited ICE from relying on apparent race or ethnicity, Spanish fluency or accented English, presence at specific locations (bus stops, car washes, day-labor sites), and type of work as the sole bases for Fourth Amendment “reasonable suspicion” during Operation At Large in Los Angeles. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence articulating the factors-in-combination framework; Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented.

What Happened / Key Facts

  • Docket: No. 25A169, application for stay directed to the Ninth Circuit
  • Vote: 6-3 with Kavanaugh concurrence; Sotomayor/Kagan/Jackson dissent. Majority unsigned
  • Underlying enforcement operation: “Operation At Large” launched by DHS in Los Angeles in June 2025; armed and masked ICE agents raided bus stops, car washes, farms, and day-labor sites
  • Lower court finding: Judge Maame E. Frimpong (C.D. Cal.) had held that ICE may not rely solely on apparent race/ethnicity, Spanish/accented-English speech, presence at targeted locations, or type of work to form reasonable suspicion
  • Kavanaugh concurrence: apparent ethnicity alone cannot form reasonable suspicion, but may be “a relevant factor” among others including location and English fluency — creating a combination-of-factors standard that critics characterize as license for racial profiling in dense immigrant-population areas

Why This Event Matters

The Perdomo stay is the shadow-docket order that cleared the constitutional question on ICE’s “factors-in-combination” profiling standard, enabling the escalation of Operation At Large and analogous operations in Chicago (Operation Midway Blitz, launched the same day — see 2025-09-08–operation-midway-blitz-launch-bovino-chicago) and Charlotte. The unsigned-majority + Kavanaugh-concurrence structure left the Fourth Amendment question unresolved at the merits level while clearing the practical field for aggressive immigration-enforcement raids in Latino-majority neighborhoods.

Sources & Citations

[1] 25A169 Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo (09/08/2025) — Supreme Court of the United States · Sep 8, 2025 Tier 1
[2] Noem v. Perdomo — case page — SCOTUSblog · 2025-09 Tier 1
[3] Whose Common Sense? Some Reflections on Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo — Stanford Law School Legal Aggregate · Sep 24, 2025 Tier 2
Tiers Tier 1 court records & gov docs · Tier 2 established outlets · Tier 3 regional & specialty press · Tier 4 opinion or single-source. Methodology →
Cite this entry
The Cascade Ledger. “SCOTUS shadow-docket stay in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo permits ICE to use ethnicity, Spanish fluency, location, and occupation as reasonable-suspicion factors.” The Capture Cascade Timeline, September 8, 2025. https://capturecascade.org/event/2025-09-08--scotus-stays-noem-v-perdomo-la-immigration-enforcement/