ICE Apprehension of US Citizens Derided as 'Kavanaugh Stops'
Leonardo Garcia Venegas was working at a construction site in Alabama in May when immigration agents tackled him to the ground as he said, “I’m a citizen.”
Lawyers for Garcia Venegas said he was handcuffed and held for over an hour after agents dismissed the driver’s license in his pocket issued only to legal residents as a fake. A few weeks later, he was detained again for about 30 minutes at another construction site 20 miles away.
There’s a shorthand circulating on the left for this kind of encounter: “Kavanaugh Stops.” It’s a reference to conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote in a case last month that encounters with immigration agents for legal residents are “typically brief” and affected individuals “promptly go free.”
Kavanaugh’s assessment is at odds with Garcia Venegas’ experience, as documented in his lawsuit against the US government. He’s among numerous lawful residents allegedly caught up in enforcement sweeps, according to media accounts and court filings, and administration critics see the moniker as a way to highlight the fallout from policies the Supreme Court allowed to continue.
“The Supreme Court effectively rubber stamped the executive branch’s practice of engaging in racial profiling, without any meaningful consideration of the harms that result from wrongful stops, arrests, detentions, and deportations,” said Elora Mukherjee, the director of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.
“The term ‘Kavanaugh stops,’” she said, “offers a useful colloquial shorthand for the devastating and predictable harms that individuals and communities are facing.”
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/ice-apprehension-of-us-citizens-derided-as-kavanaugh-stops
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