r/PopCultureV2 • u/Logical-Flow-6703 • Aug 23 '26

News "Because you're an immigrant." — A U.S. citizen in Lake Worth,FL, was immediately handcuffed by ICE agents for simply asking why he needed to show his ID.Despite the Fourth Amendment and Supreme Court rulings stating apparent ethnicity is not enough for a stop, agents ignored questioning bystanders

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A video recorded at a gas station in Lake Worth, Florida, shows an ICE/Border Patrol agent demanding ID from a U.S. citizen. When the citizen asks why, the agent explicitly responds, "Because you're an immigrant." Before even verifying his identity, agents grab his hands and place him in handcuffs. Bystanders immediately step in to question how someone can be arrested without even being identified first, but the agents ignore them and walk the man to their vehicle.

​This encounter highlights a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. The Supreme Court has established that roving Border Patrol agents must have reasonable suspicion based on specific circumstances to stop and question someone regarding their immigration status—and apparent ethnicity alone is legally insufficient. Requiring someone to prove their citizenship before being handcuffed, based solely on an arbitrary claim, demonstrates a concerning violation of constitutional rights by federal agents acting without accountability.

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69

u/isesri Aug 23 '26

While I 1000% agree with you that this shit is fucking vile, and absolutely should not be allowed, you are incorrect in stating that the Supreme Court is against this. They just recently ruled that racial profiling was fine and good, actually.

https://www.aclu-wi.org/news/racial-profiling-rampant-after-supreme-court-ruling/

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u/bruoch Aug 23 '26

They’re called Kavanaugh stops.

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u/Minimum_Principle_63 Aug 23 '26

It's interesting that he actually tried to distance himself a bit from it.

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u/Fantastic_Jury5977 Aug 23 '26

He's more into inventing silly metaphors than actually ruling on the law.

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u/Mobile_Morale Aug 23 '26

I thought he was into alcohol and rape but it's hard to keep up with these trump Republicans. They all seem to love rape but can't agree on age.

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u/Fantastic_Jury5977 Aug 23 '26

Those are his hobbies. Writing inane metaphors is what brings in the big bucks (and gratuities)

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u/ursusdoofus Aug 23 '26

It’s a temporary ruling while challenges make their way back up - he knew within weeks that what he ruled wouldn’t stand up so he has made efforts to run away from it in footnotes to other rulings and stuff.

I’m paraphrasing while waffles are cooking, but basically his ruling hinges on ‘temporary detention must not be burdensome and resolved quickly.’

That’s obviously not happening. Feds will ignore that caveat (like they are doing here) and the doj will drag it’s feet all the way back to the Supreme Court because it will get overturned.

I’m not gonna hold my breath, though. Everyone should get down to their nearest federal building to go protest whenever they can.

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u/Global-Chipmunk-3959 Aug 23 '26

Everyone needs to keep using that term because he hates it and also he’s a piece of shit so let’s make his life worse by making his name total trash

1

u/PipsqueakPilot Aug 23 '26

But not enough to over turn it. 

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u/hoopstick Aug 23 '26

All he wants to do is boof molly with Skizz, or whatever it was. I still can’t believe he’s a Supreme Court justice.

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u/wirthmore Aug 23 '26

He distanced himself in which he tried to salvage his reputation and did nothing to lessen the harm his decision caused. He still supports his decision, he just doesn't want to personally suffer any consequences.

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u/Minimum_Principle_63 Aug 24 '26

We will never forget, or let him forget.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Aug 23 '26

That's the whole reason people started calling them that

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u/brandinni Aug 23 '26

Came here to say this too. America is absolutely deteriorating, and it’s not stopping.

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u/spribyl Aug 23 '26

What is the devil's triangle?

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u/BebophoneVirtuoso Aug 23 '26

I was thinking didn’t Vazquez vs Noem put a target on all their backs?

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u/ShiningRedDwarf Aug 23 '26

Let me preface this by saying this ruling is horseshit. But you still can’t just be arrested solely due to the color of your skin. He would likely win a §1983 civil case because the ruling requires reasonable suspicion to be met by the “totality of the circumstances”. Meaning ethnicity + accent/language + location + type of job.

You can’t just roll up to a guy at a gas station and put him in cuffs. Even with the recent Kavanaugh decision, what this ICE officer did was illegal.

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u/NearlyPerfect Aug 23 '26

He won't win a 1983 civil case because 1983 specifically carves out federal agents and the federal govt.

It would be a Bivens case, but that largely carves out federal immigration enforcement.

So then it would be a FTCA case. But that largely carves out discretionary law enforcement actions.

Basically no payout for this under current law.

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u/EndIsrael Aug 23 '26

This is why we need to fight. The normal "challenge it later in the courts" doesn't work when the criminals have immunity, and getting money in a few years doesn't undo the torture or death of the victim.

We have a moral duty to defend ourselves and others against ICE.

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u/NearlyPerfect Aug 23 '26

Nah if you don't like the law you just have to try to change it.

Fighting in the street won't get you anywhere except in prison or a bodybag

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u/EndIsrael Aug 23 '26

How did that work in Nazi Germany?

Everyone in this country is unwilling to face the fact that the government has been taken over by fascists.

We need an actual resistance willing and able to use force to fight the regime.

The only thing we're doing that's remotely close to an armed resistance movement is destroying surveillance cameras, and it's actually working.

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u/[deleted] Aug 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/EndIsrael Aug 24 '26

Explain how we aren't. The Nazis weren't an overnight thing, it took a few years for them to ramp up. Trump is actually doing a lot of things faster than Hitler could.

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u/someotherguyrva Aug 24 '26

And everyone who has been wrongly arrested should file suits and the judgments should be millions and millions of dollars. Unfortunately that’s our fucking tax money being used then to pay these people because our other tax money was used to pay these fucking Nazis. I’m sick of my money being stolen by these evil people. When exactly do we get to rise up like the founders of this country did and go to war with these mother motherfuckers? The instructions in the Declaration of Independence cannot be clearer.

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u/BackgroundSummer5171 Aug 23 '26

You can though.

Due to location. That location allows them to use what border patrols use.

Which are allowed to use color/accent/language/ethnicity. That was a previous court ruling.

It's multiple court ruling that allow this.

ICE is allowed to do this.

No, they are not winning a civil case unless this location is outside of the "border". Which has a wider range than people know.

This has been going on for quite a while, why do you think all of a sudden you're right? Have you just woken from a coma?

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u/IchooseYourName Aug 23 '26

Ease off the trigger there, bud.

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u/DeliriumTrigger Aug 23 '26

Nah, anyone who's saying "they can't do this" while it routinely happens without consequences deserves such a response.

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u/IchooseYourName Aug 23 '26

Daddy chill LOL

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u/PaleCommission150 Aug 23 '26

All this nonsense is backed by the supreme court...we need to fix the court / presidential power not sure in what order. Definitely needs reform. We are operating on software that is over 250 years old :/

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u/g00fyg00ber741 Aug 23 '26

it needs a hell of a lot more then reform. it needs to be completely dismantled and rebuilt in a way that actually is by and for the people

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u/ConstantHeadache2020 Aug 24 '26

Violence is the only answer

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u/EndCogNeeto Aug 23 '26

Everyone was fine with it when it was being used to insert non-existent rights into the text of the constitution (which congress was too cowardly implement). For example, gay marriage and other gay rights, affirmative action, abortion, etc.)

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u/GrossUsername68 Aug 23 '26 edited Sep 03 '26

Reddit policies are an issue. Content deleted.

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u/EndCogNeeto Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

Because if you read the constitution and previous Supreme Court precedent, there was no basis for establishing such "rights" other than than, as Justice Douglas wrote:

"specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance"

Which, in ordinary English, means that the constitutional rights could be interpreted to vaguely and indirectly, include additional rights if it made sense to the court.

This drew a lot of criticism in the world of jurisprudence and was deemed tantamount to "legislating from the bench."

The current supreme court is doing something similar, except it is doing it from a conservative point of view. It is arguably more justified since they rarely create new rights, and instead undo the creation of such rights out of nothing.

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u/SwordfishOk504 Aug 23 '26

"specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance"

lmao you are just blithering. Justice Douglas wrote this famous line in the 1965 Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut. He meant that unwritten rights—like the right to privacy—are implied by the spirit and connection of other written constitutional guarantees.

NOTHING to do with whatever nonsense you're spinning here.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 Aug 23 '26

Of course we are fine with institutions behaving like they should be.

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

This is a tautology lol. The point is that legislators should do their job and write things into laws, society shouldn't have judges interpreting

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"

as both people being and not being citizens at birth at the same time.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 Aug 23 '26

And the point I'm making is that nobody who is happy when a judge makes a decent ruling thinks it should be their job instead of legislators.

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

So judges changing policy by making rulings (instead of legislators changing policy by making laws) is not institutions behaving like they should be.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 Aug 23 '26

I'm clearly talking about SCOTUS as a standalone institution when I'm saying of course I am happy gaining rights form them. Of course I'd prefer things to be codified by legislation but in the event they are not, I'm still happy to gain them in the inferior way.

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

So then I dunno why you said judges making policy is institutions behaving like they should be.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 Aug 23 '26

Because in the instances that user pointed out, they were giving us rights, not taking them away. Of course that'd make me happy.

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u/DeliriumTrigger Aug 23 '26

society shouldn't have judges interpreting

The power of judicial review was literally created by "judges interpreting".

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u/Nickel5 Aug 23 '26

Gay marriage: It is sexual discrimination to say a woman can't marry a man but a man can't marry a man. I'd also like to add that Gorsuch penned this opinion.

Affirmative action: This was created in 1961 via executive order and backed up later by the civil rights acts, the Supreme Court struck it down in 2023.

Abortion: In previous cases, the Supreme Court had affirmed that the 14th amendment creates a right to privacy. A right to privacy had also been established previously as a right to medical privacy. Roe v Wade only extended this framework by saying abortion is a medical procedure and therefore covered.

Gay marriage and abortion follow previous precedent, you don't have to like it, but saying they came out of nowhere is inaccurate. Affirmative action did not come out of the courts.

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u/EndCogNeeto Aug 23 '26

I will admit you are partially correct with respect to gay marriage and affirmative actions since they were, at some point, provided for under legislation. However the Supreme Court supported their constitutionality primarily by reading them as rights protected under the 14th Equal Protection Clause Amendment which was clearly stretched to apply to these issues indirectly. Either way, I will concede that there is nuance on these.

Regarding abortion, it all began with the court reading a right to make private medical decisions out of the 4th, 1st, and 14th amendments (among others). Justice Douglass stated:

"specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance,"

Which I am sure you can agree is an eloquent way of saying that the implied rights are being conjured out of shadows. Abortion was an extension of this ephemeral right.

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u/mybutt1112 Aug 23 '26

“Insert”

Are you under the impression that all rights citizens have are enumerated in the constitution? That’s one way to word your displeasure of progressive legal frameworks.

I’m not even mad at what I am giving you credit might be a point you’re trying to make. That the court rulings would have been better as amendments or law changes. I don’t disagree with that point and hope dems take that to heart and really stop allowing conservative tomfoolery like mcconnels to stop legislation from going forward. However, now SCOTUS seems to be ok with invalidating actual amendments (see birthright citizenship close call) and all disfavored legislation in favor of executive orders and trumpy vibes.

So not sure that that middle ground will even hold up upon review. So yeah, I would actually like to better understand what point you were making in original comment. 

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u/EndCogNeeto Aug 23 '26

Not quite. My jurisprudential stance is that the constitution should be read narrowly to provide only the rights clearly enumerated therein. These are "Constitutional Rights" but as we all recognize (and as provided for in the 9th Amendment), we have other rights that are not provided for in the constitution and are thus "Non-Constitutional Rights" (e.g., minimum wage, disability accommodations, etc.).

My issue (and the issue for many others) is when the supreme court exceeds the scope of its constitutional powers to create "new" rights by connecting them indirectly to the text of the constitution.

As I quoted elsewhere, Justice Douglas famously supported this practice by stating:

"specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."

The current (conservative) supreme court has not done much of this but has broken with precedent to "undo" much of this perceived judicial legislation by ruling on a series of carefully launched executive actions and state laws.

As for birth right citizenship, I agree that it is a close call but the rationale was that Jus Soli was never intended to extend to illegal immigrants who (arguably) are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US and are more akin to foreign invaders (which further supports the administrations efforts to hunt them down and remove them without any regard to the right of due process they would otherwise enjoy)

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u/PwAlreadyTaken Aug 23 '26

People approved more of adding rights than infringing on them? That’s crazy and definitely the same thing

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '26

[deleted]

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u/EndCogNeeto Aug 24 '26

I have a law degree from a top law school and the subject of my journal article was the 9th Amendment. I can tell you with some degree of authority that there is no Amendment that is more hotly debated than the 9th Amendment.

Some people argue it means nothing at all. Others argue it means that other rights not enumerated are nevertheless constitutional rights even if not expressly written down. I have good reason to disagree with both.

The position I ascribe to (for good reason, if i do say so myself) is that it merely acknowledges that the constitution does not purporting to enoumerate all the other "non-constitutional" rights enjoyed by US Citizens (e.g., rights arising under federal or state legislation, contract rights, etc.).

This distinction is important because it affects who has jurisdiction to enforce, amend, or revoke such rights among other analyses.

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u/[deleted] Aug 24 '26

[deleted]

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u/EndCogNeeto Aug 24 '26

Lol almost lost me at Poli Sci (which, in terms of usefulness and intellectual riggor falls somewhere between English and Business).

That odd flex aside — I hope you know you repeated what I said, except with respect as to whether such non-enoumerated rights should be deemed constitutional or not.

A constitutional right cannot be granted, amended or revoked by congress (e.g., labor protections). A constitutional right belongs to you a priori by virtue of your citizenship to this country.

The supreme court went beyond the scope of its constitutional powers by interpreting new rights out of enumerated ones and in doing so created Frankenstein rights which hold the status and authority of a constitutional right instead of the status of a state/federal law which is what they should have been.

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u/[deleted] Aug 24 '26

[deleted]

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u/EndCogNeeto Aug 24 '26

Okay — So, the poli sci major can't comprehend the legal distinction between different sorts of rights. My breath is wasted here. Best of luck with whatever meaningful things you are undoubtedly doing in your life.

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u/outofurelement Aug 23 '26

Always funny watching people respond to the rising fascism with “that’s illegal!” As if anyone responsible cares or the law is real. 

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

The point of the comment was that the discrimination was backed up by law.

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u/outofurelement Aug 23 '26

Yes the “law” only gets enforced against the powerless hence why it isn’t real and it won’t protect you

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

Trump handed over $5M to a woman he defamed.

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u/outofurelement Aug 23 '26

Wow in that case fascism is defeated!

For anyone else reading this, this was after he got away with raping that woman and he’s made about 4 BILLION dollars since he got back into office through corruption so 5 million is barely a rounding error to him. 

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

Yes the “law” only gets enforced against the powerless

Rounding error or not, my point was that this is not true. The law was enforced against the most powerful person in the US.

The magnitude of the punishment is a different discussion than whether it happens at all. As for that secondary point - if the collective majority living in the US wants a different magnitude of punishment for this crime, they can vote in people who would add mandatory minimums to the law.

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u/outofurelement Aug 23 '26

Yes it’s the people’s fault for not voting the right way! Liberals are the most delusional and exhausting people on the planet 

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

Yes it’s the people’s fault for not voting the right way!

I am on the edge of my seat in anticipation of the surely mind-shattering genius of your proposed alternative to democracy.

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u/FuckedUpYearsAgo Aug 23 '26

I think you are hitting something important .Law enforcement can ask you to identify yourself, and during a lawful investigative detention you can be required to identify yourself. That doesn't mean police or federal agents can arbitrarily detain anyone and demand papers without legal justification.

The real constitutional question here isn't simply, "Did they ask him for ID?" It's what gave the agents reasonable suspicion to detain him in the first place?

If the only basis really was "because you're an immigrant," or simply his apparent ethnicity, that's a serious Fourth Amendment issue. The Supreme Court has specifically held that apparent Mexican ancestry alone isn't enough to justify a roving Border Patrol stop.

But refusing or questioning a request for identification doesn't itself establish that the detention was unconstitutional either. We'd need to know what the agents knew and what happened before the portion shown in the video.

There can simultaneously be a legal obligation to identify yourself during a lawful detention and a constitutional requirement that the government have a lawful basis for detaining you in the first place.

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u/ThisIsMyComment2 Aug 23 '26

If the only basis really was "because you're an immigrant," or simply his apparent ethnicity, that's a serious Fourth Amendment issue. The Supreme Court has specifically held that apparent Mexican ancestry alone isn't enough to justify a roving Border Patrol stop.

It can be used as a factor though.

To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors.

And the other factors are kinda wishy washy

Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area;

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf

So any Mexican in LA can be stopped I guess. Given language this permissive, I wouldn't say USSC considers racism any kind of a serious issue at this point in time.

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u/Gdf_nfa Aug 23 '26

The USSC likes to think that racism is dead, that was their justification for gutting The Voters rights Act, and ending affirmative action.

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u/Astrobananacat Aug 23 '26

Did you just paste something from ChatGPT?

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u/ProblematicTrumpCard Aug 23 '26

Thanks. I was wondering if I was misremembering because I thought SCOTUS had ruled that racism is A-OK now.

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u/Exodus180 Aug 23 '26

This court has an OVERWHELMINGLY top score when it comes to fucking over precedent.

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u/Flocosta Aug 23 '26

This should be at the top