In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the infamous Dred Scott decision, ruled (actual quote) that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
On September 8, 2025, in Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, the court went one better: nobody has any rights.
“Driving while Black” was a trope recognizing that police often hassle non-white motorists. But at least there’d have to be some pretext, like a broken tail-light. However, the Vazquez Perdomo ruling allows ICE officers to seize people even absent any such notional offense. Just on vague suspicion, how they look or talk, etc. Mainly racial profiling. (Which is now in fact ICE policy, enunciated by its head Tom Homan.*)
The decision, 6-3, was issued on the Court’s “shadow docket,” meaning there was no written explanation. The Constitution’s Fourth Amendment bars “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Long virtually a dead letter with regard to police taking property. But still, at least till now, taking people was a different matter. Nobody imagined officers could just grab anyone without some reasonable basis. I mean, that’s what arrest warrants are all about.
The Vazquez Perdomo ruling is impossible to square with that constitutional construct, nor, indeed, with the fundamental idea of a free society under rule of law. It rips the heart out of what America stood for.
The regime says they target criminals, “the worst of the worst.” Not so. Mostly ordinary inoffensive people. The real criminality is violating their rights. A recent Albany Times-Union investigation spotlighted ICE crowding great numbers of detainees, virtually incommunicado, for days or even weeks in horrible “temporary” facilities, with scant food, toilets, medical care, or places to sleep. It noted a “nursing mother” hospitalized because, separated from her baby, her breasts became painfully swollen. No mention of the baby’s fate. Another report detailed a massive military-style ICE attack on a big Chicago apartment building, smashing into and trashing residents’ abodes.
And if those people have no rights, you don’t either. Even if you’re white; a citizen or legal resident. Got your papers on you? ICE goons often wave them off. U.S. citizens have been seized, detained, and brutalized like those above. Vazquez Perdomo leaves hardly any legal recourse.
And so-called “conservatives” who say they oppose over-powerful government endorse such a police state? And Trump wants a Nobel peace prize?
This Supreme Court, in coming months, will issue several more big rulings applying the legal doctrine “Trump can do anything.” Well, almost — they’ll reject his absurd order ending birthright citizenship. A no-brainer, just to give themselves a fig-leaf of phony impartiality.
History will judge these judges harshly, as it has Roger Taney of Dred Scott infamy. If there is even such a thing as “history” in the future.
* Credibly accused of taking a $50,000 bribe in a bag of cash; in an FBI sting; but the politicized Justice Department has killed that investigation.