Did courts rule that ICE can use "stop and frisk" policies or use race/accent/location/etc as part of their probable cause to stop people and identify them as non-citizens?
Executive summary
The short answer: courts have not issued a final, reasoned ruling declaring that ICE may broadly treat race, accent, language, workplace or presence in certain locations as lawful probable cause; what has happened is that the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stayed lower-court orders that had constrained ICE’s tactics, allowing those practices to resume while litigation continues, and the Court did so without a full opinion explaining the legal basis [1] [2] [3]. Lower federal courts had previously found such stops likely unlawful and barred them, but the Supreme Court’s unsigned stay removed that immediate barrier without resolving the underlying constitutional question [1] [4].
1. What the lower courts found and barred
Federal judges in Los Angeles and the Ninth Circuit had concluded that certain ICE enforcement practices—using perceived ethnicity or race, spoken language, association with specific workplaces, or presence in areas with large migrant populations—could amount to unlawful racial profiling and likely violated the Fourth Amendment, and they issued injunctions or temporary restraining orders to prohibit such stops and arrests [1] [4] [5]. Those orders specifically targeted tactics used during raids and sweeps that plaintiffs argued were based on appearance, accent, or occupation rather than individualized probable cause [4] [5].
2. What the Supreme Court did — and what it did not do
In early September 2025 the Supreme Court granted the federal government’s request to stay the lower-court orders, in a brief, unsigned action issued through the Court’s shadow-docket process, allowing ICE to resume the contested tactics while the case proceeds in lower courts [1] [2] [3]. The stay was handed down as a summary order without an accompanying majority opinion or detailed reasoning, and commentators and civil‑liberties groups emphasized that the Court did not articulate a binding, reasoned precedent authorizing racial profiling as lawful probable cause [2] [6] [7].
3. How advocates and civil‑rights groups interpret the stay
Civil‑rights organizations uniformly interpret the Supreme Court’s stay as a practical “green light” for ICE to continue stops that rely on race, language, workplace, or location indicators, arguing the move undermines Fourth Amendment protections and permits discriminatory enforcement at scale [8] [6] [1] [5]. Groups including the ACLU, ILRC, and local immigrant‑rights groups have described the Court’s action as effectively sanctioning racial profiling while the litigation continues and have pledged further challenges in the courts [6] [7] [3].
4. The legal reality: interim pause vs. final ruling
Legally, a stay is an interim procedural act, not a merits decision: the Supreme Court’s order paused the lower-court injunction, but it did not definitively hold that using race, accent, or location satisfies probable cause or is constitutionally permissible, and it issued no reasoning that would resolve or set nationwide precedent on the Fourth Amendment questions at stake [2] [1]. Meanwhile, litigation and enforcement actions continue in multiple venues—judges in other jurisdictions have extended consent decrees or threatened enforcement actions where they find ICE noncompliance—showing the dispute remains litigated and unresolved [9] [10] [11].
5. Bottom line and what to watch next
The bottom line is that courts have not finally ruled that ICE may constitutionally adopt “stop‑and‑frisk”‑style practices or treat race, accent, workplace, or presence in certain locations as per se probable cause; instead, the Supreme Court’s unsigned stay removed a temporary judicial constraint on those practices while the underlying appeals and lawsuits continue, generating widespread alarm among civil‑rights groups who view the move as enabling discriminatory enforcement in practice [1] [2] [8]. The dispute remains live in the lower courts and in enforcement proceedings—future rulings, potential Supreme Court briefing on the merits, and ongoing litigation will determine whether the stay becomes a temporary operational fact or the prelude to a binding legal holding [6] [7] [9].