A “Kavanaugh stop” is a brief immigration detention that federal agents justify by combining several factors at once — typically a person’s apparent ethnicity, the language or accent they speak, where they are standing, and the kind of work they appear to do. The phrase comes from Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, decided by the Supreme Court on September 8, 2025, in which he argued that immigration officers may treat those factors together as “reasonable suspicion” that someone is unlawfully present in the country.1Supreme Court of the United States. Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, No. 25A169 Legal scholars coined the label soon after the ruling, and it stuck as immigration sweeps expanded from Los Angeles to cities including Chicago, Minneapolis, and Charlotte.2Stanford Law Review. Factual Revisionism, Precedent Subversion, and the Kavanaugh Stop
The Four Factors Kavanaugh Said Officers Could Combine
Kavanaugh’s ten-page solo concurrence identified a cluster of circumstances that, taken together under the “totality of the circumstances” test, could support a stop. He pointed to the large undocumented population in the Los Angeles area, the tendency of workers to gather at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, and day-laborer sites, concentration in occupations like construction, landscaping, and agriculture that “do not require paperwork,” and the fact that many people in those settings speak Spanish or English with an accent.3Cornell Law Institute. Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, No. 25A169
He wrote that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” but said ethnicity could serve as a “relevant factor” when combined with the others. He also characterized any resulting encounters as “brief,” saying individuals found to be citizens or lawfully present “may promptly go free.”3Cornell Law Institute. Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, No. 25A169 To build this framework, Kavanaugh leaned heavily on United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975), a border-region case he cited nine times.4SCOTUSblog. Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Racial Proxies
The Case Behind the Term
The dispute began with “Operation At Large,” an immigration enforcement initiative launched in the Los Angeles area in early June 2025 that produced nearly 2,800 arrests in its first month. Pedro Vasquez Perdomo and other plaintiffs, joined by groups including the United Farm Workers of America and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, sued in the Central District of California, arguing that agents were conducting stops without individualized suspicion.5Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Vasquez-Perdomo v. Noem
On July 11, 2025, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring immigration officers in the Central District from making stops based, alone or in combination, on four things: apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at certain locations such as bus stops or day-laborer sites, and the kind of work a person performs.1Supreme Court of the United States. Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, No. 25A169 The Ninth Circuit largely refused to stay that order on August 1. The government then went to the Supreme Court, which on September 8 lifted Judge Frimpong’s order in an unsigned four-sentence ruling issued through the emergency docket. It was Kavanaugh’s concurrence, not the majority order, that supplied the reasoning now identified with the practice.4SCOTUSblog. Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Racial Proxies
The Dissent’s Objection
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Drawing on Reid v. Georgia (1980), Sotomayor wrote that Kavanaugh’s factors “describe a very large category of presumably innocent” people. She added: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”1Supreme Court of the United States. Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, No. 25A169
Immigration attorney Jennifer Bade said the ruling “greenlit racial profiling” and effectively created a “‘show your papers’ nation.”6The Week. Kavanaugh Stop Racial Profiling Scholars have also pressed a procedural criticism: Kavanaugh’s concurrence is a single justice’s non-binding statement issued on the shadow docket, yet federal agencies have treated it as authority for expanded enforcement nationwide.7North Carolina Civil Rights Law Review. Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo: The Kavanaugh Stop and the Impacts of Non-Binding Decisions
Kavanaugh’s Later Footnote in Trump v. Illinois
In December 2025, the Supreme Court decided Trump v. Illinois, a case about deploying National Guard troops to Chicago for immigration enforcement. Kavanaugh wrote another concurrence, and a footnote in it appeared to cut against the position he had taken three months earlier. He stated that “officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity,” citing Whren v. United States (1996) for the rule against selectively enforcing the law on the basis of race.8Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443
Commentators read the footnote in different ways. Some saw an implicit border-only limit on his earlier reasoning, tied to Brignoni-Ponce‘s original setting near the Mexican border.9Divided Argument. Race, the Fourth Amendment, and Immigration Others read it as an attempt to soften the practical fallout of Noem without formally reversing it.10Mother Jones. Monster of 2025: Kavanaugh Stops Whichever reading is correct, the September stay remains in force.
How the Stops Have Worked in Practice
Kavanaugh described the encounters as brief, with citizens released promptly. Reporting and a Senate investigation have documented different outcomes. ProPublica found that immigration agents held more than 170 U.S. citizens against their will during the first nine months of the administration, most of them Latino, with nearly 50 identified cases ending in no charges or dismissal.11ProPublica. Immigration DHS American Citizens Arrested Detained Against Will
Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S. citizen and construction worker in Alabama, was detained three times; agents dismissed his REAL ID and held him anyway.12ProPublica. Immigration Leo Garcia Venegas Arrests Detentions Citizens ICE DHS George Retes, a U.S. combat veteran, was held for more than three days after a raid in Camarillo, California, and said he was pepper-sprayed and denied a lawyer. Javier Ramirez was detained for more than 96 hours in Montebello, California, despite carrying his passport, and said agents withheld his diabetes medication. Rafie Ollah Shouhed, a 79-year-old car wash owner, was tackled and suffered broken ribs; he was held for 12 hours without medical attention after recent heart surgery.13U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Unchecked Authority: Examining the Trump Administration’s Extrajudicial Immigration Detentions of U.S. Citizens
On December 9, 2025, Senator Richard Blumenthal, ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released a report titled Unchecked Authority. It documented 22 accounts of U.S. citizens detained between June and November 2025, seven of them for more than 24 hours, along with patterns of excessive force, denial of medical care, fabricated charges, and agents concealing their identities behind masks and unmarked vehicles.13U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Unchecked Authority: Examining the Trump Administration’s Extrajudicial Immigration Detentions of U.S. Citizens DHS Secretary Kristi Noem had said in October 2025 that “no American citizens have been arrested or detained,” and the department’s official account posted in December 2025 that “ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens.” DHS has said any citizens taken into custody were detained specifically for obstructing or assaulting federal officers.14CT Mirror. Blumenthal Questions Actions of Federal Immigration Agents
Legal and Legislative Pushback
Garcia Venegas filed a federal class action, Garcia Venegas v. Homan, on September 30, 2025, in the Southern District of Alabama. Represented by the Institute for Justice, he challenged three DHS policies he said authorized warrantless raids on private construction sites, detention of workers without reasonable suspicion, and continued custody even after workers produced proof of citizenship.15Institute for Justice. Alabama Construction Raids Complaint A class certification motion was filed October 27, 2025, and a preliminary injunction hearing was held May 27, 2026, before Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock, who had not yet ruled.16Courthouse News Service. I Don’t Feel Free: US Citizen Testifies About Repeated Immigration Detentions
In February 2026, Representative Ro Khanna introduced House Resolution 1030, which called for a statutory ban on “Kavanaugh stops,” an end to qualified immunity for ICE agents, mandatory body cameras, and the replacement of ICE with a new agency housed in the Department of Justice. The resolution was referred to the Committees on the Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Ways and Means.17U.S. Congress. H. Res. 1030 – To End ICE Abuse
Where the Original Case Stands
The Supreme Court’s stay lifted Judge Frimpong’s Fourth Amendment order, but a separate Fifth Amendment track in the same case, involving detained immigrants’ access to counsel, was not stayed. Judge Frimpong granted a preliminary injunction on the access-to-counsel claims on November 13, 2025, and the government appealed to the Ninth Circuit in January 2026. On February 19, 2026, she denied the government’s motion to dismiss nearly all of the plaintiffs’ claims, and a second amended complaint followed on February 26, 2026.18Courthouse News Service. Perdomo v. Noem, Second Order on Motion The Ninth Circuit had not ruled on the merits of the Fourth Amendment appeal as of mid-2026, and the Supreme Court’s stay of the TRO remained in effect.19CourtListener. Vasquez Perdomo, et al. v. Noem, et al.