1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling empowering ICE and local officials to detain people off the street based solely on how they look or speak is a constitutional and moral disgrace. With this ruling, the Court has opened the door to legalized racial profiling and arbitrary imprisonment. Latino and immigrant communities will be stopped, questioned, and detained for nothing more than speaking Spanish, having an accent, or looking “foreign.” This ruling strips away hard-won civil rights protections, encourages racial discrimination by law enforcement, and undermines the very idea that justice is blind. It is racism dressed in legal robes. The decision joins the Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson and Korematsu decisions as a stain on our system of justice in our nation. However, the framers gave Congress the tools to confront such betrayal: impeachment is the remedy when judges abandon their oath and corrupt their power. No justice is above the law. Congress must begin impeachment inquiries into the justices who have turned the Court into an engine of racism and repression. The Supreme Court is supposed to defend the rights of all people, not sanction their oppression. If Congress fails to act now, history will record this moment not only as a judicial disgrace, but as a congressional failure.