Laura Helton
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Laura Helton
@lehelton.bsky.social
1.2K followers 910 following 63 posts
Historian. Archivist. Teacher of public humanities. Author of Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History (Columbia University Press, 2024).
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/scattered-and-fugi
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Justice Sotomayor, not mincing words, also says that today's decision will lead to the "creation of [] a second-class citizenship status" for Latinos, who now will have the burden to "carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely."
The concurrence relegates the interests of U. S. citizens and individuals with legal status to a single sentence, positing that the Government will free these individuals as soon as they show they are legally in the United States. Ante, at 8 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). That blinks reality. Two plaintiffs in this very case tried to explain that they are U. S. citizens; one was then pushed against a fence with his arms twisted behind his back, and the other was taken away from his job to a warehouse for further questioning. More fundamentally, it is the Government’s burden to prove that it has reasonable suspicion to stop someone. The concurrence improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.
September 8, 2025 at 4:49 PM