Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo: The “Kavanaugh Stop” and the Impacts of Non-Binding Decisions

On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled on the government’s application for a stay of a district court’s temporary restraining order in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. This came after both the district court and the Ninth Circuit denied the application for a stay. The district court’s July 11, 2025, TRO restricted the government from, among other things, stopping suspected undocumented immigrants in the Central District of California based solely on any combination of the four factors below:  

1. Apparent race or ethnicity; 

2. Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; 

3. Presence at a particular location (e.g., bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.); or 

4. The type of work one does 

The Supreme Court granted the government’s motion to stay, with the only written opinion supporting the decision being a solo concurrence from Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh’s opinion states that the government would likely win on the merits in this case. He argues that immigration agents’ use of these factors is “common sense,” and is likely legal so long as apparent ethnicity is not the sole factor used. 

Some of the decision’s critics have started referring to lengthy, physically violent, and/or wrongful Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) or Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainment actions since the decision as “Kavanaugh Stops.” Kavanaugh’s opinion describes CBP and ICE investigative stops as “brief” and states that if a stop is unwarranted, the person stopped is “promptly let go.” The jeering “Kavanaugh Stop” monicker stems from the belief that the opinion is blind to the facts on the ground and appears to have emboldened federal agents to act increasingly violently and carelessly. 

The Facts 

The Vasquez Perdomo complaint lays out disturbing allegations. One account details federal agents detaining individuals standing outside a Home Depot at gunpoint. Another presents an account of armed agents tackling a man selling fruit, weapons drawn as they pressed him into the ground. The complaint adds that agents in the Los Angeles area frequently moved in large packs without any visual indication that they were law enforcement agents, with masks covering their faces and weapons drawn. The complaint also notes that these practices and similar encounters have been frequently covered in national news.  

The government did not directly contest any of these allegations in its brief filed with the Supreme Court, and Justice Kavanaugh makes no mention of them in his opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent is the only time the Supreme Court noted the factual background of the case. Sotomayor retells a story initially described at a district court hearing, wherein a Latino U.S. citizen was approached by agents carrying handguns and rifles and ordered to say if he was an American. Despite confirming that he was an American three times, when the man failed to immediately state the hospital he was born in, one of the agents visibly chambered a round of ammunition in a firearm. After being detained for 20 minutes, the man was allowed to leave, but the agents kept the Real ID he had willingly given them to identify himself.  

Where Sotomayor describes the actual conduct of immigration agents, Kavanaugh describes force and threats of force as purely hypothetical. His opinion states that unspecified “remedies should be available” for victims of excessive force. Failing to describe any specific instance laid out in any pleading, brief, or hearing, he says that these vague remedies should be available “[t]o the extent that excessive force has been used.” Kavanaugh ignores what the plaintiffs have told him about what being detained is like. His response to this civil rights issue with what appears to be a call to utilize tort law after the fact shows a laughable lack of awareness over what this decision, and his opinion specifically, enables. 

“Chilled” Enforcement Activity? 

One element courts must consider to determine if a stay should be granted is whether the moving party would “suffer irreparable harm if a stay were not granted.” Kavanaugh’s opinion holds that the government would likely face this level of harm without a stay. He relies in part on a statement first made by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist in a non-binding in-chambers opinion: that the government faces irreparable injury “any time [it] is enjoined by a court from effectuating statutes enacted by representatives of its people.” Rehnquist did not cite any legal source when making this statement; in fact, he preceded the statement with “[i]t also seems to me,” making it clear that this was simply his personal opinion. Kavanaugh, however, follows in the footsteps of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett by treating this statement as a settled legal principle when it is convenient.  

In addition, Kavanaugh states that the stay’s threat of contempt hearings for federal agents who break the district court’s order “will inevitably chill lawful immigration enforcement efforts.” Kavanaugh’s version of irreparable harm exists at such an abstracted level from the day-to-day activity of law enforcement that in his mind, any law officer being held accountable for breaking the law irreparably harms all other law enforcement. Compare this to the irreparable harms that have erupted from supposed “brief” immigration stops since Kavanaugh’s opinion was published. 

On October 10, 2025, ICE agents crashed into a Latina US citizen’s car, pulled weapons on her, quickly pulled her into their unmarked vehicle, and drove away. On October 23, 2025, an ICE agent drew a gun on a pregnant Latina woman after she honked her car horn near ICE agents. On October 30, 2025, ICE agents shot a Latino US citizen in the shoulder after he told them that they were staging in an area where a school bus would soon pick up children. In December 2025, a masked immigration agent who never identified himself tackled and detained a US citizen, allegedly solely because he appeared to be Somali. In the same month, immigration agents went door by door in a Minneapolis neighborhood detaining everyone inside East African restaurants.  

This is a small sample of ICE and CBP conduct since September 8. 2025. None of the victims in these incidents are undocumented immigrants; as the complaint described, federal profiling and aggression impacted numerous US citizens even before the Supreme Court’s decision. Justice Kavanaugh’s order ignoring ICE and CBP tactics and activities has emboldened law enforcement agents to use these threats of violence in contexts beyond immigration investigation, such as in crowd control. 

Conclusion 

If the work of immigration agents would have been chilled by the district court’s July 11, 2025 order, Kavanaugh’s opinion seems to have made them more aggressive. After the district court entered its temporary restraining order, ICE and CBP daily arrests in Los Angeles decreased. While it is harder to quantitatively view the impact of the Kavanaugh concurrence, it appears that immigration enforcement activity has become both more frequent and more violent. Americans, regardless of their immigration status, feel the impact of Kavanaugh’s opinion every day. 

Max Greenhalgh

Class of 2027, Staff Member