In September 2025, the Supreme Court let immigration agents keep stopping people based on their skin color, the language they speak, and the kind of work they appear to do. A lower court had called that racial profiling and ordered it to stop. The Supreme Court lifted that order.

That is one of twelve things ICE and the agencies working alongside it can legally do to you in the United States right now, not in theory, but in practice, today, backed by court rulings, government contracts, and ICE's own records. Here they are, with the sources so you can check each one yourself.

1. Stop you because of how you look or the language you speak

In June 2025, immigration agents swept through Los Angeles — bus stops, car washes, day-labor corners — detaining people on sight. A federal judge ordered them to stop using race, speaking Spanish, location, or type of work as the basis for a stop. The government appealed, and on September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the stops to resume in a 6-3 order with no majority opinion explaining why. Justice Sotomayor, in dissent, wrote that people were being seized "simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor."

2. Deport you without ever seeing a judge

Expedited removal lets an immigration officer order someone deported with no hearing, no judge, and no lawyer. Until 2025 it was used mostly near the border. In January 2025 the government extended it nationwide. If you can't prove on the spot that you've lived here for two years, you can be removed within days. In June 2026 a federal appeals court ruled the government doesn't even have to tell you the two-year rule exists, you have to know to claim it yourself. The dissenting judge noted that people with longer residence had already been wrongly deported.