The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned an order that barred government agents from the practice of immigration patrols detaining migrants in California. Critics say the practice now upheld by the court amounts to racial discrimination.

The decision is the latest from the nation’s highest court favoring President Donald Trump’s increasingly hardline stance after stepped-up operations in Los Angeles and other parts of California. The conservative-majority bench announced the decision in an unsigned order that did not give reasons. Its three liberal members registered dissent.

The case remains alive in lower courts and could return to the high court.

The decision followed a lower court ruling that agents must have specific reasons to arrest people beyond the fact that they speak Spanish or gather at locations popular with those seeking temporary work. That court had issued an order banning the practice.

Opponents immediately denounced Monday’s decision, with California Governor Gavin Newsom saying it was a deliberate attempt to harm the state and its diverse people. “The Trump-appointed majority on the Supreme Court has just become the grand marshal for a parade of racial terror in Los Angeles,” Newsom wrote on X. “This is not about enforcing immigration laws, it is about targeting Latinos and anyone who does not look or sound like Stephen Miller’s idea of an American,” he added, referring to the architect of Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. “Trump’s private police forces now have the green light to go after your family and make everyone a target.”

Earlier this year, masked and heavily armed agents began targeting groups of people in home-goods stores, car washes and farms around Los Angeles, sparking weeks of mostly peaceful protests in the city. Critics said the operations, in which a number of U.S. citizens as well as others legally in the country were arrested, were directly aimed at anyone who looked Latino or spoke Spanish.

Although the Supreme Court did not provide reasons for its decision, one of the conservative justices, Brett Kavanaugh, wrote a concurring opinion saying that “illegal immigration is particularly pronounced in the Los Angeles area.”

One of the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor — the first Latina appointed to the court — dissented. “We must not live in a country where the government may detain anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low-wage job,” she wrote. “The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a status of second-class citizenship.” | BGNES