Brett Kavanaugh Is Trying to Walk Back “Kavanaugh Stops.” Too Late.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh does not seem happy that his name has become synonymous with racist immigration enforcement. In September, the justice wrote that Hispanic residents’ “apparent ethnicity” could be a “relevant factor” in federal agents’ decision to stop them and demand proof of citizenship. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection promptly seized upon his opinion as a license to stop any Hispanic person on the basis of race—often with excessive, even sadistic force—and detain them until they proved their lawful presence. Law professor Anil Kalhan termed these encounters “Kavanaugh stops,” and the name swiftly caught on as evidence mounted that they had become standard practice across the country. Lawyers also provided courts with evidence that Kavanaugh had sanitized the reality of this practice to the point of fiction. The justice claimed that these were “brief investigative stops” and that any lawful resident would be “promptly” released. In truth, federal agents brutalized, kidnapped, and tormented people—including many U.S. citizens—simply because of their ethnicity, even after they asserted legal status.

Because now we have CBP Chief Greg Bovino declaring that agents can engage in racial profiling. Bovino has even said that every single person in this country has to walk around with proof of citizenship or else face arrest on suspicion of being undocumented. Kavanaugh is probably a little unnerved that all these violent, racist arrests and abductions are taking his name. He doesn’t want to be remembered by history as this great villain who greenlit the worst wave of violent racial profiling by the federal government in ages. But this footnote changes nothing. He cannot walk back what he has unleashed.