Full Breakdown

Brett Kavanaugh’s Recent Opinions Fuel Controversy Over ICE Enforcement and Trump Trade Powers

7/23/2026, 8:42:00 PM

Core Judicial Action

On September 8, 2025 Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a sole concurring opinion in *Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo*, staying a lower-court temporary restraining order that had limited ICE from targeting individuals primarily on the basis of race, language, or occupation.

The opinion introduced the framework later dubbed “Kavanaugh Stops,” which has been cited in ICE operations across several states. Kavanaugh has applied similar reasoning to economic cases, notably in a dissent scheduled for 20 February in *Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump*, where a six-to-three majority struck down President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs. In that dissent Kavanaugh argued that the president’s tariff authority was a “traditional and common tool,” despite scholarly consensus that no prior president had used IEEPA in that manner.

A ProPublica investigation reported that within the first month after the *Noem* opinion, more than 170 U.S. By July 2026 the same report counted 32 American children detained, 31 deaths at ICE detention facilities, six people shot and killed—including U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis—and two men** killed who were not the intended ICE targets.

In a footnote added to the December 2025 case *Trump v. The footnote received no public comment from White House adviser Stephen Miller.

House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the sentiment, promising to advance any legislative fix “immediately.”

Legal scholars also condemned the opinion. Sherrilyn Ifill, professor at Howard Law School, described the opinion as “preposterous” and characterized the resulting enforcement actions as “grabs and kidnapping” rather than lawful stops.

“If the 14th Amendment framers wanted to exclude the babies of temporary visitors (people not domiciled), children of unauthorized migration, or people who ‘owed allegiance’ to another country as the dissenters assert, they would have said so. They didn’t,” — Anna

The House’s proposed bill to alter birthright-citizenship provisions, inspired by Kavanaugh’s commentary on the 14th Amendment, has been introduced but faces uncertain prospects in Congress. The scheduled February 20 dissent will further clarify the Court’s stance on presidential tariff authority, potentially influencing future executive-legislative interactions.