immigration law

California and other Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration on Monday for allegedly stripping them of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal security and disaster relief funding based on their unwillingness to aid in federal immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit comes just days after a federal judge in a separate case barred the administration from conditioning similar federal grant funding on states rescinding their so-called “sanctuary” policies protecting immigrants.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the latest funding reduction — which the states were notified of over the weekend — flew in the face of last week’s ruling. He criticized it as an illegal effort to force Democratic states into complying with a federal immigration campaign they have no legal obligation to support.

“Tell me, how does defunding California’s efforts to protect against terrorism make our communities safer?” Bonta said in a statement. “President Trump doesn’t like that we won’t be bullied into doing his bidding, ignoring our sovereign right to make decisions about how our law enforcement resources are best used to protect our communities.”

The White House referred questions on the lawsuit to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The agency has previously argued that its core mission is to defend the nation’s security against threats, including from illegal immigration, and therefore that it should be able to withhold funding from states that it believes are not upholding or are actively undermining that mission.

The funding in question — billions of dollars annually — is distributed to the states to “prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from catastrophic disasters,” and have been distributed “evenhandedly” for decades by administrations of both political parties, the states’ lawsuit argues.

The funding, authorized by Congress in part after disasters such as September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, pays for things such as the salaries and training of first responders, testing of state computer systems for vulnerabilities to cyber attacks, mutual aid compacts among regional partners and emergency responses to disasters, the states said in their lawsuit.

Bonta’s office said California expected about $165 million, but was notified it would receive $110 million, a cut of $55 million, or a third of its funding. Other blue states saw even greater reductions, with Illinois seeing a 69% reduction and New York receiving a 79% reduction, it said.

Other states that are supporting the Trump administration’s immigration policies received large increases, and some more than 100% increases, the suing states said.

They said the notifications provided no justification for the reductions, noting only that they were made at the direction of Homeland Security. And yet, the reason was clear, they said, including because of recent comments by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials who have stated outright that states who do not cooperate with federal immigration policies and that maintain sanctuary policies would see reduced funding.

“The explanation for DHS and FEMA’s last-minute decision to reallocate $233 million in homeland security funds — the Reallocation Decision — is apparent. Although DHS has for decades administered federal grant programs in a fair and evenhanded manner, the current Administration is taking money from its enemies,” the states wrote in their lawsuit. “Or, as defendant Secretary Noem put it succinctly in a February 19 internal memorandum, States whose policies she dislikes ‘should not receive a single dollar of the Department’s money.’”

The states also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to immediately block the funding cuts — and prevent the Federal Emergency Management Agency from disbursing any related funds that could not be recouped later — as the case proceeds.

Just last week, a federal judge ruled that the administration setting immigration-related conditions on similar emergency funding was “arbitrary and capricious,” and unconstitutional.

“DHS justifies the conditions by pointing to its broad homeland security mission, but the grants at issue fund programs such as disaster relief, fire safety, dam safety, and emergency preparedness,” the judge in that case wrote. “Sweeping immigration-related conditions imposed on every DHS-administered grant, regardless of statutory purpose, lack the necessary tailoring.”

Last month, another judge ruled in a third case that the Trump administration cannot deny funding to Los Angeles or other local jurisdictions based on their sanctuary policies.

In their lawsuit Monday, California and the other states argued that the Trump administration appeared “undeterred” by last week’s ruling against pre-conditioning funding on immigration enforcement cooperation.

After being “frustrated in its first attempt to coerce [the states] into enforcing federal civil immigration law,” the states wrote, “DHS took yet another lawless action” by simply reallocating funding to “more favored jurisdictions” willing to support the administration’s immigration crackdown.

Bonta said the law requires such funding to be distributed based on objective assessments of “threat and risk,” but the weekend notifications showed the Trump administration doing little more than “rushing to work around last week’s order” and “force and coerce” blue states into compliance in a new way.

“This is a lawless, repeat offender administration that keeps breaking the law,” he said.

Bonta said the lawsuit is the 40th his office has filed against the current Trump administration to date. He said his office was in conversation with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, and that they both believe that “we deserve all the funding that has been appropriated to us.”

Joining California in Monday’s lawsuit were Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia. All were also party to the litigation challenging preconditions on such funding that was decided last week.

WASHINGTON — This year’s most far-reaching immigration case is likely to decide if immigration agents in Los Angeles are free to stop, question and arrest Latinos they suspect are here illegally.

President Trump promised the “largest mass deportation operation” in American history, and he chose to begin aggressive street sweeps in Los Angeles in early June.

The Greater Los Angeles area is “ground zero for the effects of the border crisis,” his lawyers told the Supreme Court this month. “Nearly 2 million illegal aliens — out of an area population of 20 million — are there unlawfully, encouraged by sanctuary-city policies and local officials’ avowed aim to thwart federal enforcement efforts.”

The “vast majority of illegal aliens in the [Central] District [of California] come from Mexico or Central America and many only speak Spanish,” they added.

Their fast-track appeal urged the justices to confirm that immigration agents have “reasonable suspicion” to stop and question Latinos who work in businesses or occupations that draw many undocumented workers.

No one questions that U.S. immigration agents may arrest migrants with criminal records or a final order of removal. But Trump administration lawyers say agents also have the authority to stop and question — and sometimes handcuff and arrest — otherwise law-abiding Latinos who have lived and worked here for years.

They could do so based not on evidence that the particular person lacks legal status but on the assumption that they look and work like others who are here illegally.

“Reasonable suspicion is a low bar — well below probable cause,” administration lawyers said. “Apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion,” they added, noting that this standard assumes “lawful stops of innocent people may occur.”

If the court rules for Trump, it “could be enormously consequential” in Los Angeles and nationwide, said UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law & Policy. “The government would read this as giving immigration enforcement agents a license to interrogate and detain people without individualized suspicion. It would likely set a pattern that could be used in other parts of the country.”

In their response to the appeal, immigrant rights advocates said the court should not “bless a regime that could ensnare in an immigration dragnet the millions of people … who are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally entitled to be in this country and are Latino, speak Spanish” and work in construction, food services or agriculture and can be seen at bus stops, car washes or retail parking lots.

The case now before the high court began June 18 when Pedro Vasquez Perdomo and two other Pasadena residents were arrested at a bus stop where they were waiting to be picked up for a job. They said heavily armed men wearing masks grabbed them, handcuffed them and put them in a car and drove to a detention center.

If “felt like a kidnapping,” Vasquez Perdomo said.

The plaintiffs include people who were handcuffed, arrested and taken to holding facilities even though they were U.S. citizens.

They joined a lawsuit with unions and immigrants rights groups as well as others who said they were confronted with masked agents who shouted commands and, in some instances, pushed them to the ground.

However, the suit quickly focused not on the aggressive and sometimes violent manner of the detentions, but on the legality of the stops.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong said the detentions appeared to violate the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

It is “illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based on race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status,” she said on July 11.

The crucial phrase is “reasonable suspicion.”

For decades, the Supreme Court has said police officers and federal agents may stop and briefly question persons if they see something that gives them reason to suspect a violation of the law. This is why, for example, an officer may pull over a motorist whose car has swerved on the highway.

But it was not clear that U.S. immigration agents can claim they have reasonable suspicion to stop and question persons based on their appearance if they are sitting at a bus stop in Pasadena, working at a car wash or standing with others outside a Home Depot.

Frimpong did not forbid agents from stopping and questioning persons who may be here illegally, but she put limits on their authority.

She said agents may not stop persons based “solely” on four factors: their race or apparent ethnicity, the fact they speak Spanish, the type of work they do, or their location such as a day labor pickup site or a car wash.

On Aug. 1, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift the judge’s temporary restraining order. The four factors “describe only a broad profile that does not supply the reasonable suspicion to justify a detentive stop,” the judges said by a 3-0 vote.

The district judge’s order applies in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

The 9th Circuit said those seven counties have an estimated population of 19,233,598, of whom 47% or 9,096,334 identify as “Hispanic or Latino.”

Like Frimpong, the three appellate judges were Democratic appointees.

A week later, Trump administration lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court in Noem vs. Perdomo. They said the judge’s order was impeding the president’s effort to enforce the immigration laws.

They urged the court to set aside the judge’s order and to clear the way for agents to make stops if they suspect the person may be in the country illegally.

Agents do not need evidence of a legal violation, they said. Moreover, the demographics of Los Angeles alone supplies them with reasonable suspicion.

“All of this reflects common sense: the reasonable-suspicion threshold is low, and the number of people who are illegally present and subject to detention and removal under the immigration laws in the (the seven-county area of Southern California) is extraordinarily high,” wrote Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer. “The high prevalence of illegal aliens should enable agents to stop a relatively broad range of individuals.”

He said the government is not “extolling racial profiling,” but “apparent ethnicity can be relevant to reasonable suspicion, especially in immigration enforcement.”

In the past, the court has said police can make stops based on the “totality of the circumstances” or the full picture. That should help the administration because agents can point to the large number of undocumented workers at certain businesses.

But past decisions have also said officers need some reason to suspect a specific individual may be violating the law.

The Supreme Court could act at any time, but it may also be several weeks before an order is issued. The decision may come with little or no explanation.

In recent weeks, the court’s conservatives have regularly sided with Trump and against federal district judges who have stood in his way. The terse decisions have been often followed by an angry and lengthy dissent from the three liberals.

Immigration rights advocates said the court should not uphold “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”

They said the daily patrols “have cast a pall over the district, where millions meet the government’s broad demographic profile and therefore reasonably fear that they may be caught up in the government’s dragnet, and perhaps spirited away from their families on a long-term basis, any time they venture outside their own homes.”

CHICAGO — A judge in Illinois dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit Friday that sought to disrupt limits Chicago imposes on cooperation between federal immigration agents and local police.

The lawsuit, filed in February, alleged that so-called sanctuary laws in the nation’s third-largest city “thwart” federal efforts to enforce immigration laws.

It argued that local laws run counter to federal laws by restricting “local governments from sharing immigration information with federal law enforcement officials” and preventing immigration agents from identifying “individuals who may be subject to removal.”

Judge Lindsay Jenkins of the Northern District of Illinois granted the defendants’ motion for dismissal.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said that he was pleased with the decision and that the city is safer when police focus on the needs of Chicagoans.

“This ruling affirms what we have long known: that Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance is lawful and supports public safety. The City cannot be compelled to cooperate with the Trump Administration’s reckless and inhumane immigration agenda,” he said in a statement.

Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, welcomed the ruling, saying in a social media post, “Illinois just beat the Trump Administration in federal court.”

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security and did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The administration has filed a series of lawsuits targeting state or city policies it sees as interfering with immigration enforcement, including those in Los Angeles, New York City, Denver and Rochester, N.Y. It sued four New Jersey cities in May.

Heavily Democratic Chicago has been a sanctuary city for decades and has beefed up its laws several times, including during President Trump’s first term in 2017.

That same year, then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, signed more statewide sanctuary protections into law, putting him at odds with his party.

There is no official definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities. The terms generally describe limits on local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but sometimes seeks state and local help.

DENVER — Colorado’s Democratic attorney general on Tuesday sued a sheriff’s deputy for allegedly helping federal immigration agents find and arrest a college student who had an expired visa.

Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser also disclosed that his office is investigating whether other law enforcement officers on a regional drug task force the deputy worked on have been sharing information to help federal agents make immigration arrests in violation of state law limiting cooperation in immigration enforcement. The federal government has sued Colorado over such laws.

On June 5, Mesa County Deputy Alexander Zwinck allegedly shared the driver’s license, vehicle registration and insurance information of the 19-year-old nursing student in a Signal chat used by task force members, according to the lawsuit. The task force includes officers who work for federal Homeland Security Investigations, which can enforce immigration laws, the lawsuit said.

After federal immigration officers told him in the chat that the student did not have a criminal history but had an expired visa, Zwinck allegedly provided them with their location and told her to wait with him in his patrol car for about five minutes, asking about her accent and where she was born. He let her go with a warning and gave federal agents a description of her vehicle and told which direction she was headed so they could arrest her, the lawsuit said.

When Zwinck was told of the arrest, the lawsuit said he congratulated the federal agents, saying “rgr, nice work.” The following day, one federal immigration agent praised Zwinck’s work in the chat, saying he should be named ”interdictor of the year” for the removal division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Zwinck is also accused of violating the law again on June 10 by providing immigration officers with the photo of the license of another driver who had overstayed his visa, information about the person’s vehicle and directions to help them arrest the driver. After being told that immigration officers “would want him,” Zwinck replied that “We better get some bitchin (sic) Christmas baskets from you guys,” the lawsuit said.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit. Spokesperson Molly Casey said the office is about a week away from finishing its internal investigation into the student’s traffic stop and plans to issue a statement after it is finished.

A working telephone number could not be found for Zwinck, who was placed on paid leave during the sheriff’s office’s investigation. Casey declined to provide the name of an attorney who might be able to speak on his behalf.

The sheriff’s office previously announced that all its employees have been removed from the Signal group chat.

Weiser said he was acting under a new state law that bars employees of local governments from sharing identifying information about people with federal immigration officials, a recent expansion of state laws limiting cooperation in immigration cases. Previously, the ban on sharing personal identifying information only applied to state agencies, but state lawmakers voted to expand that to local government agencies earlier this year.

“One of our goals in enforcing this law is to make clear that this law is not optional. This is a requirement and it’s one that we take seriously,” he said.

The law allows violators to be fined but Weiser’s lawsuit only seeks a judge’s order declaring that Zwinck’s actions violated the law and barring him from such actions in the future.

Slevin writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The governor and the president are talking past each other.

The two men, despite their politics and ambition, have worked together before, through devastating fires and a pandemic. But as immigration raids roil Los Angeles, President Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom cannot even agree on how they left their last conversation, late on Friday evening on the East Coast, as protests picked up around the city.

Aides to Trump told The Times he issued a clear warning: “Get the police in gear.” His patience would last less than 24 hours before he chose a historic path, federalizing the National Guard against the wishes of state and local officials.

The governor, on the other hand, told MSNBC the account is a lie. In their 40-minute call, not once did the president raise the prospect of wresting control over the National Guard from state and local officials.

They have not spoken since, a White House official said.

Trump went even further on Monday, raising the specter of Newsom’s arrest and supplementing the National Guard operation with a historic deployment of active-duty U.S. Marines.

The troop deployment is yet another extraordinary effort to quell simmering demonstrations across Los Angeles, some of which have turned violent, in protest of flash raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in recent days.

‘Subjecting himself to arrest’

Newsom’s government said Monday it would sue the Trump administration over the deployment and issued scathing criticism of Trump’s leadership, calling his Defense secretary a “joke” and the president “unhinged.” But the president and his top advisers responded with an especially pointed threat, suggesting the governor could be arrested for obstruction.

“It is a basic principle in this country that if you break the law, you will face a consequence for that,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Times in an interview. “So if the governor obstructs federal enforcement, or breaks federal laws, then he is subjecting himself to arrest.”

Earlier in the day, Tom Homan, the president’s so-called border czar, said that no one is above the law and that anyone — including the governor — who obstructs immigration enforcement would be subject to charges.

“I would do it if I were Tom,” Trump said, pursing his lips as he appeared to consider the question as he was speaking to reporters on Monday. “I think it’s great.”

“He’s done a terrible job,” Trump continued. “I like Gavin Newsom. He’s a nice guy. But he’s grossly incompetent. Everybody knows.”

The White House is not actively discussing or planning Newsom’s arrest. But Newsom took the threat seriously, vehemently decrying Trump’s remarks as the mark of an authoritarian.

“The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation — this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism,” Newsom wrote on X.

“It would truly be unprecedented to arrest a governor over a difference in policy between the federal government and a state,” UC Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky said Monday. “Even when Southern governors were obstructing desegregation orders, presidents did not try to have them arrested.”

A backfiring effort at deterrence

Leavitt said that Trump’s initial decision to deploy the Guard was “with the expectation that the deployment of the National Guard would hopefully prevent and deter some of this violence.”

“He told the governor to get it under control and watched again for another full day, 24 hours, where it got worse,” Leavitt said. “The assaults against federal law enforcement upticked, the violence grew, and the president took bold action on Saturday evening to protect federal detention spaces and federal buildings and federal personnel.”

The opposite occurred. The worst violence yet took place on Sunday, with some rioters torching and hurling concrete at police cars, hours after National Guard troops had arrived in L.A. County.

The protests had been largely peaceful throughout Friday and Saturday, with isolated instances of violent activity. Leavitt said that Newsom and Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, have “handicapped” the Los Angeles Police Department, “who are trying to do their jobs.”

Local leaders “have refused to allow the local police department to work alongside the feds to enforce our nation’s immigration laws, and to detain and arrest violent criminals who are on the streets of Los Angeles,” she said.

“As for the local law enforcement,” she added, “the president has the utmost respect for the Los Angeles Police Department.”

‘All options on the table’

Leavitt, in a phone call on Monday afternoon, said she would not get ahead of Trump on whether he will invoke the Insurrection Act, a law that allows the president to suspend Posse Comitatus, which prohibits the military from engaging in local law enforcement.

But she took note that, on Monday, the president referred to some of the rioters as insurrectionists, potentially laying the groundwork for an invocation of the law.

“The president is wisely keeping all options on the table, and will do what is necessary to restore law and order in California,” she said. “Federal immigration enforcement operations will continue in the city of Los Angeles, which has been completely overrun by illegal alien criminals that pose a public safety risk and need to be removed from the city.”

The president’s order, directing 2,000 National Guard troops to protect federal buildings in the city, allows for a 60-day deployment. Leavitt would not say how long the operation might last, but suggested it would continue until violence at the protests ends.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the president on any decisions or timelines,” she said. “I can tell you the White House is 100% focused on this. The president wants to solve the problem. And that means creating an environment where citizens, if they wish, are given the space and the right to peacefully protest.”

“And these violent disruptors and insurrectionists, as the president has called them, are not only doing a disservice to law-abiding citizens, but to those who wish to peacefully protest. That’s a fundamental right this administration will always support and protect.”

Wilner reported from Washington, Wick from Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON — President Trump may seek to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who recently entered the United States under a two-year grant of parole, the Supreme Court decided Friday.

Over two dissents, the justices granted an emergency appeal and set aside rulings by judges in Boston who blocked Trump’s repeal of the parole policy adopted by the Biden administration.

That 2023 policy opened the door for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to apply for entry and a work authorization if they had a financial sponsor and could pass background checks. By the time Biden left office, 530,000 people from those countries had entered the U.S. under the program.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

“The court plainly botched this,” Jackson said, adding that it should have kept the case on hold during the appeals.

It was the second time in two weeks that the justices upheld Trump’s authority to revoke a large-scale Biden administration policy that gave temporary legal status to some migrants.

The first revoked program gave temporary protected status to around 350,000 Venezuelans who were in this country and feared they could be sent home.

The parole policy allowed up to 30,000 migrants a month from the four countries to enter the country with temporary legal protection. Biden’s officials saw it as a way to reduce illegal border crossings and to provide a safe and legal pathway for carefully screened migrants.

The far-reaching policy was based on a modest-sounding provision of the immigration laws. It says the secretary of Homeland Security may “parole into United States temporarily … on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons any alien” who is seeking admission.

Upon taking office, Trump ordered an end to “all categorical parole programs.” In late March, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the parole protection would end in 30 days.

But last month, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked DHS’s “categorical” termination of the parole authority. The law said the government may grant parole on a “case-by-case basis,” she said, and that suggests it must be revoked on a case-by-case basis as well.

On May 5, the 1st Circuit Court in a 3-0 decision agreed that a “categorical termination” of parole appeared to be illegal.

Three days later, Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed another emergency appeal at the Supreme Court arguing that a judge had overstepped her authority.

The parole authority is “purely discretionary” in the hands of the DHS secretary, he wrote, and the law bars judges from reviewing those decisions.

While the Biden administration “granted parole categorically to aliens” from four counties, he said the Boston-based judges blocked the new policy because it is “categorical.”

He accused the judges of “needlessly upending critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry, vitiating core Executive Branch prerogatives, and undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election.”

Immigrants rights advocates had urged the court to stand aside for now.

Granting the administration’s appeal “would cause an immense amount of needless human suffering,” they told the court.

They said the migrants “all came to the United States with the permission of the federal government after each individually applied through a U.S. financial sponsor, passed security and other checks while still abroad, and received permission to fly to an airport here at no expense to the government to request parole.”

“Some class members have been here for nearly two years; others just arrived in January,” they added.

In response, Sauer asserted the migrants had no grounds to complain. They “accepted parole with full awareness that the benefit was temporary, discretionary, and revocable at any time,” he said.

The Biden administration began offering temporary entry to Venezuelans in late 2022, then expanded the program a few months later to people from the other three countries.

In October of last year, the Biden administration announced that it would not offer renewals of parole and directed those immigrants to apply to other forms of relief, such as asylum or temporary protected status.

It’s unclear exactly how many people remained protected solely through the parole status and could now be targeted for deportation. It’s also not clear whether the administration will seek to deport many or most of these immigrants.

But parolees who recently tried to adjust their legal status have hit a roadblock.

In a Feb. 14 memo, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it was placing an administrative hold on all pending benefit requests filed by those under the parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, as well as a program for Ukrainians and another for family reunification.

The memo said USCIS needed to implement “additional vetting flags” to identify fraud, public safety or national security concerns.

“It’s going to force people into an impossible choice,” said Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. Those who stay face potential detention and deportation, she said, while those who willingly leave the U.S. would be giving up on their applications.

The DHS memo said the government could extend the parole for some of them on a case-by-case basis. But Trump’s lawyers said migrants who were here less than two years could be deported without a hearing under the “expedited removal” provisions of the immigration laws.

Inlender said the government should not be allowed to strip people of lawfully granted legal status without sufficient reason or notice. Inlender, who defended the program against a challenge from Texas in 2023, said she expects swift individual legal challenges to the Trump administration’s use of expedited removal.

“So many people’s lives are on the line,” Inlender said. “These people did everything right — they applied through a lawful program, they were vetted. And to pull the rug out from under them in this way should be, I think, offensive to our own idea of what justice is in this country.”