This post is part of Challenging Precedent, a blog of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice examining race, law, and regulation in the Trump era.

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Where it concerns immigration policy, the shadow docket has become the Trump administration’s favorite courtroom—because the government wins there and no one explains why. In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court stayed a lower court injunction that prohibited ICE agents from relying, exclusively or in conjunction with other factors, on appearance, language, workplace, and location in targeting immigration raids in Los Angeles—many of which had involved physical violence and the wrongful detention of U.S. citizens. Vasquez Perdomo is just one case on the growing list of immigration cases the Supreme Court has issued on its shadow docket without an opinion this term. 

Despite often failing to meet its burden of proof, the Trump administration has been granted extraordinary relief by the Court in a significant number of immigration cases. In effect, the Court has signaled it will not stop the government from enforcing its immigration policies through tactics that include racial discrimination and physical violence. By omitting an opinion in so many of its immigration shadow cases, the Court leaves the interpretation of its decisions to speculation. The Trump administration has, naturally, interpreted the Court’s silence as the maximum authorization even where procedural issues could have been the decisive factor. As a result, the administration has been emboldened to pursue its most aggressive enforcement tactics, transforming the shadow docket into a powerful immigration policy tool. When the stakes are as high as our constitutional freedoms and the consequences are measured in real human lives, this unchecked authority is dangerous.

What is the “Shadow Docket” and Why Does it Matter?

The “shadow docket,” coined by law professor William Baude in 2015, refers to the Supreme Court’s emergency and summary orders “that defy its normal procedural regularity.” According to the U.S. Courts, the procedural regularity of the Supreme Court’s “merits docket” requires parties to provide a thorough briefing of the constitutional issues at stake (including from amici curiae). Each party also presents an oral argument and answers questions that allow the Justices “to clarify their understanding of nuances that may be important to the decision.” This process often takes months and typically concludes with a written opinion that clearly lays out the majority’s reasoning and becomes binding precedent for lower courts applying the same law or facing the same issue. 

As Justice Jackson emphasized in her Trump v. J.G.G. dissent, an immigration case on the Court’s shadow docket in 2025, “[t]hose standard processes may not always yield correct results. But when we deviate from them, the risk of error always substantially increases.”

That deviation is precisely the course for emergency requests for stay under Supreme Court Rules 22 and 23. Justice Jackson observes that the Court usually does not hear oral arguments on the “complex and monumental issues” under consideration in its shadow docket cases. These cases, as Justice Sotomayor notes in her Trump v. J.G.G. dissent, are often decided after a mere “few days of deliberation on barebones briefing.” The practice of issuing emergency stays has been authorized by Congress since 1948, although the Court’s ability to handle applications outside the typical flow of its merits litigation has been around as long as the Supreme Court itself. Historically, this power was exercised primarily to help the Court manage its workload by issuing routine orders such as extending oral arguments or granting extra time to file a brief. In recent years, however, the shadow docket has taken an increasingly new shape. 

In testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, law professor Stephen Vladeck traces the rise of the shadow docket since 2017, noting the extraordinary number of applications that have been granted relief each year, specifically emergency writs of injunction, “which are supposed to be the most extraordinary and unusual form of such relief.” Taken together, these shifts in the shadow docket create significant jurisprudential changes. And yet, these shadow rulings “are usually accompanied by no reasoning (let alone a majority opinion).” Without an explanation, the parties and lower courts are left “to speculate about why the Court ruled the way it did.” Emboldened by repeated, unexplained approvals, executive officials face little judicial constraint–consequences that are particularly severe in the immigration arena.

Immigration Shadow Cases: Judicial Submission and Unreasoned Rulings as Signals

Through the end of 2025, the Trump administration has filed 34 emergency applications, which is more than the 19 filed during Biden’s four-year term and the 8 filed during the combined 16 years of the Obama and Bush administrations. The Supreme Court issued 25 decisions, ruling at least partially for the administration in 80% of those cases. Of those 25 decisions, 9 concerned issues of immigration enforcement, which is more than double the second and third most adjudicated issues on the shadow docket (independent agencies at 5 decisions and government spending at 4 decisions). These numbers are significant because they signal to the Trump administration that its aggressive immigration enforcement tactics—including violent raids and racial profiling—will face little judicial resistance. This is especially true given the Court’s predilection to grant the most extraordinary forms of relief even when, as in several cases, the government’s showing of merits and irreparable harm has been minimal. 

For example, in Vasquez Perdomo, the Court stayed a lower court injunction that barred ICE from relying on how an individual looks, what language they speak, where they live, or the kind of work they do in immigration raids. The unsigned order provided no reasoning, with only a concurrence from Justice Kavanaugh—whose dismissive characterization of such stops as “brief encounters” led to their being termed “Kavanaugh stops.” In this case, as in most of the immigration cases that have been added to the Court’s emergency docket, two lower courts had already denied the government’s request for relief. This meant the Trump administration bore “an especially heavy burden” to show its likelihood of success on the merits and likelihood of irreparable harm. 

On the merits question, Justice Sotomayor’s dissent is especially critical that the government “provided no evidence” that the immigration stops were particularized. Indeed, the government submitted very little evidence at all. The plaintiffs submitted 21 declarations detailing dozens of intrusive seizures and dubious statements from federal officials telling officers to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens” and directing them to target Home Depot and 7-Eleven stores. The government, however, submitted only two declarations. The generality of these statements seemed to indicate precisely the plaintiffs’ contention—that ICE was targeting locations and people for enforcement based entirely on what they presumed to be “illegal” behavior and characteristics—how one looks, the language they speak, where they live, and the kind of work they do. 

As to the second inquiry, Justice Sotomayor found the evidence of “irreparable harm [was] sorely lacking.” In its application for a stay, the administration asserted the injunction “gravely chills enforcement efforts by improperly threatening federal officers with contempt and extensive judicial second-guessing even if they comply with its terms.” The application did not identify, however, any concrete harm that has or would soon be experienced. The government’s reply brief offered a recent immigration raid as its sole material evidence. Just three days after the Ninth Circuit declined to stay the injunction, federal agents used a Penske rental truck to target a Home Depot in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. The raid resulted in the arrest of 16 undocumented migrants in “the most high-profile immigration sweep in the [L.A.] area since” the district court issued the injunction. The ACLU of Southern California, one of the plaintiffs in Vasquez Perdomo, publicly stated its intent to review the “information about the raid to assess whether agents may have violated the court order.” This statement, the government contended, evinced the “obvious” chilling effect on “robust immigration enforcement.” As Justice Sotomayor points out, this is a mere hypothetical enforcement scenario that the administration “thinks might be chilled.” Indeed, no lawsuits have been filed regarding “Operation Trojan Horse,” as the government has dubbed the raid.

Notwithstanding that the administration provided no concrete proof of real and imminent harm, the “on-the-ground reality contradicts the Government’s. . . claim of a chilling effect.” Declarations from the plaintiffs demonstrated the government had not quelled its violent and arbitrary enforcement tactics. As if to corroborate, L.A. U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli released footage from Operation Trojan Horse, stating “For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again.” In the days that followed, the government engaged in multiple high-profile raids in L.A., often at Home Depots and sometimes conducting multiple raids in a single day. In a declaration, the Vasquez Perdomo plaintiffs also described the violent seizure of two Latino men who were thrown to the ground and against a wall in a donut shop by masked agents without being asked any questions, let alone about their legal status.

Despite these evidentiary deficiencies, the “Court yet again grant[ed] emergency relief to the Government.” The result is a signal to the administration that it may continue its racially discriminatory immigration policing practices, including violent enforcement tactics, and the judiciary will do little to prevent it from doing so. Indeed, the administration only appears to be emboldened. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called the ruling a “major victory” and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi expressed her satisfaction that “ICE can continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement.”

Immigration Related Cases from the Supreme Court’s 2025 Shadow Docket

Adapted from Brennan Center “Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker — Challenges to Trump Administration Actions”

Case Name	Issue	Ruled for Trump Administration	Reason Given
Noem v. National TPS Alliance	Whether the Department of Homeland Security can terminate a portion of the Temporary Protected Status designations relating to Venezuelan nationals	Yes	Yes
Noem v. Perdomo	Whether federal officers can conduct investigative stops in Southern California based on factors like ethnicity and language	Yes	No
Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D.	Whether the Department of Homeland Security can remove noncitizens to “third countries”	Yes	No
Noem v. Doe	Whether the secretary of Homeland Security can conduct en masse revocation of parole for approximately half a million noncitizens	Yes	No
Noem v. National TPS Alliance	Whether the Department of Homeland Security can terminate a portion of the Temporary Protected Status designations relating to Venezuelan nationals	Yes	No
A.A.R.P v. Trump	Whether the federal government could remove a group of Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act	No	Yes
Noem v. Abrego Garcia	Whether the federal government was required to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States	No	Yes
Trump v. J.G.G.	Whether the federal government could deport the named plaintiffs under the Alien Enemies Act	Yes	Yes
Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges	Whether the Fourth Circuit can remand a case concerning a policy governing immigration judges’ ability to speak publicly on issues relating to immigration back to the District Court for fact-finding if the normal venue for such a case is not functional	No	Yes

As Justice Sotomayor noted, the Vasquez Perdomo ruling is “troubling for another reason: it is entirely unexplained.” Indeed, the unsigned order proffered no reason for staying the district court’s prohibition of racial profiling in immigration policing, only a concurrence by Justice Kavanaugh and a dissent by Justice Sotomayor (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson). This is not all that surprising given the notable percentage of unreasoned immigration shadow rulings. Of the Court’s 25 shadow rulings favoring the administration, 7 were unaccompanied by any written explanation—4 of which were in immigration enforcement cases. It is significant that immigration cases account for more than 50% of the Court’s unreasoned shadow rulings, but even more consequential that half of all immigration cases were unreasoned. Interestingly, the Court did provide an explanation in the only three cases it ruled against the administration. When the Court abdicates its explanatory role, it effectively transfers interpretive authority to the executive branch.

In Vasquez Perdomo, two of the three arguments raised by the government were procedural—that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case and that the injunction was too broad. Substantively, the administration also asserted that its immigration policing practices did not violate the Fourth Amendment. In the absence of reasoning, we are left to speculate about which issue or issues influenced the Court’s decision to stay the injunction. Was the stay granted on procedural grounds? Or does the Court arguably seek to weaken decades of Fourth Amendment protection jurisprudence to allow the continued enforcement of racialized policing? We do not know, but the Trump administration has certainly taken its “major victory” to mean the latter. 

The Court’s failure to explain its rulings has allowed the Trump administration to adopt a maximalist interpretation of what the Court has authorized. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin trumpeted that “The Supreme Court simply applied longstanding precedent regarding what qualifies as ‘reasonable suspicion’ under the Fourth Amendment.” Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief who led “Operation at Large” in L.A., announced the agency had been vindicated by “the green light [from] SCOTUS” to continue its “lawful stops based on a hundred years of case law and Border Patrol expertise.” DHS echoed that the Supreme Court held that “no ‘indiscriminate stops’ [were] being made.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt solidified this narrative when she stated “The Supreme Court upheld the Trump Administration’s right to stop individuals in Los Angeles to briefly question them regarding their legal status because the law allows this and this has been the practice of the federal government for decades.” According to Leavitt, the “Supreme Court has re-affirmed” ICE’s enforcement of the nation’s “very clear immigration laws.”  

As the Brennan Center has pointed out, it is difficult to label any of these statements as a “mischaracterization when there was no analysis to mischaracterize in the first place.” Ultimately, the unexplained rulings have their most significant and dangerous impact on the Black, Brown, and immigrant communities subjected to the administration’s most extreme interpretation of the Supreme Court’s authorization.  

The Racialized Impact of Immigration Shadow Rulings

The Trump administration’s unprecedented number of emergency applications—and the Court’s consistent rulings in favor of the administration without explanation—have signaled that the judiciary will not prohibit or even limit the administration’s immigration enforcement. In the immigration context, these shadow rulings “may have life or death consequences.” And yet, “the Court allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless.” With “more and more of [the] most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of [the] emergency docket” and when the stakes are as high as our constitutional freedoms, the Court cannot relinquish its interpretative duty. In Vasquez Perdomo, the consequences of the Court’s unexplained decision are that the Trump administration can “all but [declare] that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.” Given the practical effect, recent immigration shadow rulings are less like a judicial exercise and more akin to policymaking that materially alters the on-the-ground realities for Black, Brown, and immigrant communities.

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Brionna Bolaños is a Bremond Fellow and a student at Stanford Law School.