This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 7 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

Here’s a headline you might not have expected from the Los Angeles Times: “ICE arrests plummet in L.A., data show.” Over the past month, immigration arrests in the seven counties around Los Angeles have fallen to about half of what they were the previous month — and experts say there’s a simple reason for that.

Last month, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop arresting suspected undocumented immigrants based solely on their race, ethnicity, language and the type of work they do — otherwise known as racial profiling. That meant the Trump administration had to stop randomly showing up at worksites and arresting people with no criminal history.

But then on Wednesday, something changed. Video from the MacArthur Park area of L.A. shows federal agents loading themselves into a rented moving van. According to the Los Angeles Times, that truck drove to a Home Depot and “pulled up to laborers who had gathered in the parking lot. The driver told them in Spanish he was looking for workers.”

That’s when federal agents spilled out and started chasing after those laborers, ultimately arresting 16 people. The L.A. Times reported that one of the people detained in the raid was a woman wearing an apron who had been selling food and drinks from a folding table.

The Department of Homeland Security suggested that this raid was targeting MS-13 gang members, but, as the Times noted, agents appeared to arrest only day laborers and street vendors, who are often extorted by the gangs.

Local officials in Los Angeles have said Wednesday’s operation looks a lot like the kind of racial profiling raids that the courts explicitly told ICE they could no longer conduct in Southern California. The city’s mayor, Karen Bass, questioned the federal government’s claim that the immigrants targeted in this raid were “gang members” and asked authorities to share any evidence they had to prove so. Bass described the raid as the “essence of racial profiling” and ordered city officials to investigate whether it violated the July court order.

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Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Trump administration decided to take a new approach. In a new court filing, they asked the Supreme Court to overturn that judge’s order and let them please go back to profiling as many brown, Spanish-speaking day laborers as they want.

The government’s filing reads, in part: “Needless to say, no one thinks that speaking Spanish or working in construction always creates reasonable suspicion. Nor does anyone suggest those are the only factors federal agents ever consider. But in many situations, such factors — alone or in combination — can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States.”

That is a pretty unbelievable statement. The federal government is saying it should be able to consider “speaking Spanish or working in construction” alone when determining whether to arrest someone on suspicion of being undocumented.

To sum this all up: Donald Trump’s immigration officers have engaged in widespread racial profiling to sweep up immigrants throughout the Los Angeles area. A court ordered them to stop. Then, federal agents appeared to just start doing it again, arresting day laborers and street vendors in what officials said looks like racial profiling. And now the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to make it all OK.