You can't refuse to be scanned by ICE's facial recognition app, DHS document say

This is going to be a huge pain. The US has a very fragmented identity system, and "move fast and break things" approaches like this to bring information from across government systems well outside the scope of what that information was collected for will result in real problems.

I worry what this app and systems like it might mean for me. I'm a US citizen, but I used to be an LPR. I never naturalized - I got my citizenship automatically by operation of law (INA 320, the child citizenship act). At some point I stopped being noodlesUK (LPR) and magically became noodlesUK (US Citizen), but not through the normal process. Presumably this means that there are entries in USCIS's systems that are orphaned, that likely indicate that I am an LPR who has abandoned their status, or at least been very bad about renewing their green card.

I fear that people in similar situations to my own might have a camera put in their face, some old database record that has no chance of being updated will be returned, and the obvious evidence in front of an officer's eyes, such as a US passport will be ignored. There are probably millions of people in similar situations to me, and millions more with even more complex statuses.

I know people who have multiple citizenships with multiple names, similar to this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45531721. Will these hastily deployed systems be able to cope with the complex realities of real people?

EDIT: LPR is lawful permanent resident, i.e., green card holder

LPR?? It is so frustrating to see acronyms without explanation. I looked in the article and searched the web.

They were born as a network printing system, and became a US citizen later in life.

I see you, Wintermute, I see you.

Legal permanent resident

I also searched the web: Laryngopharyngeal Reflux

(second result was Lawful Permanent Resident; make of that what you will)

tried searching for "noodlesUK" and didn't find anything meaningful

I’m with you on this, especially this year LPR seems to stand for license plate recognition (Flock and others) much more often.

> This is going to be a huge pain.

I struggle a lot when I see comments like this. The point is to be a pain. The point is to empower a national police force to subjugate the populace. The people in charge don’t care if it is “ able to cope with the complex realities of real people.”

I don’t understand why people, especially those like you who have complex realities, significantly more complex than me a white man who can trace his lineage to the 1600s in VA, are still giving any benefit of the doubt to these actions.

Someone I know is in a similar situation. She doesn't have the "naturalization documents". She has a passport, a ssn, and became a citizen before she turned 18.

Will ICE get it right? or will she be put into a prison for months with poor conditions, with an administration that does not want lawyers involved, with little ability to be found or call out for help?

This site likes to do the cowardly take of avoiding politics as long as it's advantageous. I'm going to look into these companies that produce this tech, and memorize the company names. If a resume ever passes my desk with a significant time at any of these companies, it's going to be a "no" from me. That's the small bit of power I hold.

echo face | lpr

It's the guy's username

>Will ICE get it right? or will she be put into a prison for months with poor conditions, with an administration that does not want lawyers involved, with little ability to be found or call out for help?

Better yet -- whisk her out of the country and then claim that she no longer has standing to sue.

Lawful Permanent Resident - https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/lawful-permanent-res....

It's the official status of green card holders.

Basically any "legal option", aka trying to legally fight illegal actions, requires letting people get hurt, or killed with no recourse while hoping some judge makes a decision and these people actually follow it.

You as an individual are defenseless against an incorrect and badly trained officer. This goes for local cops, federal cops, the twitter racists they brought in for ICE, etc.

Even if you oppose this with all your heart, if you're semi-intelligent you know the Admin is looking for an excuse to execute greater powers, so any kinetic action against the poorly trained, illegal actions of the state will only cause greater harm.

The worst part about this, is if we allow the slow "legal" process to take it's course, even if all this is proven illegal and thrown out, people released, etc, nothing will happen to the people who brought it on. Those who have the power to hold accountable only reached the position of power by being amenable to others in power. We likely wont have trials against the individuals picking mothers and fathers up off the street for a bonus, we wont have trials against the people who offered the bonuses either. They'll disappear and come back when the times are more kind to their sick world view of violence and cruelty.

Several results on the first page of Google for "lpr acronym" brings up "lawful permanent resident" or similar on my end.

>Will ICE get it right?

Hands on the ground don't read the laws, they only bring people before the person who actually knows them.

So no, ICE goons will do the basic thing -- check how white the person is, if not white enough, ask for documents, if documents are not convincing enough to them, snatch the person and let the more nuanced decisions to be made by those who can read.

Now if the person above them isn't agreeing with interpretation of the law that was used to issue those documents, it's sitting in the jail waiting for a judge time.

Your point about orphaned records resonates with me, but for a much simpler (or stupider) "use case". I took a domestic flight earlier this year and foolishly showed my British passport as ID. I had returned to the country the day before, it just happened to be in my pocket. My green card was clipped to the front of it. After checking the identification page, the TSA agent flipped through the pages of entry stamps, visas, etc. There, they found all my old US work visas, which have long since expired. The agent was convinced that, since I have expired visas, I must be here illegally and would have to "come with [her]". I pointed out that I have a valid green card, so I'm here legally, and that of course every visa in the book has expired because - well that's what they do. It took 30 minutes, multiple staff being called over, supervisors, etc before I was allowed to continue. At every step, the presence of the expired visas was a mark against me. Never got an apology or recognition that they were wrong, just eventually told I could be on my way. I truly fear that overzealous thugs will use any "evidence" to prove their presuppositions, like your orphaned records. (I've naturalized since then, and carry my passport card around religiously, for all the good it may do...)

Except that to all appearances, most of the time ICE isn't actually bringing them before people who actually know the law: they're throwing them in concentration camps.

Or even when they do end up before someone who knows the law, and that someone says "no, this is illegal, you have to set them free," they say "nah, we can do what we want" and put them on a plane to another country unrelated to the hapless detainee.

Can someone remind me why this fragmented identity system is preferable to a National ID?

I get that nobody wants to be tracked by the government. But we are already being tracked... just imperfectly to the point where innocent people are being jailed.

The question should be how accurate do we want the government's data on us to be. And how much of our taxpayer money do we want to spend on companies like Palantir to fuzzy match our data across systems when we could simplify this all with a primary key.

I think this is a valid question. The first thing that comes to mind for me is that multiple conflicting records introduce a doubt about the veracity of those records. So we might be able to consider that there has been a mistake made. Contrast that to a single identification with an error. In that case, there is no way to tell that an error has been made, and very little recourse.

I'm also thinking about people that could get caught up at the border crossing back and forth on the regular because of this.

If you get captured as part of this Mobile Fortify stuff, it sounds like it's going to merge it with all other CBP records you have (including all border entry interactions). Pulling up at the passport desk or at a land crossing is just begging for the officer to see that an ICE HSI agent pulled you at a protest and scanned your face to pull you in for "secondary screening" for "higher risk factors" going forward and throwing nice glowing red targets on your back.

> Can someone remind me why this fragmented identity system is preferable to a National ID?

States prefer having the power to issue ID cards and all of the control that grants them, they do not want to give up those powers, and politically the states have enough political and legal power to keep it this way.

Don’t make the mistake of presuming that this the result of a flawed cooperative system. It isn’t — it’s adversarial.

Just look at how long states fought to stop Real ID legislation.

Kristi Noem says no US citizens have been arrested so it's all OK, right?

If you're white British with an accent from our shores, you don't have a very serious problem. Sure you could get locked up somewhere away from a lawyer for a few days which is terribly inconvenient —- that clearly is happening to British citizens -- but nobody is going to pin you to the ground until you can't breathe. We appear to be getting the benefit of some doubt (unless we have opinions).

And if you are white and have an American accent you're going to be ignored entirely anyway.

Perhaps carry any paperwork you need, definitely carry any medication you'll need for a few days.

As to whether the officer will ignore evidence presented: that is clearly what they are being told to do. There are lawful citizens carrying their papers with them and there's video of an ICE agent mockingly saying "what papers?"

Because on the ground it's not about immigration status really, it's about race and white power and sheer numbers of arrests to meet Stephen Miller's quotas.

The correct answer is that you’re a US citizen unless proved not to be. That’s how the US has always worked, since we’ve made a long-term societal decision not to require papers or allow extrajudicial treatment of our people. This app and everything behind it is foundationally wrong and unamerican.

The databases you are concerned about are, most likely, not indexed by pictures so how does it matter if your identity is determined by face, fingerprints, passport, or another government identification document?

> a white man who can trace his lineage to the 1600s in VA

and where exactly did those white men in 1600s VA come from? right, you're an immigrant, you should be detained. the 1600s detail is just smoke. the only key thing you said was white. everything after that is just fluff for telling the story.

The thing I think most people forget is why society made the decision that the government requires a neutral third-party to be consulted to determine if there is probable cause to conduct a search of "persons, houses, papers, and effects".

Otherwise, you have a 'king' issuing general warrants which allow federal agents to search and seize anyone they want in the course of their investigations based on 'feels'. What makes it even worse is some court said racial profiling is sufficient reason to conduct a Terry stop to determine if the person is engaged in (civil) criminal activity and lets law enforcement demand they show their papers or be scanned by some dodgy app.

Who cares about correct answers. While technically correct, it means nothing in the world of today. Those in power believe unless you can prove you are a citizen, you are not. It is only correct answer if that's how people are behaving.

Because when it is convenient, people like to think state's rights means something and that the federal government is the wrong place for things like this. Giving a national ID cedes power from the states to the fed. Or so discussions go

The fun part is the Supreme Court has steadily eroded away any avenues for recourse. ICE can harass, abuse, even kill people with zero justification and any lawsuits will be thrown out.

This argument rings especially true in the U.S. where there is already a primary key in use every day. The SSN serves as a universal enumerator but without canonical data.

If the U.S. wanted to have a national ID system with rules, a defined scope, and redress procedures when things went wrong, and established it in the open, following a democratic process, I would be much happier.

The system we are getting instead has all the downsides of centralisation, with none of the upsides.

> Kristi Noem says no US citizens have been arrested so it's all OK, right?

They've certainly been held in custody, though.

Unfortunately, lots of people are going to arrive at a first-hand understanding of the oft-repeated systems adage: "the purpose of a system is what it does."

They put a whole lot of children onto a plane in the middle of the night to deport them. This was only stopped because laywers got wind of it and a federal judge intervened almost immediately on the weekend.

They are trying to bypass any review by being fast and creating facts that prevent US judges from any effective action as once people are outside US jurisdiction they have very little power.

And immigration judges are not actual judges, they are part of the executive.

> you're white British with an accent from our shores, you don't have a very serious problem. Sure you could get locked up somewhere away from a lawyer for a few days which is terribly inconvenient

This may be statistically true, but it's probably not very good advice. You might equally end up deported, now that they are running everyone through every database looking for things that might make you technically deportable that would never have come up under previous administrations:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g78nj7701o

You used to be able to get bailed while stuff got sorted out. That has changed. Now they keep you locked up for months, not days. How long are you prepared to hold out before agreeing to be deported despite being in the right? Racial profiling is certainly happening, but anyone can find themselves in this situation if the wrong database pings when they walk through an airport, and once you have been dropped into immigration detention, relying on your ethnicity to get you out is not a sure thing.

And Justice Kavanaugh said that even if someone is stopped and question by ICE, all they have to do is prove they're a citizen, and everything will be fine; there's really no inconvenience at all.

I assume you mean your parents naturalized? In which case I think you(r parents) should have been given a certificate of citizenship for you at that point, along with their own certificates of naturalization - was that not the case?

(Not suggesting anything about enforcement practices - just trying to understand what the edge cases are like.)

> This may be statistically true, but it's probably not very good advice.

Oh it was partly sarcastic ("terribly inconvenient" being something of a Britishism for really quite awful)

> And if you are white and have an American accent you're going to be ignored entirely anyway.

For now, until they move on to persecuting political adversaries.

bit of a motte and bailey, there.

you’re responding to a comment which states detainees are being sent to concentration camps, places like the deplorably named Alligator Alcatraz. i don’t think we should conflate that as deportation.

She was lying, is what I meant. She is a liar.

Re: Stafford Beer, we're beyond that in so many ways —- what in ordinary times might be considered an emergent, unthinking consequence of this system is what it was actually designed to do: the terror and arbitrary quality or even the perception that the USA is hostile to foreigners, is not an accidental, emergent quality of the operation. It's Stephen Miller's intent.

If you were to take a truly Stafford Beer approach to this, then you might say the purpose of this system is to desensitise Americans to the arbitrary and/or violent expression of presidential power.

But when you combine that with blowing up boats that contain no combatants and could have been interdicted, the use of selective prosecution, and the confidence with which they say, look, that is exactly what we're doing, even that feels like it is pretty close to text, certainly not unconscious subtext.

Well, in the 90s through the late 2000s there was a LOT of paranoia from the right, especially the evangelical right, as well as the milieu that is sorta called the "patriot movement" which includes minutemen militias, sovereign citizens, conspiracy theorists, separatists etc. regarding Government goons coming for them, "Mark of the Beast" stuff, and New World Order global cabals and what not. They even had magazines.[0] This is the precursor to the Obama FEMA Camp conspiracy theories (Which is ironic, since we are now building camps, just you know, for those people.)

Early 90's 2nd amendment anxiety, Ruby Ridge, assault weapon bans/Brady Bill and McVeigh's terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City propelled this stuff, and when we tried to impliment the national id (REAL ID Act) they very much flipped out, so they leaned on States Rights to shatter this notion, basically letting any state just not do it. 20 years later after REAL ID passed, you still don't need it unless you want to get on a plane.

It is highly ironic that the very same humans brains that constitute the right wing which railed against the REAL ID act are now basically demanding REAL ID Act. This is worth reflecting on.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060702184553/http://www.nonati...

How much you believe this might depend on which regional bubble you're in. I live in Montana and around here I have an expectation that while there might be the odd rogue law enforcement person roaming the state, generally things still work like America.

Meanwhile last week I was in LA for a family thing and caught some TV ads playing there. That dog-killing gnome woman was on TV saying something like "We will hunt you down and deport you, there is no hiding, leave now". Initially I thought I was watching some comedy skit, but no it was an official US government advert.

Whether I'm in Montana or in LA vastly changes my perception of what's considered ok in America today.

You're being too generous. Once you are targeted for whatever reason, you are not a citizen unless you manage to publicly prove that you are, and they will fight tooth and nail to deny you any such opportunity.

Was unamerican.

Seems to the rest of world that this is very much what America is now.

See: 8 U.S.C. § 1304(e) : "Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d)." [1] So aliens are indeed required to carry papers at all times. The balance between the rights of citizens and the obligations of aliens comes in the form of probable cause. It's similar to how a cop can't pull you over and just randomly search your car without reason, but if he has probable cause, then suddenly he can.

An ICE officer can't just detain somebody for having an accent or whatever, but if they have probable cause to think the person may not be a citizen then they have a substantial amount of leverage to affirm that. Probable cause has been tested somewhat rigorously in the courts and really means probable cause and not the knee-jerk obvious abuses like 'he's brown!'

[1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1304

Administration view is that if you're not citizen, you don't get due process[1]. Even if you're a citizen, if their system says your not, you'll never get brought in front of people who know the law. Why due process only works if everyone gets it otherwise the government will say your a class that doesn't get it even if you aren't.

1)https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-trump-says-immigrants-...

> and where exactly did those white men in 1600s VA come from? right, you're an immigrant,

Not according to immigration law, which is all that matters for the current discussion. The parent of you comment made a point which you failed to notice.

BTW holier-than-thou attitudes and picking fights with friends are largely responsible for where we are. Spotting them is also a good hint for bot detection.

I thought LPR stands for "line printer".

the Supreme Court has recently determined, in Noem v. Perdomo, that racial profiling by ICE is indeed completely .. acceptable? idk what the right word for 'legal but not legal' is.

I struggle a lot when I see comments like this.

This comes off to me as a more refined "Yes of course, what did you expect you naive person ?" type of comment you often find online (somewhat common among radical leftists)

Maybe commenter agrees with you that the point is to empower a national police to subjugate the populace (This opinion does not raise any of my eyebrows) but do you think this is going to reach people who don't already think that ? To put any doubt in their minds ? I understand the anger the current situation is causing and I am guilty of breaking the hn guidelines a few times myself but I am also convinced of the need to actually explain what you think are the actual problems from the ground up rather than just casting your own conclusions onto people, no matter how obvious they seem to you

So I did think they did a good job with their comment

> Will these hastily deployed systems be able to cope with the complex realities of real people?

Cope with?! These systems and procedures are designed to circumvent the "complex" realities and give cover for deporting citizens and legal residents. So maybe you have a passport, but you've been attending protests, and perhaps even dared to be lippy towards an ICE agent; your passport is going to the shredder, and your ass to Liberia.

I don't know how folk keep assuming DHS/ICE are acting in good faith - a shocking number of people continue to be oblivious until the agents come for them or theirs.

Nope. I was born abroad to a U.S. citizen who didn’t meet the physical presence criteria to pass on citizenship. I came to the U.S. as a child on an IR-2 green card, then when the CCA became law I automatically became a citizen. My parents applied for a passport for me, and in the process the department of state presumably shredded my green card. I don’t have a certificate of citizenship and I’m not eligible to apply for one, as I no longer live in the U.S.

Unfortunately USCIS doesn’t know anything about this (as it was all handled by the department of state), and presumably thinks I’m an alien who abandoned their status.

who's picking a fight? you tell me the sky is red, and i'm going to tell you you're wrong. if you think any of my comments sound like bots, then boy, i don't know

> Not according to immigration law

You overlooked the fact that ICE goons are breaking the law on a regular basis.

It's such a shock he turned out to be a weasel, eh? He seemed like such a straight-backed, moral, uncompromised person in his confirmation hearings.

That ruling wasn't based on race, it was based on a whole bunch of factors (including: high amount of illegal immigrants in the area in question, jobs and locations that attract illegal immigrants due to not needing paperwork, etc). It was also not final, it was temporary pending another appeal.

"Radical Leftist" is a term the current administration is using to brandish anyone who disagrees with them, particularly the Democratic party, it's donors and former Trump officials critical of him.

They've already been doing that, just not at scale yet. Trump's political enemies like Latisha James and officials who protest ICE or try to show up at ICE facilities to inspect them.

> 20 years later after REAL ID passed, you still don't need it unless you want to get on a plane

... or shop at Home Depot.

> It is highly ironic that the very same humans brains that constitute the right wing which railed against the REAL ID act are now basically demanding REAL ID Act

Ironic, coincidence, or all according to plan?

The so-called right wing has been being led around by the corporate lobbyist agenda for decades now. It's not a terrible stretch to imagine the same corpo political operatives that were behind the ratcheting authoritarian ID requirements are now behind the fascist kidnap squads as they tighten the noose around our society.

A bit paranoid and non-actionable, of course.

Wow, I see. In a sane world, I would assume the passport would be enough, so hopefully this won't cause you issues, but I can certainly imagine things going wrong. That was quite fascinating, thanks for explaining.

This isn’t new under Trump. But it’s entertaining watching everyone pretend it is.

Obama had similar rules around standing deportation orders and how quickly they could be executed once an alien was in custody.

If you’ve stood before a judge, argued why you should be allowed to stay and lost, you have a standing deportation order. That’s due process. Nothing has been denied.

It makes for a great talking point but is a pretty shallow analysis of what is going on or their historical relevance.

You’re ignoring the cases where people produce fraudulent documentation proving they are a citizen.

Do you just throw up your hands “i guess there is nothing we can do”?

What I find entertaining as a non-US citizen is how border enforcement is table stakes in every other country I’ve lived in (5 so far). Even the left doesn’t question it, it’s a basic function of a government.

Even the less developed countries have relatively straightforward enforcement. You produce proof you’re there legally or you’re put on the next flight home.

Since I lived in the US people keep asking me why some Americans don’t want border security. I don’t have a good answer.

If the computer system says you are not a citizen but you produces then clearly one is wrong.

It’s no different than a US citizen having an arrest warrant but then showing the cop a final disposition from the court showing the charges were dismissed.

Whats next? It’s certainly not the cop just walking away.

You detain the person until the discrepancy can be resolved.

Are some innocent people going to be held in custody? Yes, in both cases. But until a better approach can be found (other than just ignoring it), it’s how it works.

> You’re ignoring the cases where people produce fraudulent documentation proving they are a citizen.

Citation needed lol.

“In Fiscal Year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in the Cincinnati area alone intercepted and identified more than 6,800 fraudulent, counterfeit, or stolen documents.”

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cincinnati-...

That ONE CBP office in the US. And it’s not even in a state with a high population of illegal aliens. There are 20 offices in the US.

And sure creating fraudulent documents from scratch isn’t easy. But it’s not that hard to use someone else’s identity to get documents that support US citizenship. Hell, a paper social security card is proof as long as it doesn’t say “NOT WORK AUTHORIZED on it.

So it wouldn’t even be that unusual to locate an alien that the database says (correctly) has a deportation order but for them to claim US citizenship and even produce a document that looks like they are.

You can even read a nice CBP report on the problems they have with fraudulent documents.

https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2025-09/O...

The ruling was just ”let’s play for time, this is looking fun and interesting. Keep it up team!”

I don't think it is better, I think the US should implement one unified national ID system.

A passport is a national ID.

In this case you're detained indefinitely and not likely to see a judge for several months at best. If you ever see the light of day again.

I happen to agree with you. I haven't fully accepted yet the new era where words are meaningless. I meant actual radical leftists, the ones who believes capitalism is the source of all issues even though they can't always explain clearly what is is. Not just people who think the rule of law is good and should be maintained.

What do you think a good response would look like? I thought about linking to comments from those in charge but I admit I was too lazy to collect them. At this point I’m lost on what more to say to people other than “You know those problems you’re pointing out? Well if you listen to the people in charge they are saying they aren’t problems.”

I just realized I inverted the sense of what you were saying about opposition to REAL ID. The way I remember it, it was the right wing cheering on the "Patriot" act, "REAL ID", and all those general "homeland security" laws back then. Yes, there was red tribe grassroots opposition in general terms, but that kind of thing always gets brushed aside when "their" team is doing it. See also the 2nd amendment - individual liberty and "from my cold dead hands", but then zero reservations about actively cheering the government agents who summarily executed Breonna Taylor. Or these masked abduction squads currently roaming the streets - blatantly anti-American anti-Constitutional, and if JOEBIDEN had done anything resembling this we would have never heard the end of it. But since it's "their guys" doing it it's just framed as some noble exercise of the government agents' own liberty to cleanse the undesirables.

Only in extraordinary cases where immigration status can’t be proven. If your document is suspect it’s examined. You can provide additional documents and interviewed about how you obtained your status.

If you are a US citizen they can call your county that holds the birth certificate, take affidavits from parents or other family members.

I mean the fact we haven’t heard of any US citizens detained for months (as you put it) is a good indication it’s not happening because you know the media would blast that story to the top for weeks.

Ideally, the government wouldn't be doing anything that requires tracking like this. We got by for hundreds of years without it.

While Obama, Biden, and Trump all had cruel deportation policies, the previous two didn't have 5-figure bonuses for a deportation.

Additionally, the performative method of how they're looking for deportations, its random, violent, and meant to send a message of powerlessness and fear.

The point is fear and cruelty. As was Family separation under Biden, the cruelty is accelerating.

> But until a better approach can be found (other than just ignoring it), it’s how it works

How it works now in Trump 2.

Obama, notably, had a better approach, with a faster rate of deportation of illegal migrants, and he did so without absurd threatening intimidating cruelty, or ordering arbitrary kidnappings off the street by violent anonymised paramilitary thugs. There was a really quite high level of voluntary compliance with that system.

The only reason this is all happening is that Stephen Miller wants to beat Obama's number: it consumes him that during Trump 1 they didn't get close to the performance of ICE under Obama 2. And he wants it to be showy, threatening, arbitrary, militarised and for it to overpoweringly favour white people.

It's legitimately crazy to normalise it by framing it in normal terms like you are doing. There is nothing normal about this, nothing essential, procedure-based or unavoidable. It's an attempt to build a white police state.

Well, I think this would be a great response. You can basically say the same thing but the first sounds like "it's like your opinion, man" whereas the second one hits harder

“You know those problems you’re pointing out? Well if you listen to the people in charge they are saying they aren’t problems" is much better than "Duh, what did you expect ?"

No matter how obvious you think the context that led to your conclusion is, it's always worth it to share it along, especially in times of information bubbles

Trump is deporting US citizen with no due process. Lets not pretend this happened under Obama or Biden.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/28/man-deported-to-lao...

You are describing rules that pertain to non-citizens. U.S. citizens are not required to carry proof of citizenship ever and they can't legally be arrested or detained for this. The most that legally ICE can do to a citizen is briefly stop them to ask questions. Anything beyond that is an illegal arrest, full stop.

There is a lot of constitutional law here, not a lot of ambiguity. While mistakes happen, and ICE is clearly becoming more eager to violate the law (see TFA), that doesn't mean we should be unclear about what the law says. In particular, prioritizing the (incorrect) results from an app over any sort of claim or presentation of proof is illegal.

With due respect, that problem is on CBP. I am somewhat (albeit decreasingly) sympathetic to the unique challenges that immigration enforcement agencies face in the US. We live in a country where the citizens have decided democratically that no US citizen will ever have to carry proof of US citizenship, and moreover, that national ID and standardized proof-of-citizenship passports should not even be mandatory for citizens to possess, let alone carry. We even decided that the Federal Government should be explicitly banned from creating those forms of ID.

We made these decisions for various reasons, but broadly because the voters felt that US citizenship and lawfullness should be presumptions, rather than something you had to prove in order to enjoy your rights as a citizen.

For an immigration agent, this is really tough. You have to identify unauthorized immigrants in an environment where you can't just require lawful citizens to carry ID or proof of citizenship. You legally can't arrest or (more than briefly) detain a US citizen for failure to carry citizenship documents. You have to walk on eggshells even with actual unauthorized immigrants, to avoid violating the law. And our proof-of-identity document systems are deliberately decentralized and unreliable, so you can't just check a master database. It's a tough problem!

But that's the way the cookie crumbles. We designed our society to make this kind of "papers please" enforcement difficult, which means that immigration enforcement needs to be smarter and more savvy, or else we need to actually change the laws. What ICE and CBP are trying to do now is just to ignore the law, and that doesn't work. Citizens' built this law to protect their rights; you can't just take away those rights because CBP have a tough job.

I’m sorry you’re saying under Obama when the system said someone had a deportation order and the person produced fraudulent documents ICE just threw up their hands and said “oh well!”?

Nobody is saying citizens need to carry papers.

My only point is that when a deportation order shows a name and face, people can still produce fraudulent documents showing they are a citizen.

It’s not a uniquely American problem.

You realize ICE responded to this claim?

https://x.com/dhsgov/status/1983550041496117532?s=46

“This temporary restraining order was not served to ICE until AFTER the criminal illegal alien was removed….Following his heinous crimes, he lost his green card, and an immigration judge ordered him removed in 2006. 20 years later, he tried a Hail Mary attempt to remain in our country by claiming he was a U.S. citizen.”

Don’t be an idiot.

The point is that in Trump 2.0 ICE tactics have changed up from targeted raids (where a few US citizens might have had time to identify themselves as such in the process of an enforcemenr action) to untargeted sweeps where people are being dragged off the street based on their ethnicity and dumped in holding camps in other states by masked goons who are not at all interested in the process because they are literally working to quotas and bonuses.

The rate of US citizens being arrested and held for days has increased exponentially and the process no longer cares about fairness; it cares about detention, intimidation and causing fear.

This change is obvious, marked to anyone paying attention, and not remotely normal.

No, the right wing fielded opposition to the real ID laws. See this 2008 CATO report[0]. There was a bipartisan movement against this at the time.

But yes, far less bothered by stingrays, ALPR national surveillance, etc in more recent times.

I just want to give people their dues on this. For example Rand Paul introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act which would have banned no-knock warrants if it had passed.[1]

[0] https://www.cato.org/policy-report/july/august-2008/real-id-...

[1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s3955

> Rand Paul introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act which would have banned no-knock warrants if it had passed

Yes, Rand Paul deserves credit for this. But isn't he basically like an exception that proves the rule?

The 2005 vote on the REAL ID ACT was 218 Yea 9 Nay for Republicans, and 42 Yea 152 Nay for Democrats. Ron Paul was one of those Nays. He deserves credit along with the other 8. But overall, it was still a Republican bill. That's what my original comment was referring to.

And it's great that Republican opposition to REAL ID built. But of course the immediate question is how much of that opposition was due to being bored with Bush, and having a Democratic administration on the horizon? Just like the dishonest cries about fiscal responsibility.

Because while it's important to give credit and look to build pro-freedom coalitions, it's also important to call out the rank hypocrisy. And rank hypocrisy seems to be the entire platform of the Republican party these days. For example, I don't see any of these purported 2nd amendment enthusiasts forming militias to defend their states against the federalized abduction squads.