Prove you’re not a camel. Props to Timothy Snyder for calling that one.
Friendly reminder: suspending habeas corpus for illegal immigrants means that you have NO LEGAL RECOURSE WHATSOEVER if ICE wrongly detains you.
You cannot in any way prove in a court of law that you are not an illegal immigrant if you have no right to have your detention as an illegal immigrant challenged in court.
It DOES NOT MATTER if you have great evidence that you’re not an illegal immigrant if illegal immigrants lose their right to trial. It means NOTHING because you then immediately lose your right to legal defence as soon as ICE detans you.
Only people acting in good-faith care about your “proof”
Not if the people examining my documents are morons, no.
I have a birth certificate, I have a passport and a passport card. None of that is a defense against “It’s fake”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/us-citizen-detained-ice-real-id
I’ve been thinking about getting a passport card just to have a proof of citizenship in my wallet at all times.
Pretty much. The fact is that ICE does stuff like beat up and arrest a state-level union president because they don’t like the color of his skin.
Another thing to consider is the recording of a ICE kidnapping where the person said they were a natural born citizen, when asked for proof they didn’t have their birth certificate on them… While in the car… driving to work.
The white paper birth certificate… That in my case is over 50 years old, and embossed with a stamp the clerks office likely got at the local trophy shop. That’s it.
Drivers license including the Real ID ones don’t count it seems.
So, yes. It’s being used to indiscriminately arrest who they want like the Stasi fucks they are.
Literally all you really need, fundamentally, is to have memorized your SSN. Your SSN’s validity cant be faked. It proves you are who you say you are at the drop of a hat. If its valid enough for a bank to loan you money through a phone, just because you know your name and your SSN and those match, then it should be good enough for ICE. Its good enough for normal law enforcement already.
And yes, many undocumented people have fake SSNs, but they are not real numbers that tie properly to persons name. They wouldnt pass an EVerify system
SSN is not proof of identity.
Is a social security card a form of ID?
No, a Social Security card is not a form of ID. It only verifies the connection between a name and a Social Security Number.
As it does not have a photograph or other features needed to confirm identity, it cannot be used to confirm someone’s identity.
My birth certificate doesnt have a photo of me on it either.
DLs and other photo documentation are easily faked in comparison to a SSN.
My comment was meant in the assumption that you have a normal form of ID as well. While your ID could easily be faked to show your picture, only you should know your social security number. Thereby identifying the validity of your photo ID.
Regardless, many government databases should have your photo ID from drivers licenses, passports, etc, tied to your social
I have literally used only my SSN to prove my identity to a game warden before. I didnt have my ID because I was out fishing in a boat. We got checked for licenses. I gave him my social and all was good. ICE should be no different than that
Most kids don’t have the set of photos you describe in government databases.
Are children the target audience of the article?
Are children likely to be detained independently of a guardian?
ICE has been raiding elementary schools in the past few days.
I dont expect 2nd graders to read the article.
Watson says that, looking back, he’s not confident that the damage long-term imprisonment did to his mind and body was worth it to remain in the country. “As lovely as America sounds, it’s not everything. It’s okay to start back over and live your life, because sometimes you’re gonna sit there for a long time if you’re fighting,” he says. His advice to other citizens in ICE detention is to remain open to giving up, if deportation means getting out of jail
Only do that if you know you’ll actually be deported - rather than imprisoned offshore.
I fully agree with the comments criticizing the ICE and proof of citizenship. The shitty part, the judicial branch is not arresting nor penalizing the business owners hiring illegal labor and a lot of those fuckers voted for this shit.
Yeah, that’s the problem isn’t it? I have to assume that if there was nowhere to work, there’d be less folks coming here illegally. It’s just known you can come, work your ass off, get paid pretty well in cash, and send that shit home on a weekly basis. And there’s rules about what can get sent home and there are ways folks skirt that all the time. It’s a whole economy. And nothing is done about the people facilitating it. It’s arresting the drug user, but leaving the dealers in place.
not if someone expects me to produce documents randomly on the sidewalk.
Without due process they can just take your documents and poof! What documents?
Good luck once locked up without the right to an attorney
Well, for me personally, all they would need to do is run my finger prints as my prints have been in the system since I was in highschool for employment background checks.
However, that would assume that the thugs were competent and acting in good faith, which they are not.
It’s like proving to a Nazi, you don’t have Jewish ancestry in 1938.
There is an important and subtle distinction to be made here. A lot of noise is made calling people who are here without authorization “illegals”, but that’s not always true. Being present in the country without authorization is not automatically a criminal matter. It is true that many of the avenues for being here without authorization (crossing illegally, overstaying a visa) also violate the law, but that is handled as a separate matter.
Since immigration status is mostly a civil matter, ot a criminal one, these immigration courts are not under the Judicial Branch, like criminal courts are. They are actually “administrative courts” which are part of the Department of Justice, under the President, just like ICE is.
So while the courts occasionally provide a check on this Predident’s power, the immigration courts never will. They ultimately report to the President through the DoJ, and the President has much more direct influence over it. So it doesn’t surprise me that these people are stuck in a Kafkaesque hell, where ICE ignore their pleas that they are citizens and says “tell it to the judge”, and when they finally get to the judge they get ignored.
Is it any wonder that Trump was so dead set against the immigration bill last year? He needed the process to stay chaotic, in order to have a better chance of winning.
So many things wrong with this headline.
- It is ‘nearly impossible to escape’ FOR ANYONE, not just US citizens. By design.
- You can be in the US legitimately without being a citizen.
- ANY AND EVERY detainment by ICE is wrongful.
- You are not legally required to provide ID to authorities. In some states you can be compelled to provide your full name and possibly your address, ONLY if there is reasonable suspicion against you.
Proving you’re a citizen or not is irrelevant since ICE are not enforcing immigration law they’re conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign.
Man, I can’t wait for them to try to grab someone with concealed carry.
police arrest armed people all the time. or they shoot them.
even having two naked guys with guns vs one body armored guy with a gun puts the odds in the naked guys’ favor.
They’re wearing body armor. Dude with a concealed gun likely ends up dead, and ICE gets no charges because they were afraid.
Kevlar isn’t magic. For a pistol round, it might absorb a bunch of the energy, but it’s still like getting kicked in the chest by a horse. And that’s only for one. Or, if they’re ceramic plates, they become much less effective after the first impact.
And that’s for a pistol. Consider if they come to the wrong house and the person at the door has a shotgun.
if only they had some sort of id card they kept on their person at all times… The government would know who they are. They are explicitly against this. So, “leopards ate my face”
The government doesn’t care. They won’t look at any proof even if you could provide it.
Due process is how you prove who you are. They’re not doing any due process.
Or they’ll just call your ID a fake. It’s racism through and through.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/us-citizen-detained-ice-real-id
They call your ID fake…
