"In Justice Brett Kavanaugh's telling, citizenship checks by ICE officers are as straightforward and frictionless as presenting yourself at the entrance to a Costco. Just show a membership card, and you'll be on your merry way. Kavanaugh wrote an opinion this week, concurring with the Court's majority, that would afford Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers broad latitude to detain and question someone based on factors such as ethnic appearance, speaking Spanish, and speaking English with an accent."
"The problem is that ICE does not say what it accepts as definitive proof of legal status. Is it a driver's license? A green card? A folder of immigration documents? Donald Trump's mass-deportation campaign has swept up U.S. citizens and permanent residents over the past several months, leaving some detained for days despite individuals presenting officers with evidence of their legal status."
""There is no national database or birth registry," Sandweg said. "There is no place for ICE to quickly check and do facial recognition. An officer's not going to just take someone's word for it if they have reasons to believe they're in the country unlawfully." It can take days or weeks for ICE or someone's attorney to track down their birth records, Sandweg added. "The idea that it's going to be done in a Home Depot parking lot is ludicrous.""
ICE officers could be permitted to detain and question individuals based on ethnic appearance, speaking Spanish, or speaking English with an accent, with encounter brevity weighed against profiling risks. ICE does not specify what documents constitute definitive proof of legal status, creating ambiguity during stops. Mass-deportation enforcement has resulted in U.S. citizens and permanent residents being detained even after presenting documentation. No national database or instant verification system exists for citizenship; locating birth records and resolving status can take days or weeks, undermining the notion of immediate, frictionless verification.
Read at The Atlantic
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