| ▲ | matthewdgreen 6 days ago |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | UncleEntity 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | dylan604 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | tremon 6 days ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | somenameforme 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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 |
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| ▲ | convolvatron 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | Izkata 5 days ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | actionfromafar 5 days ago | parent [-] | | The ruling was just ”let’s play for time, this is looking fun and interesting. Keep it up team!” |
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| ▲ | matthewdgreen 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The issue is fake documents. People in the country illegally have already shown a willingness to break the law and the typical consequence for presenting fake documents is nonexistent - it's deportation, exactly as if they didn't even bother trying. So we've created a scenario where fake documents are widespread, especially in areas with high numbers of illegal immigrants where they are readily available. So how do you discourage this? We could start prosecuting and imprisoning people with fake documents, but that would send our already absurd prison population through the roof and cost immense amounts of money. An alternative way is exactly what this article is about. | | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Fake documents are a problem for immigration enforcement officials. They are a problem that makes immigration enforcement harder, and requires officials to be more creative. They are not a problem for me, a legitimate US citizen, such that they require my rights or freedom to be curtailed in any way. And let’s be clear: that’s precisely what TFA is talking about: an unreliable, unauthenticated database that officials will believe over my legitimate and truthful statements of citizenship, and over my legitimate and truthful presentation of US citizenship evidence. As I said in a different comment, we US folks have decided as a society that we don’t want to have mandatory difficult-to-forge national ID. When asked this question democratically, US voters and their representatives have repeatedly* turned down this option and explicitly banned the Federal government from issuing Federal ID cards outside of optional passports for international travel. We made this decision precisely because we distrust the sort of Federal government that would require us to carry that sort of document. There is nothing accidental about this, and you can find explicit statements of this bipartisan consensus all over real Federal legislation; there’s really no possibility that we did this by accident or without due consideration of the tradeoffs. You’re correct that this lack of standardized documentation makes the immigration enforcer’s job harder, since they can’t just force people to produce proof-of-citizenship on demand and they can’t detain US citizens, and they can’t necessarily trust every paper document they’re given. I’m sympathetic! But that’s the tradeoff we’ve made as a society. The answer is not “throw out the rule book and risk depriving citizens of their rights because our job is hard.” The answer is: respect the rules you were given and due the best job you can without depriving US citizens of their rights. And PS this situation is hardly unique: we also make ordinary cops’ jobs harder by requiring them to respect suspects’ civil rights and demanding probable cause to make an arrest. It’s tough! The result there is that cops have to work harder and be smarter; they don’t just get to detain anyone they want just because they might vaguely hypothetically be a criminal. | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The chances of a citizen being targeted by ICE is low. The chances of a citizen being unable to compellingly correct that mistake is very low. The chance of a mismatch on the database is very low. The chance of there being a mismatch that isn't immediately obvious to the ICE officer is astronomically low. And now you need every single one of these events to occur, simultaneously. The chances of this happening is practically zero. And even if somehow this does happen, which it won't, it's at worst a significant inconvenience for the person who somehow managed to win the reverse lottery. Though in this case perhaps it's not even entirely the reverse lottery - because there'd be a big paycheck awaiting them in lawsuits, crowdfunding, media fees, and so on. I simply don't see false positives as a realistic concern here, whatsoever. Going with your analog with the police I'd mention e.g. DNA tests or finger prints. These do have non-zero failure rates, but they're still regularly used to convict people simply because the failure rate is seen as acceptably low. And in this case, the conditional probability we're speaking of is probably even lower, and with much less at stake! | | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Today I watched a video of a US citizen being dragged out of a car and arrested because ICE ran into her car. She was held for the better part of a day without medical care. So no, I'm not going to assign highly-optimistic data-free priors to the masked agents operating these agencies, nor am I going to assume that (for the first time in my experience) a hastily-assembled government database is accurate. You're free to hope for these things if you want. But hoping does not make them true. | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 3 days ago | parent [-] | | This video? [1] Did you watch a different video? Not only did she obviously hit the car, she railed into it. Check the moment of impact at 2:20. She bounces a way bigger SUV with a little sedan. It also looks like she never once touched her brakes. I find that part difficult to believe, but did you ever see her brake lights come on? So one could try to claim it was an accident because the ICE vehicle was turning around in the middle of the street, but that's also probably impossible as it was a giant scene full of adults acting like children with the ICE car right in the middle of the road. You can't be that aloof. The reason divides on these sort of issues are probably irreconcilable is because of stuff like this. So many people seem to have missed the point of the childhood story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. [1] - https://youtu.be/mSgwQVjqSBg?t=131 |
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| ▲ | drewbug01 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The chances of a citizen being targeted by ICE is low. You can’t start with this premise, though. Recent rulings allow stops based on “probable cause” such as a combination of “speaks Spanish”, “is brown”, and “is in a place where we think illegal immigrants might be”. So like: any Latino US citizen, who happens to be working someplace like a landscaping company. Or a kitchen. The idea that citizens aren’t likely to be targets is now laughable. And we have ample reporting indicating that in fact, citizens are being detained, for hours and hours (if not longer). | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Low doesn't mean zero, it means low. You might notice I used different terms for the different groupings, with the chance of a citizen being targeted by ICE as the highest overall at "low". ICE has so far deported more than 400,000 illegal aliens. [1] If they were "only" 99% accurate, you'd be able to find thousands of instances where things went wrong. Instead, you're looking more at tens to low hundreds of instances, so it's likely that their overall accuracy is somewhere in the 99.9% to 99.99% range. And as I was demonstrating above, the conditional probabilities required for a false positive from this app mean that it's practical effective accuracy rate will likely be 100%. [1] - https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/23/new-milestone-over-2-mil... | | |
| ▲ | drewbug01 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > Instead, you're looking more at tens to low hundreds of instances …based on what, the independent research ProPublica did? DHS doesn’t even keep statistics on how many citizens they detain so I’m not sure we should be assuming the numbers here are that low. | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 3 days ago | parent [-] | | What I mentioned already. Being incorrectly detained isn't consequence free. People can and have successfully sued, winning substantial sums of money in the process. And we also live in the social media age where nothing gets more of those sacred likes and other such things (including that sweet sweet GoFundMe money) than framing oneself as a victim. And on top of this all immigration enforcement runs contrary to the corporate media's biases. They are actively trying to make a mountain out of every single molehill, yet they are clearly finding themselves annoyingly short of molehills. In other words, ICE's errors are highly visible. That my approximation aligns with ProPublica's (which is probably a higher end ballpark since I doubt they were especially critical of any claims they discovered) is unsurprising. | | |
| ▲ | drewbug01 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > People can and have successfully sued, winning substantial sums of money in the process. I would be quite interested to know if you can cite sources on that. > And we also live in the social media age where nothing gets more of those sacred likes and other such things (including that sweet sweet GoFundMe money) than framing oneself as a victim. What, exactly, is your argument here? That it’s all fine because you think people will play victim and strike it rich on GoFundMe? I’m struggling to see what point you’re actually trying to make. > They are actively trying to make a mountain out of every single molehill, yet they are clearly finding themselves annoyingly short of molehills. Sources? Please list out what molehills were made into mountains. What evidence do you have that they are actively trying to do it because of their “bias”? You’re regurgitating tired, right-wing talking points. Back it up with evidence if you’re so sure about it. > which is probably a higher end ballpark since I doubt they were especially critical of any claims they discovered Well, sure. Let’s see some evidence that they weren’t critical enough with their reporting. My understanding is that they are a highly respected journalistic outfit. What makes you so sure they were playing fast and loose with the facts? | | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Here [1] is a case where somebody won $150,000 for being detained for 12 hours. The cases aren't especially difficult to search for yourself, so I'm not sure why you're asking me. I can actually respond to everything else you said with an example from ProPublica's story you cited [2], to emphasize that I'm not cherry picking cases to make my point! Scroll down about 25% of the way and you'll get their first inline video example of "Rafie Ollah Shouhed". Now go frame by frame at about the 5.5s mark. You can see the individual in question charge and then thrust his body in front of the responding ICE officer (watch how he leans left into the officer before they are in physical contact) to create a physical altercation. He then attempts to grab the legs of the officer as he jogs away. The same guy then comes out for more, and pushes one ICE officer dealing with somebody else, and then starts grappling with another ICE officer before he's finally tackled and arrested. Media Framing: - Surveillance footage shows Ice agents pushing 79-year-old man to the ground (Guardian) - Car wash owner files $50M claim over injuries sustained during immigration raid (ABC) - 79-year-old US citizen pinned by ICE agents (Fox) - California wash owner tackled, arrested 'impeding' ICE arrest (USA Today) - U.S. citizen files civil rights claim after ICE raid at his car wash (NBC) As this is the first video ProPublica featured, presumably they think that's the most compelling case. In any case it's certainly one of their cases which are supposed to be injust, yet there wasn't even the slightest injustice there whatsoever. And now he wants $50 million lol. I'd also add that ProPublica implies that the government dropping charges in cases is because of lack of merit. In reality it's going to be a balance of gain:loss from such. This is one of those cases where the charges were dropped, but obviously that was not done for lack of merit. [1] - https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/florida-sheriffs... [2] - https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-... | | |
| ▲ | drewbug01 2 days ago | parent [-] | | We clearly aren’t watching the same video. What you see as “thrusting” sure looks to me like he was trying to stop himself from a full-on run - why did he grab a door handle on the wall? Why would you grab and pull like that if you were trying to tackle? And “grabbing his legs”… come on man. That looks a hell of a lot like an old man flailing after getting tackled. And you think he grappled with the officer before getting arrested outside? It looks like precisely the opposite. I’m sorry, I just can’t buy what you’re selling. | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme a day ago | parent [-] | | I didn't say he was trying to tackle, I said he was trying to create a physical altercation, probably with the premeditated goal of trying to sue and/or buy time for the likely illegal aliens working for him - not only for their sake, but because hiring illegal aliens is a felony. I don't believe you believe that he just 'accidentally fell' exactly on the officer exactly as he came into range. The reason he grabbed the door handle is because in his mind he thought he was going to be the one knocking the officer down. He's a big and very aggressive guy that's this spry at 79 - I'm positive this wasn't even remotely close to his first rodeo. He grabbed on to help maintain balance. As another issue he wasn't running anywhere in particular, except towards the officer. As soon as he collides, he then gets up from crashing into him he turns around and starts racing back towards him again. He then pushes the other officer at 28 seconds and begins grappling with yet a third officer at 30 seconds. He's then tackled at 35 seconds. Given he was not arrested for intentionally crashing into the first officer I think ICE was generally trying their hardest to ignore him, but that probably became impossible about the point he actively decided to start grappling with them. | | |
| ▲ | drewbug01 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | > probably with the premeditated goal of trying to sue and/or buy time for the likely illegal aliens working for him My bad. Didn’t realize you already knew his heart, and that this was premeditated. And that you clearly know who his employees were and that they were here illegally. Whoops. Since we know they’re guilty, I guess all that’s left to do is find the evidence! Enjoy yourself. I won’t engage in this uncharitable, ugly discussion with you anymore. I hope you find peace in you heart, and I hope others treat you with the charity and dignity you’re clearly unwilling to give others. | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Feel free to try to create a plausible explanation for his aggressive behavior otherwise. Why would you say he was running towards the office officer only to 'accidentally' land on him right as he passed him? And then why would he go outside, push one officer, and begin grappling with another? This is not how normal people behave. He actually gave an explanation for this which we clearly know is a lie - he claimed that "when he tried to speak with the agents and show them the legal paperwork for his employees, they shoved him to the ground, and at least one agent put his knee on Shouhed’s neck." [1] He probably wasn't aware the outside altercation had been recorded. Where's the paperwork? And in this case 5 illegal aliens were arrested, including one who had already been arrested and deported twice previously. There's a balance to all things in life. Obviously we should not be blindly prejudiced against individuals on one extreme, yet on the equal but opposite extreme one can be so open minded that your brain falls out. [1] - https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-sued-for-50m-over-immig... |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | 4ndrewl 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Was unamerican. Seems to the rest of world that this is very much what America is now. |
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| ▲ | dboreham 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | refurb 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | habinero 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > You’re ignoring the cases where people produce fraudulent documentation proving they are a citizen. Citation needed lol. | | |
| ▲ | refurb 5 days ago | parent [-] | | “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... | | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen 5 days ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | refurb 4 days ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | habinero 4 days ago | parent [-] | | 6,000 supposed papers for a pool of 5 million immigrants seems like an extremely minor problem that doesn't require shooting food bank workers to enforce. | | |
| ▲ | refurb 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Again, that’s 6,000 papers from a relatively quiet USCBP office where illegal immigration rates are low. If you want a national estimate that grossly undercounts, just multiply by the 20 field offices. Now we’re in the hundreds of thousands. | | |
| ▲ | habinero 4 days ago | parent [-] | | So what? Still seems like a minor problem. If the paperwork is that easy to duplicate, it's on the government to make it more difficult, not beating in the faces of citizens until they produce documentation they don't have. | | |
| ▲ | refurb 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I feel like you’re being disingenuous in your argument. Hundreds of thousands of aliens with fraudulent documents seems like a huge problem to me. Keep in mind it’s US law for every alien to keep documentation of legal status on their person at all times (US code 8 USC § 1304(e)). Since we know fraudulent documents are not uncommon, then immigration officials must have some powers to validate a person’s status if uncertainty remains. | | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen 3 days ago | parent [-] | | It's only a problem if (1) the immigrants in question behaving in a dangerous and criminal fashion, or (2) you need to urgently deport millions of peaceful, non-dangerous immigrants in an extremely short period of time, and you don't care about the harm this does to society. Obviously in case (1) you can just detain and carefully identify people, since they're actually doing dangerous things and you'll have probable cause to detain them. Note that this was the case that nearly all the 2024 election rhetoric was focused on (i.e., deporting the "rapists and murders".) In practice we're seeing that the true goal is (2), rapid emergency deportation and arrest of non-criminal immigrants. There is absolutely no emergency that requires this to be done quickly or carelessly, such that there's any risk to US citizens' (or immigrants) civil rights. It can be done carefully, with strong evidence, without violating civil rights. But of course, violating civil rights and creating disorder appears to be the goal. | | |
| ▲ | refurb 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Why would a country not deport non-criminal illegal aliens? Not being American and having lived in 4 different countries, I’ve never encountered this attitude except in the US. Controlling who enters and stays in your country is just table stakes for a functioning state. Without it, you don’t even have control over basic things like security. In every other country I’ve lived in anyone who enters illegally or overstays is promptly removed. So to answer your question, fraudulent documents is a massive problem. Now not only do you have no control over who enters and stays you have no ability to even determine who these people are even if you do encounter them. |
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| ▲ | RemainsOfTheDay 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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