A US Senator blasted Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem for heavily insisting that Americans must be ready to show their proof of citizenship to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers if the situation arises during enforcement raids.
According to a letter seen by Newsweek, Illinois US Senator Dick Durbin wrote to Noem on Friday (US time), fuming at how US citizens were being repeatedly targeted and racially profiled by authorities demanding “citizens checks.”
It comes amid multiple reports of shootings involving ICE officers coming in from Minneapolis. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest federal authorities and their ongoing crackdown, especially in the wake of Renee Nicole Good being killed in her vehicle earlier this month.
US Senator’s letter to DHS Secy Kristi Noem over citizenship proof threat
In his letter, the Democratic Party member asserted, “We are not a ‘papers, please’ country,” as per Newsweek’s report published this week. “American citizens generally do not have ‘immigration documents’, and to require them to carry such documents to avoid being violently stopped or interrogated by federal immigration agents is absurd and unconstitutional.”
He vehemently argued that that the law didn’t dictate US citizens to carry identification to “avoid arbitrary arrest and detention.”
Having already been vocally critical of the Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown this past year, hit back hard saying that American founders and current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh alike have affirmed certain protection to American citizens against such circumstances.
“The founders included explicit protections from unreasonable searches and seizures in the US Constitution to prevent the types of arbitrary and indiscriminate arrests of US citizens that are currently occurring in American cities,” he wrote in the letter, as per Newsweek.
The senator maintained that despite these caveats being in place, unwarranted stops, arrests and detentions of American citizens at the hands of federal immigration agent has only surged in the recent past.
He further accused the Department of Homeland Security of expressing “cavalier attitude towards the law” by continuing its “frequent abuses against American citizens.”
Alluding to certain instances of enforcement in Minneapolis and elsewhere, Durbin told Noem in the letter that certain ICE agents had even reached out to multiple non-white people and asked them their origins while demanding identification. He cited at least one person being told that the federal officers were “doing a citizen check,” as per Newsweek.
Pushing down hard, Durbin fumed in the letter, as he urged Noem to “issue a correction to the Department’s false statement that US citizens must carry proof of citizenship.” He also compelled the DHS leader to instruct her “employees that unconstitutional “citizen checks” are not permitted and must immediately cease.”
Kristi Noem’s citizenship proof warning: What did she say?
Durbin’s reported letter to the DHS official has come to light shortly after Noem and US Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino issued serious statements regarding the issue while ICE agents continue to execute Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
The US senator’s message was also brought to attention over a week after 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three, was shot by ICE officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. In another instance, the DHS claimed online that federal authorities fired “defensive shots” during a “targeted traffic stop” in Minneapolis earlier this week. As per the DHS’ account, the situation slipped out of control when a Venezuelan nation resisted arrest and started to “violently assault” an officer.
On Thursday, Noem told reporters during a press gaggle outside the White House that some Americans may be asked for proof of citizenship during ICE raids.
When asked why, she replied, “In every situation we are doing targeted enforcement. If we are on a target, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there and having them validate their identity.”
Bovino, on the other, has left similar remarks on social media. Having led massive DHS operations in Chicago, Charlotte and Minnesota, Bovino wrote on X last month, “One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A Real ID is not an immigration document.”
Do Americans have to show they are citizens?
Ahilan Arulanantham, professor and co-director of UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, told NBC Los Angeles that US citizens must legally show proof of citizenship only when they are entering the country or when they are applying for certain jobs which demand it be presented.
He further revealed that a citizen has no obligation to show any identification if a law enforcement officer approaches them on the street without any reason to believe that the person has committed a crime.
However, the expert also maintained that immigration officers can detain someone briefly to determine whether they are in the US legally. At the same time, agent must have a reasonable suspicion that the person’s presence in the country violates immigration laws.
“But the Supreme Court, unfortunately, has allowed the government since the summertime to stop people based on essentially racial profiling,” he told NBC Los Angeles. “And so we’re living in this strange moment where there seems to be a gap between what the legal rules are and what’s actually sort of operational on the ground.”