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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 d

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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!
    - drewbug01 1y ago
      > 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 1y ago
        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-million-illegal-aliens-out-united-states-less-250-days https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/23/new-milestone-over-2-mil...

somenameforme 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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!
  - drewbug01 1y ago
    > 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 1y ago
      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-million-illegal-aliens-out-united-states-less-250-days https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/23/new-milestone-over-2-mil...