'A Chilling Assertion': Trump Officials Falsely Claim Citizens Must Carry Immigration Docs to Prove Their Status

Federal law enforcement agencies are detaining US citizens who do not carry proof of their citizenship in what civil rights advocates describe as a flagrant violation of constitutional rights—and a top Trump administration official is claiming the government has the authority to do so.

A Somali-born Minnesota man was alarmed by the practice last Tuesday when immigration agents tackled him, handcuffed him, and arrested him, refusing to accept his REAL ID as proof of his legal residence in a video that was widely circulated on social media.

The man, who identified only as Mubashir, was placed into a chokehold and forced to his knees in the snow on his way to get food in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which has a large Somali population.

As the Sahan Journal describes:

Mubashir said he told officers multiple times that he is a US citizen and asked if he could show them his ID. Officers ignored him, dragged him in the snow, and pushed him into a car as witnesses yelled and blew whistles, according to the video of his arrest.

The arrest occurred as federal agents walked into nearby businesses in the Somali-heavy neighborhood, questioning people and asking them to show their passports. Mubashir said he was in the car with officers for about 20 minutes, asking them repeatedly if he could show them his ID. They refused, he said.

According to the report, officers asked if they could photograph Mubashir to check whether he's a US citizen—likely to run his information through a facial recognition application that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acknowledged it uses during immigration stops, including on US citizens without their consent.

Mubashir declined to have his photo taken, asking: "How would a picture prove I’m a US citizen?”

He was later taken to a federal building that houses an immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. Only after having his fingerprint taken was Mubashir allowed to present his ID and given permission to leave.

Officers refused to drop him back off at Cedar-Riverside, instead telling him to walk home more than seven miles in the midst of a snowstorm, which had led authorities to issue a weather advisory.

“I deserve to be here like anyone else—I’m a US citizen,” Mubashir said. “I can’t even step outside without being tackled—no question—because I’m Somali.”

"I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say 'police.' That's embarrassing," Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said to Mubashir during a press conference on Wednesday.

According to legal experts, there is no requirement under US law that American citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment's notice.

In comments to KQED, a public radio station in San Francisco, earlier this month, Richard Boswell, a law professor at the University of California Law School, called it “most troubling” that US citizens have felt the need to carry their ID to avoid harassment.

“There is no reason why government officers can or should be questioning people about their citizenship without any reason to suspect that they are noncitizens who are here unlawfully,” he explained.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noncitizens must carry proof of their legal status, such as a green card or a foreign passport with stamps indicating a lawful visa.

About two dozen states require residents to identify themselves if stopped by law enforcement. But none require citizens to carry a physical ID at all times, except in specific cases, such as operating a motorized vehicle.

And, as Bree Bernwanger, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, explained, “there is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them." Unless police have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the US unlawfully, she said, "there shouldn’t be a reason to have to carry your papers, because immigration agents aren’t supposed to stop people or detain them."

But as backlash rolled in from the video of Mubashir's arrest, the man leading Trump's mass deportation crusade, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, seemed to falsely suggest via social media that citizens are required to carry proof of their citizenship.

"One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A REAL ID is not an immigration document," he wrote in response to a post about Mubashir's arrest, which noted his citizenship.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, responded that "in no way does the INA require citizens to carry immigration documents" and that Bovino is "just letting his jackboot thugs presumptively detain whomever they like."

Immigration lawyer Jared McClain later noted on social media that, in response to a class-action suit arguing against indiscriminate workplace raids, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) argued that an Alabama construction worker, who was kept in handcuffs even after presenting multiple REAL IDs to agents, had still not done enough to prove his citizenship, according to the federal officers.

"This is the official policy—not a one-off," McClain said.

Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the filing was "official confirmation that ICE HSI believes that it can, in fact, detain US citizens for immigration checks, and keep them handcuffed while they have their biometrics run."

"That is a chilling assertion," he said.

ProPublica found in October that at least 170 Americans have been detained by immigration agents, sometimes for days, with some having been "dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot."

But months after the report was published, top administration officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—continue to emphatically deny that any US citizens have been detained during the second Trump administration.

At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Noem abruptly left before Democrats could grill her on reports that citizens had been arrested, claiming she had to speak at a different committee hearing. Reports later found that the hearing had already been cancelled, leading to accusations that Noem misled Congress.

In response to Bovino's assertion that REAL IDs are not immigration documents, Nicole Foy, a reporter at ProPublica, told the Border Patrol commander: "We've been trying to request an interview with you for months now about the enforcement operations you're leading and the detention of US citizens."

"Why does a US citizen need to carry immigration documents?" she asked. At press time, Bovino had not publicly responded to Foy's question.