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The American Public Must Resist Trump’s ‘Papers, Please’ Politics
We must reject the idea that entire populations can be stripped of rights simply because of how they look, where they were born, or what kind of documentation they carry.
Apr 25, 2025
People of a certain age will remember the old black-and-white movies, The Twilight Zone, and countless Cold War-era dramas set in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. In scene after chilling scene, people in uniform approach random pedestrians and bark, “Papers, please.”
Those who hesitate—who don’t have their documentation in order, who look “out of place,” or simply fail to comply fast enough—are dragged away. Vanished. Disappeared into the gulag or the prison camps, never to be seen again.
It was always framed as national security. Public order. Protecting the homeland. But what it really was, in both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR, was authoritarianism dressed up as bureaucracy.
This combination of surveillance, identification, and coercion has always been the hallmark of authoritarian regimes, and Trump’s is no different.
Republicans in the House have passed legislation requiring people to bring their passports to register to vote; increasingly Americans with brown skin are today carrying their citizenship papers, birth certificates, and even passports out of fear of a chance encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Because it’s already started here: On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued a directive requiring all noncitizens in the U.S.—including those on visas and green card holders—to carry proof of their legal status at all times. Failure to comply will result in imprisonment.
This policy, part of Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” has sparked fears among civil rights groups that it could lead to racial profiling and wrongful detentions of U.S. citizens who may be unable to immediately prove their status.
As recently happened to Jose Hermosillo, who was held in a detention facility for undocumented immigrants for 10 days after simply asking an officer for directions.
It’s as if the Trump regime is taking a cue from those old movies, like they were templates for America’s future. After all, if you want to control a civilian population this is tried and true.
The Soviet Union’s internal passport system, introduced in 1932, became the backbone of state control over citizens. Those domestic passports—containing personal information and required for anyone over 16—weren’t just identification but permission slips for existence itself. Without the proper stamps and approvals, citizens couldn’t access employment, housing, education, or even food rations. The system created a population dependent on state approval for their most basic needs.
During crackdowns like those following the 1968 Prague Spring, these identification systems became weapons allowing authorities to swiftly target, detain, and “disappear” political opponents under the guise of administrative violations. The message was clear: Your papers aren’t just documentation; they’re the difference between freedom and vanishing into the system.
Another poignant example of this oppressive system was the “Green Ticket Roundup” on May 14, 1941, in Paris. Immigrant Jews received summonses from the Nazi-collaborating Vichy government printed on green paper, instructing them to report for a “status check.” Upon arrival, over 3,700 individuals were arrested and deported to death camps, marking one of the first mass arrests of Jews in France during World War II .
A regime of fear, enforced by ID checks and compliance demands, that began with targeting outsiders—immigrants, ethnic minorities, refugees—and then, inevitably, turned inward toward its own citizens: starting with marginalized groups, political dissenters, even the merely inconvenient.
Today, in the United States, we are witnessing the early stages of this same playbook.
Donald Trump recently attacked the U.S. Supreme Court for temporarily blocking his administration’s attempt to summarily deport migrants without due process. He raged, “We cannot give everyone a trial,” signaling his belief that constitutional protections shouldn’t apply to undocumented people, or perhaps to anyone he deems unworthy.
This wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It was a direct statement of naked authoritarianism.
Across the country, stories are piling up of ICE arrests and detentions with no transparency, no due process, and no answers. A mother from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, was suddenly detained by ICE, leaving her children and family in a panic, not knowing where she had been taken or why. She had no criminal record, no apparent reason for the arrest, and is still missing.
In another case, the U.S. government detained a father of two under a highly questionable interpretation of immigration law, claiming he was involved with a gang despite a complete lack of evidence or criminal charges. The Center for Constitutional Rights called the detention illegal, noting it was based on racial profiling and guilt by association, not rule of law.
Even places of education are no longer safe. ICE agents reportedly detained a Harvard affiliate in what critics called a targeted enforcement action meant to intimidate immigrant students and faculty. In Los Angeles, ICE showed up in a public school district, triggering fear and outrage among parents and teachers alike.
What kind of country sends armed agents—not local police, but militarized agents of the federal government—into school communities to drag away parents or students?
A country rapidly sliding into fascism.
Remember: What happens to the most vulnerable among us eventually happens to us all.
Trump and his allies claim this is about law and order. But when you strip people of their rights based solely on their immigration status—and create a culture where anyone who “looks” undocumented can be interrogated or detained without cause—you are not enforcing the law. You are weaponizing it.
Estimates suggest there are around 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today. Trump has made it clear he sees the Black and brown people among this group as a political tool, not as people. He has floated mass deportation plans that would require enormous internment facilities and a paramilitary-style enforcement mechanism.
This is not idle talk; it is a blueprint for authoritarian control that will quickly expand beyond immigrants: He’s already said that he wants to be able to deport average U.S. citizens who piss him off to the CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador.
Consider how quickly this can escalate. In Venezuela, for example, internal identification cards are linked to government food distribution and political loyalty. Those who criticized the regime or fail to demonstrate allegiance are routinely denied basic necessities and even healthcare.
This combination of surveillance, identification, and coercion has always been the hallmark of authoritarian regimes, and Trump’s is no different. This is an old story.
And let’s not forget how it begins: first by singling out the “outsiders,” then targeting the marginalized, and finally sweeping up anyone who dares resist. We saw it in the 1930s. We saw it in the 1950s. And now, disturbingly, we are seeing echoes of it today.
Axiosreported Wednesday that the Trump administration is floating the idea of arresting U.S. citizens who criticize their “anti-terrorism” policies (people who protest Israel’s Gaza policies at universities, and people who condemn Trump’s actions against immigrants) and deporting us to the same CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador:
Trump administration officials are suggesting their immigration crackdown could expand to include deporting convicted U.S. citizens and charging anyone—not just immigrants—who criticizes Trump’s policies…
Some officials say U.S. citizens who criticize administration policies could be charged with crimes, based on the notion that they're aiding terrorists and criminals.
“You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them, because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime,” White House Senior Director for Counterterrorism Seb Gorka said in an interview with Newsmax.
Trump’s team also has questioned the legality of civic groups providing immigrants with “know your rights” trainings on how to respond to federal agents. Border czar Tom Homan suggested that such seminars help people “evade law enforcement.”
This is how it starts. Soon it could be policy, and anybody who protests or resists the Trump regime could end up disappeared.
The American public must resist the normalization of “papers, please” politics. We must reject the idea that entire populations can be stripped of rights simply because of how they look, where they were born, or what kind of documentation they carry.
Because once the machinery is built and the culture of silence takes hold, it doesn’t stop at the border. It never has.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Just this month, a family in Arizona reported that their grandmother, a legal permanent resident for over 30 years, was detained by ICE during a routine check-in. No explanation was given. No timeline for release. Just the bewildering silence of bureaucratic cruelty.
For the millions living in fear, and for all Americans who value liberty, the time to act is now:
- Contact your representatives and demand oversight hearings on ICE enforcement.
- Support legal aid organizations providing representation to detained immigrants.
- Document and report ICE activities in your community to civil liberties watchdogs.
- Show up for weekly protests.
- Participate in social media and other venues to get the word out.
- Send small donations ($5-$25) to politicians who show the courage to speak out or take action against the regime every time they do so; it’ll have far more impact than a call or postcard.
Remember: What happens to the most vulnerable among us eventually happens to us all.
History has taught us this lesson repeatedly. We ignore it at our peril
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When 6,000 Immigrants Can Be Declared Dead, No One’s Benefits Are Safe
It would be short-sighted to view this as an immigration issue. In fact, this move reveals both our common vulnerability to the whims of high-up decision-makers, and our shared humanity.
Apr 17, 2025
When the Social Security Administration recently reclassified more than 6,000 living and breathing immigrants as dead in order to deny them the Social Security numbers and benefits they legally held, I empathized with those migrants.
I’m not an immigrant, and I don’t receive Social Security benefits. Yet my family, like millions of other Americans, has felt the pain and helplessness of losing access to services and benefits through no fault of our own.
The technique of declaring thousands of people “dead” with one stroke of the pen is particularly cruel and epitomizes the long-standing dehumanization of immigrants in this country.
At first glance, it might seem they target someone else, somewhere else. Upon further reflection, it is evident that the actions and tactics they deploy affect everyone.
But it would be short-sighted to view this as an immigration issue. In fact, this move reveals both our common vulnerability to the whims of high-up decision-makers, and our shared humanity.
As the Trump administration inflicts one cruel injustice after another, rapid fire, on immigrants and other vulnerable groups, these updates flash across screens as discrete, targeted acts. But it is more important than ever to focus on what we have in common and reframe these headlines as coordinated actions within systems that threaten everyone’s well-being.
A few years ago, my husband wrote the annual check for his life insurance policy, sealed it in the company’s return envelope, and dropped it into the official blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox near his bank. To his surprise, the life insurance company contacted him shortly after, notifying him that his policy was canceled due to nonpayment.
Turns out, he was one of thousands of victims of mail theft and check fraud in our town and throughout the country. Just this year, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service warned about mail theft and announced that check fraud has recently doubled.
My husband reported the crime to the police, and his bank covered the amount of the lost check. However, the life insurance company refused to reinstate his policy because during all those years he had been paying the annual fee, he also developed a chronic disease. As a small business owner with three children, my husband watched as an essential financial tool, put in place for our family, disappeared overnight—despite the fact that he had done everything right. Just like those 6,000 immigrants.
The health insurance industry has long employed the strategy of “deny, defend, and depose” to avoid covering the costs of important treatments for the sick and suffering who continue to pay climbing premiums. A 2025 article in the American Journal of Managed Care states that “insurance claim denials have risen 16% from 2018 to 2024, affecting access to essential medications like insulin and albuterol.” At the same time, health insurance companies’ net profitability increases.
Those immigrants followed strict rules and were granted Social Security numbers; they did nothing wrong. But just as their identities were wiped away, the high rate of health insurance claim denials financially wipes out millions of Americans. Almost half a million Americans declared personal bankruptcies in 2024, with medical debt the top cause.
Disability benefits are notoriously difficult to receive, and even when accessed, they are tenuous. According to the non-partisan USA Facts, “38% of applicants who meet technical requirements are accepted initially, but 53% of applicants who appeal that decision are ultimately approved.” However, the appeals process can be burdensome and last years. Paying into a private disability insurance plan holds no guarantees either.
Given that last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that “more than 1 in 4—over 70 million—adults in the United States reported having a disability,” everyone in this country knows someone who contends with their disability and simultaneously battles for benefits that are rightfully theirs. It shouldn’t be difficult, then, to empathize with immigrants’ dual plight: they must ward against diffuse and dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment and at the same time fight for basic benefits promised to them.
Even recipients of disability insurance cannot rest easy. They are often stalked and photographed by investigators who use highly selective photos to “prove” the person is able to work. Now, surveillance is digital, too. Algorithms and new surveillance technologies can be laced with bias, trespass privacy laws, and lead to unjust claim denials for the people who can least defend themselves.
These new technologies also surveil migrants, with the same built-in biases. A scholarly article published this year describes the system as “a vast digital dragnet.” Once sacred boundaries that protected the privacy of income-tax payers have now been violated to help the Department of Homeland Security locate tax-paying immigrants. Once breached, that once-clear line of privacy is now erased for anyone.
The policies and actions coming from the Trump administration can feel like a barrage—because they are. At first glance, it might seem they target someone else, somewhere else. Upon further reflection, it is evident that the actions and tactics they deploy affect everyone. No one deserves to capriciously have the rug pulled out from under them through no fault of their own—yet we’re barreling toward a future where that’s commonplace, and possibly the norm.
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Declaring People Dead Is Yet Another Trump Admin Failure to Protect Social Security
This claim of unbounded power is made all the more concerning by the lack of effective oversight at the Social Security Administration.
Apr 16, 2025
The Trump administration has made a shocking claim: that it can declare living people dead to cut off their access to government benefits and the broader U.S. financial system.
According to reporting from The New York Times, the Social Security Administration (SSA), at the direction of DOGE, has begun knowingly adding living people to SSA’s death records—the Death Master File (DMF)—by assigning them false “dates of death” to “terminat[e]” their “financial lives.”
Being wrongfully identified as dead in Social Security records “can lead to benefit termination… and severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals.” Because the DMF is leveraged by many federal and state agencies to determine eligibility—and by the Treasury Department’s government-wide “Do Not Pay” system to prevent improper payments—false inclusion of a death date can lead to an individual losing their health coverage through Medicare, having their tax return delayed, or having their Social Security or other eligible benefit payments cancelled, among other harms.
There is no legal authority that allows the Trump administration to falsely claim an individual is dead—and that opens the possibility that the administration could falsely add living people to the DMF for any reason.
The DMF is also used by some private-sector companies with a legitimate business or anti-fraud need for the data—including financial institutions, credit agencies, insurance companies, and pension administrators. As a result, being inappropriately listed as dead can result in severe financial consequences like disruption in bank account access, credit cards being cancelled, pension benefits being paused, insurance coverage being cancelled or claims being denied, rejected employment applications, or denial of credit.
The first group of people to be wrongfully and knowingly declared dead by the Trump administration are reportedly being targeted in an immigration enforcement effort focused, at least in part, on people who were lawfully present and eligible to work until the Trump administration abruptly terminated their lawful status. These individuals would have been correctly issued Social Security numbers (SSNs) upon obtaining their lawful immigration statuses, and any change in those statuses should not limit their access to their own financial resources in U.S. banks.
The Trump administration made an unsupported claim that everyone in the initial group had either links to terrorist activity or criminal records. But an internal review by SSA staff that focused on some of the youngest targets—including children as young as 13 years old—“found no evidence of crimes or law enforcement interactions.” The administration’s unproven claim follows its other wildly inaccurate and widely debunked claims about Social Security—including false claims that people who are 150 years old receive Social Security payments and that 40% of calls to Social Security come from fraudsters, when evidence suggests the percentage is “minuscule.”
It is deeply concerning that the administration is knowingly falsifying records. While SSA has the legal authority to collect information about people’s deaths to administer Social Security, there is no legal authority that allows the Trump administration to falsely claim an individual is dead—and that opens the possibility that the administration could falsely add living people to the DMF for any reason.
Moreover, it’s unclear how an individual could have themselves removed from the list if being dead is no longer the sole criterion for being included on the DMF. Recognizing that wrongful inclusion in the DMF can be “devastating” to individuals and their families, SSA has taken steps under previous administrations both to reduce the chances of such mistakes and to resolve them as quickly as possible. Previously, when a person was included in error in the DMF, they had only to make the straightforward case that they were alive, something that could be achieved with identification documents and an in-person visit to a Social Security field office. In this case, without transparent guidance on what circumstances other than death would result in inclusion on the DMF, and without a clear process for appeal, there is no longer a clear pathway to proving that the inclusion was in error.
This claim of unbounded power is made all the more concerning by the lack of effective oversight at SSA. The Trump administration has already dismissed the acting Social Security inspector general without cause and pushed out many nonpartisan career officials, reducing oversight and guardrails. And there are reports that staff objections to the legality of falsifying death information in SSA data have already directly led to the removal of at least one agency senior executive.
As SSA and DOGE (the “Department of Government Efficiency”) prioritize carrying out this reckless and seemingly illegal action, it serves as just one more example of the Trump administration’s failure to protect Social Security, including undermining core systems that are critical to running the program. At a time when the administration should be doing everything it can to reassure seniors, people with disabilities, and others who receive Social Security benefits, it is instead making deep cuts to SSA staffing, leading to overworked and understaffed field offices and degrading customer service and the reliability of SSA systems; proposing and then partially walking back the unnecessary elimination of phone services, leading to confusion and unnecessary burdens on seniors; and now falsely labeling people as dead in SSA databases.
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