> What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
8 U.S. Code § 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act makes it illegal to enter the country without authorisation. Are you implying that these people didn't know it was illegal, or are you arguing that the country should have no borders?
This concept hinges on everyone walking around with ID at all times. If you don't have it on you we'll throw you into a concrete box for 8 hours while we sort it out. Cool? Oh you were a home birth in Wisconsin you say? Sounds vaguely Canadian.
This is why the 4th amendment exists. It is my favorite amendment. I wish people would take it more seriously.
As far as I understand, people are ID'd all the time in US. If police stops you, they will ask for an identification document; if you don't have it, they will ask for your SSN and if you can't remember it, they will run your name and address until they match you with a photo id on their systems. In the meanwhile, you're detained and you're not free to leave. Immigration aside, how are they supposed to identify you?
They can't detain you forever because they can't ID you. You can't be compelled to own an ID or carry it around with you all the time. Many naturally born americans have no passport, birth certificate, or even state license.
So many homeless here have zero identification.
They are basically just going after people who are too brown and even ending up grabbing people who are just here on vacation, legally.
Wait, I agree that false positives shouldn't happen, but true positives (i.e. you are an illegal alien, ICE interacts with you, they detain you until they discover your status, then start the deportation process) are how the system is supposed to work.
This is illegal, notoriously, police can only request AND detain someone to provide ID if they are actually suspected of committing a crime. Potentially being illegal, a neighbor calling the police or stuff like that does not give them permission to detain. They can nicely ask, but that's all.
That's specific to ICE though, where they need a "warrant", not from a judge but just from some other ICE "supervisor".
I agree that in practice there is some kind of loophole: ICE gets a "warrant" for someone that by definition has no ID, so there is no point in identifying a detainee - the immigration court will do that, later. Effectively, they seem to get away with snatching people off the street that vaguely may resemble any "warrant" they have.
If I'm not born American, I suppose the right way of handling that would be negotiating a date to voluntarily leave the country (I think it's called self-deportation), which leaves you a bit of levee to put your things in order. If I was born American and I only have American citizenship, that would be a strange situation to be in. I suppose a bunch of other countries would have offered me instant citizenship just to spite Trump.
I'm not sure what does it have to do with people who entered the US illegally and were never citizens in the first place though.
Because one of the major things Trump has talked about and has been moving towards is revoking citizenship. Both those who are naturalized US citizens as well as ending birthright citizenship and revoking their rights. You do that, then they have 'entered the country illegally' and everything follows from there
This was always a well-understood risk though.