The Atlantic – ICE won’t say. [gift article] “In Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s telling, citizenship checks by ICE officers are as straightforward and frictionless as presenting yourself at the entrance to a Costco. Just show a membership card, and you’ll be on your merry way. Kavanaugh wrote an opinion this week, concurring with the Court’s majority, that would afford Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers broad latitude to detain and question someone based on factors such as ethnic appearance, speaking Spanish, and speaking English with an accent. The risk that nonwhite Americans will be racially profiled or subject to unlawful detention should be weighed against the brevity of an encounter with ICE, Kavanaugh wrote..

…The problem is that ICE does not say what it accepts as definitive proof of legal status. Is it a driver’s license? A green card? A folder of immigration documents? Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign has swept up U.S. citizens and permanent residents over the past several months, leaving some detained for days despite individuals presenting officers with evidence of their legal status. Kavanaugh’s depiction of an immigration check shows “a fundamental misunderstanding about verification of citizenship,” John Sandweg, an attorney who served as the top official at ICE during part of Barack Obama’s first term, told me. “There is no national database or birth registry,” Sandweg said. “There is no place for ICE to quickly check and do facial recognition. An officer’s not going to just take someone’s word for it if they have reasons to believe they’re in the country unlawfully.” It can take days or weeks for ICE or someone’s attorney to track down their birth records, Sandweg added. “The idea that it’s going to be done in a Home Depot parking lot is ludicrous…”