[phoe-krk]

> When asked to comment on Lavoie's declaration, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to Reason: "The INA requires aliens and non-citizens in the US to carry immigration documents. Real IDs are not immigration documents—they make identification harder to forge, thwarting criminals and terrorists."

>But of course, Venegas is a U.S. citizen, so he is not required to carry non-existent immigration documents.

Reading between the lines here: citizens who happen to be personae non gratae can be detained indefinitely as soon as they fail to produce immigration documents.

These documents are allowed to not exist if someone is a citizen. Alas, if there is no reliable way to prove one's citizenship, then nobody really needs to be treated like a citizen and everyone can be detained at will.

And this last point, given the current US political context, seems to be why Real ID is being undermined right now.

[yubblegum]

I have made multiple photocopies of my US passport (naturalized) that I have put in my wallet, backpacks, etc.

[Smoosh]

That won’t help you if they decide that they don’t like you.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-citizen-arrested-by-ice_n_...

[y-c-o-m-b]

In another article, I read a US citizen being detained despite showing a copy in his phone: https://archive.is/0WXZR

Edit: actually I'm not sure if he got the chance to show the copy, that info seems ambiguous:

> The federal agents who detained Mubashir refused his repeated attempts to show them a copy of his passport on his phone or provide his name and date of birth to prove his citizenship, he said. Instead, they insisted he allow them to take a photo of him to make the verification, according to Mubashir.

[chaostheory]

You can get a card version of your passport that is the same size as your driver’s license. There’s no need to photocopy your actual passport book

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Its all a moot point because if they want to arrest you, then it doesn't matter what you show them. They're going to arrest you anyway, and suffer no consequences for doing so.

[chaostheory]

“Giving up and dying” is a personal preference that we don’t all share.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

It certainly wasn't a preference that I was advocating for. Odd that's what you saw in my comment.

[yubblegum]

TIL. Thanks, good to know.

[bathtub365]

I wouldn’t expect them to accept photocopies of a passport

[jtokoph]

I would hope that they have access to a tool to look up the passport by number and confirm that the details match the copy and the photo appears to look like the person.

[toomuchtodo]

They do, but it can and will be ignored, based on events to date. The goal is to create ambiguity to enable a power imbalance enabling working outside of the legal framework to accomplish target outcomes. It turns an objective boolean evaluation (“is_citizen”) into a subjective one (“is_preferred_and_compliant”).

[xboxnolifes]

You might even hope that such a system would be able to work off of their name and some other memorable, identifiable information like address, origin country, date of birth, and would display their papers with photo-identification available, but alas...

The goal isn't to be reasonable or helpful.