American citizens, including citizens of Native tribal nations, have been pulled into the vast immigration operations ordered by President Donald Trump in accordance with his campaign vow to conduct mass deportations since Day 1.
Those who are getting caught in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids are being targeted because of their race or skin color, according to witnesses.
The Navajo Nation Office was flooded with calls from tribal members living off-reservation, with many reporting being questioned about their identity by ICE officers, Native News Online reported.
Questioning of Navajo Nation citizens, who are American citizens, by ICE has been problematic enough that Navajo President Buu Nygren took to the airwaves to address it. On tribal radio station KTNN, Nygren said he had received accounts of “negative and sometimes traumatizing” encounters between ICE and Navajo Nation citizens, Native News Online reported.
He advised Navajo Nation residents to carry identification, driver’s licenses and their Certificate of Indian Blood.
NBC News reached out to ICE regarding the detaining and questioning of Navajo Nation citizens and complaints of racial profiling, and has not yet received a response.
One of the employees detained and questioned by ICE at a seafood wholesaler during an immigration raid in Newark, New Jersey, was a U.S. citizen and military veteran.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka denounced the ICE raid, saying the military veteran "suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned.”
Regarding the raid, ICE stated they “may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity.”
The seafood wholesaler's owner, Luis Janota, told WPIX in New York that his warehouse manager, who was also detained, was Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and its residents are U.S. citizens.
“It looked to me like they were specifically going after certain kinds of people — not every kind. Because they did not ask me for documentation for my American workers, Portuguese workers or white workers,” Janota told the station.
More deportations, worries over 'increased profiling'
ICE has stepped up arrests and deportations since Trump took office. While he had said he would prioritize violent criminals, his "border czar," Tom Homan, also said this week that arrests of undocumented immigrants without criminal convictions — which the administration calls collateral arrests — would occur.
On Sunday, almost half of the people arrested, 48%, had nonviolent offenses on their record or were people who had not committed any offense.
Being in the U.S. without legal status is a civil violation. Entering the country without inspection, between ports of entry or based on false statements — what is considered illegal entry — is a misdemeanor. Re-entering, or attempting to re-enter, is a felony.
The criteria for who is arrested and deported will soon be expanded, however. A bill awaiting Trump's signature, the Laken Riley Act, will allow the arrest and detention of people who are not legally in the country and have been charged — they do not have to be convicted — with burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, or crimes that lead to death or serious bodily injury.
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“When you don’t have enforcement priorities, everyone is subject to detention,” said Rosanna Eugenio, legal director at the New York Immigration Coalition. “It also creates this situation that leads to increased profiling. How do you tell that someone does not have legal status in this country or is in the process of seeking legal status? You can’t tell that by looking at someone. But it will create conditions where there will be profiling of communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color.”
The administration is not relying only on ICE officers to make the arrests. The president ordered personnel in several agencies to assist in arresting and detaining immigrants, and some states and cities also are assisting or have said they are willing to assist. Some arrests have been made in cities where officials support the arrests, but the administration also has been targeting cities whose officials have said their local law enforcement would not assist Trump,
On Tuesday morning, several law enforcement agencies made arrests in New York City. The arrests were showcased on social media in posts by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the Drug Enforcement Agency.
The mass deportation efforts may soon run into funding realities. Homan has said Congress will have to pony up more money to pay for Trump's mass deportation pledge and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said "we don't have the resources."
As Trump’s immigration crackdown spread to more cities and towns around the country, immigration advocates were trying to make sure immigrants know what to do if they are caught in the crackdown.
“Our best defense in this moment is people knowing their rights. Stay calm, don’t lie. Remain silent. Don’t consent to the search,” said Murad Awadeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “Do not open the door without a judicial warrant, as well as making sure that it’s signed by a judge.”
During the campaign, Trump frequently alluded to mass deportations carried out by Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s under the label “Operation Wetback,” a racist term used against mostly Mexican immigrants.
U.S. citizens of Mexican descent were also expelled from the country during that operation. Trump has said his mass deportations would be larger than Eisenhower's.
But there have been more recent arrests and deportations of American citizens: From Oct. 1, 2015, to March 2020, ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121 and removed 70, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report.
The GAO said at the time that ICE had conflicting policies on questioning U.S. citizens and did not track its encounters with U.S. citizens well.
The GAO also found that ICE issued detainers — asking a local jurisdiction to hold a suspected undocumented immigrant who had been arrested in another crime — for at least 895 potential U.S. citizens during that period. It eventually canceled about 74% of the detainers.
