For fellow Americans living in cities where ICE is active, many people, especially those of Hispanic descent, are already carrying around passports on their persons at all times because they’re rightfully afraid of being forcibly disappeared or deported to some random South American country.
A passport card can be obtained for $30 from the Department of State. It is considered exactly equivalent to a passport within the US, but it’s the size of a credit card. It is a valid travel document for land and sea travel within North America and the Caribbean. It also counts as a Real ID. The card is good for ten years.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html
Do not do this if you are transgender or have an X gender marker. They will cancel your passport and tell you to apply for a new one with your sex assigned at birth.
YSK a card in your wallet won’t help you much when an ICE agent points a gun at your head and tells you your passport looks fake, without even looking at it.
If this form factor for ID isn’t well known enough for them to know about it, I doubt they received training on its existence.
Which means having this card will make them assume it’s fake by default. “That’s not what a US passport looks like!” Thereby increasing their deluded suspicions, rather than reducing them.
I doubt they received training
on its existence.The problem is not lack of training. This isn’t a “whoopsie-poopsie”. They’re doing it on purpose and if someone looks brown enough they get kidnapped. With luck they get released later.
They already did this to people with Real ID drivers licenses, which have the same requirements to acquire as a passport.
The main advantage is that it’s a redundant form of citizenship ID. ICE can always say it is fake and confiscate it, but then you have your passport book waiting at home for your lawyer to take to the detention center to get you out (once they find out where they took you).
Most Americans don’t own a passport in the first place.
Anyone who fails the “Peter Griffin in a Fez” test needs to get one. And double up on the card and book.
Because it doesn’t matter where you were born, or what the facts are. ICE is targeting people who they believe don’t belong here, based on how they look and sound. Having the card on your person is no guarantee, but maybe it will work if they are in a good mood.
It’s sad that this is what it has come to in America, of all places, but here we are.
Why would they let your lawyer find out where they took you?
Yeah, but you’re at least a little more likely to survive.
Apparently they don’t even bother with that now, they’ll go after anyone
Are you actively encouraging people to not seek protections against a fascist regime just because it wouldn’t be 100% effective?
Maybe armbands with star of david would help like it did during Nazi regime?
Ah, so you are trying to get people killed.
Yes, because we all know citizens don’t get shot in the face while driving and just existing. Identification would really help. We’re way past the compliance stage.
Still doing the or nothing argument. ICE has actively deported us citizens. These people might have had a better chance of arguing at the moment if they’d had this identification. Are you also arguing against vaccines because they don’t make you bulletproof?
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How in the world did you draw that conclusion? I’m merely pointing out that they’re discriminating on skin color alone, but that wasn’t an advocacy against a passport card.
“This isn’t real” -ICEcuck
They’ve already proven (okay stories but since it’s been a few and they have no leeway to think they’re better) that proper ID doesn’t exempt you. Hell I bet even if their unknown app says you’re good they’ll still bring you in if they want to.
Fuck fascist governments and fuck ICE. They’re a blight on humanity. Sure we can be that bad but everyone else is supposed to reign them in.
UN/NATO needs a fascism rule, countries that display enough fascist traits are treated as such, even if they have the biggest penis…I mean military.
their unknown app
This part deeply worries me, as a trans person. Does their little fascist app know about my previous name? My gender change? I cannot imagine the horrific treatment trans people are getting if it does.
It won’t stop them. Immigration and customs already had a large amount of unchecked power prior to this administration, but under this administration there isn’t anything they care about. They’ve been murdering people in cold blood across multiple blue states for a while now.
Besides that, if people start panicking and trying this then the necessary venues that people have to go to for their first passport(you have to show up in person for your first passport) could become ICE targets or places they stalk. It’s not exactly uncommon knowledge that conservatives tend to not bother getting passports either.
YSK if ICE thinks you’re too brown, they’ll just say yours is fake and deport you anyway. It’s already happened to US citizens.
Deadset. Which moron actually thinks mexican-looking peoples with actual passports are being approached on the streets and let go??
Source on this please!
Thank you so much!
Lmao it’s been shown multiple times that even with a passport shown to ICE they’ll just call it fake if they want to abduct you.
Yup I was going to comment the same. The physical passport might be useful after the fact once you’re in ICE holding being processed after x amount of hours/days. But then again at that point they would look you up in their systems so having the physical passport in your wallet may end up being a waste of time anyway.
The fact is if the ICE goon squad you encounter feels like arresting and detaining US citizens they’re going to do it.
And that’s assuming the ICE goons don’t make up charges of assaulting them or similar, in which case I’m not sure if those US citizens being charged get released with a future court date or are detained indefinitely.
It would’ve been amazing if most of the US had come together, did a general strike, or another massive daily protest like BLM to tell this regime to fuck the fuck off. But instead we step piecemeal closer and closer to something worse. If we didn’t resist on Step C, then on to Step D they go.
This is actually not super common. I was personally stopped by them and I was let go after showing my passport card. Ideally, ICE should not be arresting any citizens, but it happens anyway because they’ll hire anyone who can breathe and do a decent seig heil. Nonetheless, a thing that works 80% of the time is still worth having.
It is happening all day, every day. Your one experience is your one experience. You are denying the experiences of, right now, countless others. Every response you have is, “but when it happened to me.” Cool. It might be different for Somalis in MN right now than it was for Americans with Asian heritage weeks ago in Portland. You are telling a whole group of people to deny their eyes, ears, and rational thought because you had an encounter with one agent on one day.
Look, I came into this expecting people to understand that most (arbitrary percentage greater than 50 but less than 100) interactions with anyone, ICE or not, are reasonable. You don’t hear about these, because they’re not interesting enough to get posted on the Internet. If your information comes from the Internet only, you will think everything is extreme. I don’t like to use the term “terminally online”, but it’s a problem common with people typically described as being “terminally online”—not realising that real life is a lot more boring than it would appear from clips that people share of ridiculous interactions.
It’s always difficult to deal with these types of comments because despite it being obvious that they show an extremity bias because the person who made them has a viewpoint influence by an extremely cherry-picked data set, they technically are logically sound (that being that an anecdote doesn’t displace a statistic, though statistics largely don’t exist for this).
You should know that you are not required to identify yourself to the gestapo. This post is in un-American.
The way to combat these idiots is everyone refusing to show identification .
Thank you. Papers, Please isn’t the ending we need to run to. They can’t treat us like criminals cause they feel like it
I thought that you did within 100m of an airport
While I agree with the sentiment behind your post, this is like waving a copy of the Weimar constitution to the Gestapo.
i dont get what anyone’s so worried about, as a straight white man cops don’t seem to give me any trouble when i present my papers
Definitive proof of citizenship won’t stop ICE from beating or killing you if you have an accent or non-white skin.
what if i don’t have an accent or non-white skin? they won’t beat me, right?
They might still just execute you in the street if they think you’re talking back to them shrug
Usually
The admin is hating in white people too. You might have heard of that white woman executed on false pretense recently, celebrated by leadershio.
They’re targeting anybody who challenges their authority, starting with people who look different (foreigners first)
I am not going to lie and say it’s 100% effective. But it most certainly will quickly get you out of ICE’s attention 80% of the time when you are not wanting a confrontation at that time.
From what I’m seeing, ICE doesn’t give a flying fuck if you have a valid ID or not, they’re still going to collar you. Their policy is literally to fuck around first and find out later.
That’s from the videos that get widely shared.
95% of interactions are gonna be them being dicks but backing off when they realize you’re there legally. The other 5% are gonna be the ones you see.
Where do these numbers come from? Internet magic?
Look here mate, you and I both know there’s probably no empirical evidence whatsoever about this. It’s a heuristic based on observations of how law enforcement works and what people choose to post on the Internet. This is like how people post a picture of a deformed boxed pie they bought at the grocery store to complain about it and then you assume that all pies are deformed. No, people only post the bad ones online to complain about it, but if I were to assert that “at least 80% of pies are fine and not deformed” and you choose to reply with “Where do these numbers come from? internet magic?”, I think you can see the inherent ridiculousness of that reasoning.
I really hate that on the Internet you really have to explain to people that the things they see posted there are almost always the exceptions rather than the rule.
There is empirical evidence, tho. We have numbers for how many people ICE has detained, and how many of those have been legal citizens. And it’s a fucking lot.
Yep, I found the evidence. It supports my point of view. I’ll paste it below.
I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.
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There are many ways to be there legally without being a citizen.
Yeah, and if you have a green card or passport with a visa it’s “probably” fine, unless they’re having a bad day or whatever.
I’m not sure about a passport from a visa waiver country though, because no shot ICE agents know that Lithuanians and Singaporeans can be in the US without a visa.
I’d love to know where 80% comes from. Because I’m in Minnesota and can see what’s happening on our streets. Where are you getting your info from? You sound soooooo sure of yourself and what you are saying contradicts evidence.
It’s a guess without any empirical evidence whatsoever. However, the only reason why you believe it “contradicts evidence” is because nobody ever talks about ICE encounters that go down peacefully. People only ever talk about and post about ICE encounters that are outrageous. So all the encounters you have ever heard of will be ones where someone gets wrongfully arrested/beaten up by agents/etc.
When I saw them, they were checking everyone and arrested 0 people in the time I observed them.
I should not have to explain to you that what you see on the Internet has a heavy selection bias towards the extreme and that for every one video of something stupid happening there’s hundreds more unfilmed of ordinary interactions which aren’t interesting enough to get posted at all.
Edit: I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.
This would be more effective if everyone just affixed a symbol to their sleeve.
Maybe that symbol can be easily recognizable like a star or something. We can even make it bright yellow or gold so it’s visible from a distance.
Do not do this if you are transgender or have an X gender marker. They will cancel your passport and tell you to apply for a new one with your sex assigned at birth.
Uh . . . how? I’m a trans man, but my passport says male. I changed it years ago. I have an active passport. Is there anything in this process that would get me flagged as a trans person?
They have a database of trans people. If you were ever issued a passport with an F gender marker, they would know you changed it.
If you try to renew, you’ll get the passport back with two holes punched in it with a letter telling you to apply again with an F gender marker.
Edit: Some transgender people have been issued the passport anyway with the gender they were assigned at birth. This causes problems because your appearance would not match the gender stated on the passport and thus would subject you to additional scrutiny at checkpoints. That’s not even mentioning the countries where being transgender is just illegal, although I don’t imagine you have many plans to visit those places.
Fuckin’ gross.
So for every person who submits for a renewal or new passport, they are crosschecking records to try to catch “the trannies”.
“YSK you should comply with authoritarian governments”
Yall are so fucking cooked.
Watch the comments advocating for resisting the fascist takeover and see the excuses and downvotes pour in.
So cooked.
“You Americans all are cowards for not doing anything against the fascists besides protesting!”
“okay what do you suggest?”
“I’m not gonna say! But you 2nd amendment people should definitely think of something”
“dude I’m not going to travel 1000 miles and shoot the most protected person on the planet”
“woah where did I say that? Americans are so violent and uncreative! you have to do something along the lines of the French revolution though”
This same conversation repeated over and over with the same bad faith assholes every day. It gets so very tiring to read.
Fucking stewed.
You think ICE cares? You think ICE even understands that?
I have been stopped by ICE and was let go after showing my passport card.
It’s not a guarantee, but it doesn’t hurt.
Work will set you free.
Alternate title:
Give the government $30 to stop violating your civil liberties
Lol, my mom had to pay like somewhere between ¥10,000 to ¥30,000 (Reminbi) in “fines” just so the PRC governenment even legally recognize my existence, because one child policy violation.
Give the government $30 to maybe stop violating your civil liberties
If you have to prove you hand rights then no one has rights.
Still seems like a hassle to have to pull that out. They should design something that’s more outwardly noticeable like a piece of clothing or maybe just a simple armband they can wear over their clothes that signifies they’re jewis-I mean legal or whatever.
Or just a stamp saying ‘this person is unwanted but haven’t found a reason to get rid of them yet’ so you can show to the next ice ‘agent’ you’ve already been harassed earlier.
Or maybe a tattoo on their forehead!
Apple has been trying to get states/governments to let them add their ID to Apple Wallet for years now. Only a handful of states have complied. I’m not sure if you can add a passport.
The most common misconception is that a cop will take your phone and have access to all your personal information plus they’re in your phone. That’s not how it’s intended to work (but absolutely can regardless of whether your state supports digital ID). The intended use is much like paying for goods, they hold up a reader, you open Wallet and select your ID, tap your phone to their reader, and they can see all the relevant information. And it’s encrypted and all that.
Of course, I’m talking about cops following procedure, not thugs working directly for Trump.
I would advise never using your phone. That just cant end well.
Your phone should never be involved in your interactions with cops. In fact you should literally shut it down to get it in its totally unencrypted state
I agree. I just mean, in theory, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
If I had state ID on my phone and a cop asked for it with the reader, sure, I’ll do it. He wants the phone, I’m squeezing the side button five times to lock it so Face ID is disabled. That also prevents data access via the USB port until it’s unlocked. And oops, I forgot the passcode. Can’t prove I know it, I just use Face ID.
Ur better off just shutting it down. As long as it is still is AFU (after first unlock) theres all kinds of fuckery they can work with. It has to be ahard shutdown or reset
My goodness. I can’t believe we are living in this era of fascism.
Good luck United States folk.
