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Comment by unhappy_meaning | Hacker News Reader

Hello Mr. Roberts,

Thank you for doing this, as you know we've probably have seen some crazy news articles and segments of ICE agents arresting people all over the U.S. with some for good and some for wrong reasons. What is your advice or best practice for someone who is "wrongfully" approached by ICE agents but has legal status to be in the U.S.? (whether work visa or green card)

I've read that someone should carry their green card with them or if they have some sort of REAL ID mark on their drivers license it may help.

Thank you again for doing this!

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It’s a legal requirement to carry your green card with you at all times. INA 264(e) has required this for as long as I’ve been in the US (which is since 2004).

To be more specific:

>> (e) Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d). Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.

Where evidence of registration is an I94 or a green card or whatever.

I’m constantly surprised how many permanent residents don’t do this.

Personally I don’t carry my GC, because I’m far more likely to lose it than for anyone to ever ask for it. And it’s kind of a nightmare to replace, takes awhile and you can’t travel.

To put it another way, the $100 fine is less expensive to me than the consequences of losing it.

If I understand the comment above correctly, one can carry an I94 too and those you can just print on the website [1]

I'm guessing there's no size requirements? If so it might be a good idea to just print four on an A4, and have one folded in your wallet, one tucked in your bag-pack, one in the car, etc.

[1]: https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/search/recent-search

They can also put you in jail for up to 30 days if they're feeling like it. Seems crazy to me but also perfectly legal for them to do.

There are a lot of things that are "perfectly legal" to do. Doesn't mean that, in practice, law enforcement would necessarily take the most extreme legal action possible.

This is a new development (well, new-ish for many communities... I imagine predominatly-black communities have always experience this) whereby LE is explicitly instructed to look for any legal course of action to punitively enforce the law (rather than using a more judicious interpretation, which was more in line with the spirit of many of these regulations).

So yes, technically, law-abiding citizens should always xxxx. Does that mean that, in real life, folks always do this? Only if they are in a paranoid state whereby LE maliciously enforces the law for any minor violation and enforces overwhelming (often illegal) responses to these infractions.

> Only if they are in a paranoid state whereby LE maliciously enforces the law for any minor violation and enforces overwhelming (often illegal) responses to these infractions.

ICE operates in every state. e.g. US citizens are being jailed in California (https://apnews.com/article/us-army-veteran-immigration-raid-...)

It sounds like the current administration is specifically targeting democratic stronghold states, but I don't know if that means you would be any safer in Republican majority states.

Generally no, because those are more likely to have state or local government employees working on ICE’s behalf. For instance in Florida a weigh station employee said they were calling ICE on people who looked (and sounded?) Hispanic.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2025/07/09/attor...

Reading that article, it reads more like the person skipped the weigh station and got pulled over by the highway patrol cop usually at the weigh station. Weigh stations will often have a patrol car sitting by the highway that pulls over anyone speeding or who needs to stop at the weigh station but didn't. So CBP (not ICE) was called by a highway officer.

Still to your point of a state government authority calling the feds because someone they interacted with looked Hispanic.

Interesting, it seems like you read “was stopped” as an action, and I had read it as a state.

Many don't do this because they don't feel the need. I've spent about a decade in the US as a green card holder, and the only cases I ever been asked for it is either crossing the border or being hired. And I never heard about anyone being fined (let alone going to prison) for failure to carry the green card on them. Yes, the law says that, but I don't think anybody paid much attention to that, at least until now.

You act as if the last 6 months are a continuation of the the last 9.5 years, and there is some status quo that hasn't changed. Maybe for an affluent SWE in his Tesla, but this isn't the case for many on their way to work in a construction work van.

> this isn't the case for many on their way to work in a construction work van.

How many of those van-traveling green card holding construction workers have been fined or imprisoned for failure to carry the green card lately? I don't mean brief detention - anybody can be detained by the police, especially when not having any identification - I mean actual conviction under 1304(e) and court-assigned fine or jail time. How many such cases do you know?

2,452

Care to provide any evidence for at least some?

Immigration law enforcement is at the discretion of the Executive (President). If the President decides they want to pump up the numbers of deported criminals, doing anything that's technically a crime as an immigrant is a risky proposition. Even saying you do it on a public forum is risky.

Are you user proberts?

The best defense so to speak is to carry evidence of your status whether that's a green card or foreign passport and I-94 admission record, to have the number of a local immigration attorney whom you can call if you need to, and to be aware of one's rights. The ACLU has a good discussion of these rights: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/immigrants-rights.

What would you recommend for foreign born US citizens worried about being approached by ICE? What are the basic ground rules for interacting?

For example, some of us here look very much like we didnt grow up in an Iowa cornfield and have genuine concern that one negative interaction is going to result in being roughed up by untrained ICE agents at best and tossed into jail or worse.

Do we just get used to the idea of carrying our passport at all times? Is an ICE agent authorized to demand it and take it from us "for checking", say?

Bar two pieces of fragile paper - a passport and a naturalization certificate - it's not obvious that a citizen is a citizen.

Carry a REAL-ID enabled state ID? Those are not available to illegals in any state. All newer state IDs AFAIK are REAL-ID enabled by default. And you probably will need to use some form of ID anyway pretty frequently.

Thats a good idea, although it is not completely robust.

REAL-ID only proves that the holder had legal presence at the time of issue, not that the holder maintains legal presence at the point of presenting it to the ICE officer. For example, holders of Temporary Protected Status would have been here perfectly legally and been able to get and hold a REAL ID. But their status has just been revoked. So an ICE officer could still refuse to accept it as proof of legal status.

(I'm not Peter)

I'd suggest also applying for a Passport Card, you can keep it in your wallet.

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