Ava Benach, a partner with the law firm Benach Pitney Reilly Immigration in D.C., told WTOP that as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions have ramped up across the country, she’s gotten more inquiries on how a U.S. citizen stopped by agents could prove their citizenship.
“A United States citizen has no obligation to produce evidence of his or her citizenship if requested on the street,” Benach said. “Be respectful, be polite. … Which is not a very satisfactory answer if you have masked men with guns yelling in your face.”
Asked what the best form of ID establishes U.S. citizenship, Benach said that would be a U.S. passport.
“A passport has a photograph, it has a name,” Benach said. And it is uniform across all states, unlike a birth certificate.
“If you’re stopped on the street of Bethesda, Maryland, and your birth certificate happens to be from Los Alamos, New Mexico, it may look completely unlike any birth certificate this ICE officer has ever seen,” Benach said.
“And carrying around a birth certificate, let’s face it, is kind of weird.”
Around this same time last year, the U.S. State Department reported that the number of passport holders was at an all-time high, with 170 million in circulation.
But Benach said many Americans don’t have passports. And those who do have passports may not be in the habit of carrying them around.
“But that’s really the best documentation a person has,” when it comes to proving citizenship, she said.
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