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While immigration raids are scheduled to begin on Sunday in at least nine major cities, some US citizens are taking precautions, including carrying their US passports at all times, so as not to be mistakenly detained by immigration officials. and customs.
Cautious Americans, often Latinos, have said they do not want to get carried away by the planned roundups announced by President Donald Trump.
"I was born in this country," said David Cruz, director of communications for the League of Latin American United Citizens. "I am a third-generation Texan and I have been carrying a passport since the day of his election."
Passports, used by international travelers to return to the United States, are legal proof of citizenship.
A Latin American journalist originally from Latin America, who did not want his name to be used for fear that his passport would be reported, said that he had started carrying the document with him. this week-end. Naturalized in the 2000s, he said that recent accounts of citizens mistakenly detained by ICE had made him think that he could be wrongly targeted.
He added that this posed a particular dilemma to accentuated naturalized citizens, as CIE agents might believe that they are illegally in the United States and not grant them the rights of Americans, including due process, the access to a lawyer and leaving their home without proof of citizenship.
"This creates a two-tier system with second-class citizens, people who can be detained without access to a lawyer, unless they carry a federal identity card," the reporter said.
"I was showing my friends, hey, here's my passport, and I'm wearing it for the first time because I do not want anyone to stop me from saying:" Prove that you're a citizen now or ourselves "I'm going to throw you into a cage", he says, "I'm literally worried about my pets and paying my rent."
Linda Gamboa, a Los Angeles-based Los Angeles-based Chicano artist, said she had started carrying her passport at the time of Trump's election.
"I was just telling a friend how I wore mine three years ago" when Trump began to step up her rhetoric about immigration, she said.
Los Angeles resident Guadalupe Acuña said her husband, the student to Professor Rodolfo Acuña, had encouraged her to renew her passport, due to escalating immigration controls imposed by the Trump government.
"Morally, I think no one should have to carry these papers, but that's where we are going," she said.
Thomas A. Saenz, President and General Counsel of the US Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that he was not surprised that some Americans are flying in their passports in their own country .
"I do not think any of us want to live in a country where people feel that they must always wear their passports because of their race," he said. "The record of ICE and immigration enforcement is not good. I can understand why someone would do that."
Even Americans without Latino heritage are seizing their passport this weekend.
Tori Griffin, an African-American and community leader in Atlanta, said that he had recently put his passport in his backpack in case ICE agents would ask him for a proof of citizenship.
Atlanta was one of ICE's target cities on Sunday, and Griffin said his neighborhood was home to many Latino immigrants.
"I consider myself as American as an apple pie," he said. "But in this environment, in this world of Trump, if you're not white, you're considered another, that's the polarization you get."
Clarissa Martinez, Deputy Policy Vice President of the Latin American Defense Group UnidosUS, said in an email that "Immigration law enforcement is too often used as an excuse to harass the law." 39, all of this community, as we have seen from the stories of citizens interviewed and detained.
"It is tragic that people feel compelled to have a passport because of the color of their skin," she said.
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