When we posted our latest know-your-rights guide, we noted that it describes the rights of U.S. citizens if you are stopped and/or asked to identify yourself or show ID documents in certain circumstances: as a pedestrian, as a passenger in a car (not the driver), at home, or at the airport for a domestic flight.

Why these exceptions and limitations? What about drivers of motor vehicles, passengers on international flights, and people who aren’t U.S. citizens? Don’t they have rights too?

Yes, everyone has rights. But we limited our guide to circumstances in which we think the law is clearly established. In other situations, U.S. courts have been less clear, and in some cases these issues are the subject of ongoing litigation.

Here are some notes on these exceptions and limitations:

• Non-U.S. citizens: All people have rights, regardless of their citizenship. The Bill of Rights refers to the rights of “persons”, not citizens. The U.S. is a party to international treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which according to the U.S. Constitution are the “supreme law of the land” just as much as the Constitution itself. Human rights, by definition, don’t depend on citizenship. But U.S. courts have often (wrongly, we think) interpreted some of the references to “persons” in the Bill of Rights and other U.S. laws as applying only to U.S. citizens and sometimes to permanent U.S. residents, not to all people. And U.S. courts have made it difficult or impossible to enforce rights recognized by the ICCPR, other international treaties, or customary international law through U.S. courts. In practice, non-U.S. citizens have fewer rights likely to be recognized by U.S. courts. U.S. law requires each non-U.S. citizen 18 or older in the U.S. for more than 30 days to register with the U.S. government and “at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession” their registration certificate. That law is of dubious validity, and hasn’t generally been enforced. It says non-U.S. citizens must “carry” their papers, but is silent on whether or when they are required to show those papers. Recent renewed enforcement of this law has prompted ongoing litigation in which these issues have been raised but not yet resolved. See  this know-your-rights brochure and these other resources from the American Immigration Lawyers Association for more on the rights of non-U.S. citizens.
• Drivers of motor vehicles: Unlike a mere passenger, the operator of a motor vehicle on a public road must have a license and must show their license to police if they are lawfully stopped. Case law on what constitutes a lawful traffic stop is complex and voluminous, with variations from state to state.  A key unresolved question is whether or in what circumstances ICE agents or other Federal law enforcement officers have the authority to make traffic stops or demand drivers licenses to investigate possible violations of state motor vehicle or traffic laws. In one recent ruling in an ongoing lawsuit in Minnesota, for example, the District Court Judge wrote that, “the Court declines to wade into whether federal immigration enforcement officers have any authority to enforce Minnesota’s traffic laws.”
• Passengers on international flights to and from the U.S.: Here again the case law is voluminous, complex, and silent on some key issues.  Federal agents have been allowed broad authority to stop and search anyone entering or leaving (or seeking to enter or leave) the U.S., whether at a land border or at an international airport or seaport.  Non-U.S. citizens can, in many cases, be denied entry to the U.S. if they decline to answer questions. But we can find no case law on the limits of the right of a U.S. citizen to remain silent in response to questions at the U.S. border or an international port of entry or exit, once they have declared their U.S. citizenship. (See more here about your rights at the airport for a domestic flight.)

We also noted in our guide that in some states, but not others, you might have to identify yourself verbally, if you have been legally stopped based on reasonable suspicion, but you don’t have to say anything else or show any papers. We think state “stop and ID” laws are unconstitutional. But whether “stop and ID” laws conflict with the 5th Amendment right to remain silent has not, so far as we can tell, been resolved by the courts.

Having the legal “right” to do something doesn’t mean that, in practice, you can do it without the police stopping you or retaliating against you for trying to exercise your rights. Retaliatory policing and retaliatory prosecutions are illegal but common.

Whether you are arrested, prosecuted, tortured, or shot by police, jailers, or prison guards may depend on the color of your skin,  your accent, what neighborhood you are in, whether you are wearing a hijab or other indicia of faith or ethnicity, or other aspects of your appearance and the situation, rather than on whether you are breaking the law.

Different people face different risks in trying to exercise their rights. Many of these risks are not ones individuals can choose whether to take. You are unavoidably “at risk”, to a greater or lesser degree, whether or not you chose to take additional risks. The law won’t always protect you. But neither will complying with the law always protect you.

One thing is certain: Your legal rights don’t matter if you never try to use them.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and an assortment of other masked Federal officers are arresting U.S. citizens for not showing ID or “proof” of citizenship on the streets, at traffic stops, and in warrantless door-to-door searches in the Twin Cities.

ICE is planning to station agents to “check documents” on the jetbridges at the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport.

With all this happening, we’ve posted a new know-your rights FAQ for U.S. citizens, “Do I have to show ID as a pedestrian, passenger in a car (not the driver, for whom the rules are different), at my home, or at the airport for a domestic flight?” (Also available here as a printable one-page PDF.)

This know-your-rights guide is for U.S. citizens. The law is different for those who aren’t U.S. citizens: U.S. law requires non-U.S. citizens in the U.S. for more than 30 days to register with the U.S. government and carry  their papers “at all times”.  But there are many other good resources for non-U.S. citizens such as this brochure. We’ve found few other clear guides to the rights of U.S. citizens in situations like those today in Minnesota, in which U.S. citizens are being (illegally) required to prove their right to walk the streets, live peacefully in their homes, or travel within their own country.

This guide is a work in progress. We’ve posted it quickly because the need seems urgent. We welcome suggestions for corrections or changes.

Knowing and asserting your rights protects everyone in our society — including non-U.S. citizens. It shows other people that they have rights too, and shows police that we know we have rights. Rights are not, in and of themselves, a protection. You can’t count on police to respect your rights. But police act differently when people know and assert their rights.

Liberty lives in its exercise. Freedom dies if it’s not used. Know your rights — and use them.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a Federal agency whose mandate is to administer naturalization and derivative citizenship for those not born as U.S. citizens, has been trying — without the public notice required by law for such a database — to construct a national ID registry of all U.S. citizens including natural-born U.S. citizens.

This process began in April and May of 2025 with a ten-fold expansion of the USCIS “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program” (SAVE) database to add records about hundreds of millions of native-born U.S. citizens to those already in the system about tens of millions of naturalized citizens and immigrants.

Information about a new category of individuals (native-born U.S. citizens) was added to SAVE from new sources including Social Security and state drivers’ license records.

The Privacy Act requires prior notice in the Federal Register of the categories of individuals, information, and sources of personal data in Federal databases. To deter Federal officials or employees form keeping secret databases about the citizenry, the Privacy Act makes the maintenance of such a database of personal information without proper notice a crime on the part of the responsible Federal officials and employees.

USCIS converted the SAVE database about immigration and naturalization into a comprehensive  database about all U.S. citizens without the required notice.

Six months later, in response to a lawsuit led by the League of Women Voters, USCIS published a notice of the changes to the SAVE system, with the notice to take effect today unless the changes are rescinded in response to public comments. But USCIS has kept the the revised SAVE system in operation, illegally, during the comment period.

In our comments submitted today to USCIS, the Identity Project points out that the ongoing maintenance of the revised SAVE system without proper notice has been a crime on the part of the responsible Federal officials and employees.

We also argue that “the revisions to the SAVE system of records exceed the statutory authority of USCIS and violate multiple provisions of the Privacy Act.”

According to our comments:

The statutory mandate of USCIS is to carry out various functions with respect to naturalization and derivative citizenship. No statute requires USCIS to carry out any function whatsoever with respect to natural-born U.S. citizens, or to collect information about them. Nor does any statute require any agency to maintain a national registry of U.S. citizens.

Even if Congress were to authorize  a national ID registry, “records of Social Security numbers and account information and state drivers’ license records would not be ‘relevant or necessary’ to accomplish that purpose”:

Pursuant to the U.S. Constitution, an individual born in the U.S. acquires U.S. citizenship by birth. In the absence of a valid renunciation of citizenship — which would be executed and recorded by the Department of State, not by USCIS, the Social Security Administration (SSA), or state drivers’ license agencies — the sole fact that is relevant or necessary to ascertain their U.S. citizenship is the fact of their birth in the U.S., not whether they have a Social Security number or drivers’ license, much less any other information in SSA or drivers’ license records.

What is the relevance of whether someone has a Social Security number to whether they are a U.S. citizen? Non-U.S. citizens can and routinely do (and in many cases must) have Social Security numbers and accounts. What is the “relevance” of whether an individual has a driver’s license to whether they are a U.S. citizen? Many states can and do issue driving permits to non-U.S. citizens, on the basis of their demonstrated competence to operate motor vehicles safely rather than on the basis of citizenship. Neither the Social Security Administration nor state driver licensing agencies are authoritative adjudicators of U.S. citizenship, and neither of them has any need, for any of their official purposes, to ensure that whatever information about U.S. citizenship they may incidentally collect and maintain is either accurate or up to date.

Will anyone who doesn’t have a drivers’ license be presumed not to be a U.S. citizen?

A “citizenship” registry constructed in garbage-in, garbage-out fashion by aggregating state drivers’ license records that have nothing to do with citizenship will inevitably be incomplete, inaccurate, and unfit for the purpose of judging citizenship, eligibility to vote, or eligibility for other Federal programs.

Finally, we call out USCIS for violating the provision of the Privacy Act that requires information that is to be used to determine eligibility for Federal programs (the stated purpose of the SAVE citizenship database) to be collected directly from the individuals to whom it pertains:

The Privacy Act at 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(2) also requires that, “Each agency that maintains a system of records shall… (2) collect information to the greatest extent practicable directly from the subject individual when the information may result in adverse determinations about an individual’s rights, benefits, and privileges under Federal programs.”

None of the additional information in the revised SAVE system would be collected directly from the subject individuals, as required by this provision, although all of it could be.

If USCIS wants to create a registry of all U.S. citizens (and if a valid law has authorized it to do so, which it has not), USCIS must “to the greatest extent practicable” sign individuals up directly for that registry, first providing them with the notices required by the Privacy Act.

You can submit your own comments here through midnight EST tonight, December 1, 2025.

Given that the criminals at USCIS responsible for maintaining the SAVE system ignored the law when they expanded it into a  national ID registry, kept it in operation for six months before publishing a proper notice of what they were already doing, and have kept it in operation in its illegally revised and expanded form during the comment period, we have little hope that they will now come to their senses and rescind the changes, much less that they will be prosecuted for their criminal violations of the Privacy Act.

We wish all success to the League of Women Voters and their partners in their ongoing litigation against the unlawful transformation of this immigration and naturalization system into a national database of aggregated (mis)information about all U.S. citizens.

Earlier this month, as part of a lengthy and complex bill to reauthorize the US State Department,  the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) revived a proposal that had been rejected but came close to passage in 2017 to authorize the Secretary of State to summarily deny or revoke the passport of any US citizen on the basis of an extrajudicial determination by the Secretary that a US citizen has “knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization”.

The proposal drew immediate condemnation on both due process and First Amendment grounds. “Provide material support” has been interpreted to include making or amplifying statements supporting the political goals of a banned organization — i.e., free speech.

Last week, during markup of the State Department reauthorization bill, the Committee on Foreign Affairs approved an amendment sponsored by Rep. Mast to remove the passport denial and revocation provisions he himself had introduced a week earlier.

We’re pleased that this trial balloon went down in flames so quickly. But we’re disturbed that it was even introduced.

If there’s any silver lining in this episode, it’s that it’s proved a teachable moment to articulate the relationship between passports, travel, and the First Amendment.

We’re especially pleased by the comment of Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX):

Travel abroad is a form of expression and association.

In saying this, Rep. Castro recognized that, as we’ve always argued, to travel is “to assemble”, and to do so is an act directly protected by the First Amendment guarantee of “the right of the people… to assemble”.

Read More →

The US  Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is threatening to step up enforcement of Federal laws that require each foreign citizen present in the US for more than 30 days — even as a tourist or other visa-free visitor — to register with the  US government and “at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession” the registration certificate issued by the US government.

These laws are not new, but they have rarely been enforced. Until the creation by the DHS in March 2025 of a new registration procedure, there was no practical way for many foreigners to comply. This was especially true for Canadian citizens who can stay in the US for six months at a time without a visa and without being registered by US authorities at land border crossings.

These laws and others like them that place foreigners under special suspicion and surveillance should be repealed, not revived. They are a threat to the freedom of foreigners in the US and, to the extent that other countries reciprocate, a threat to the freedom of US citizens traveling abroad. We shouldn’t always have to carry government-issued papers to prove who we are, whether we are in the country of our citizenship or any other. Human rights, including rights to freedom of movement, should not depend on citizenship.

The Alien Registration Act (currently codified at (8 USC §1301-1306) was enacted in 1940 as part of a bill more often referred to as the Smith Act. The bundling together of restrictions on dissident speech and association with requirements for registration and tracking of all foreigners  reflects the xenophobic assumption that foreign ideas, associations, and individuals are presumptively suspicious and potentially subversive.

Similarly xenophobic assumptions underlie the Foreign Agents Registration  Act (FARA), which requires almost impossibly burdensome registration, reporting, and labeling of informational materials produced or funded by foreigners.

Portions of the Smith Act were eventually found unconstitutional, but have largely been left on the Federal statute books along with the alien registration requirement. There have been fewer challenges to the Constitutionality of FARA, but it too remains on the books.

Violations of the the registration and other provisions of the Smith Act or FARA carry potentially substantial criminal penalties for those singled out for prosecution.

Laws like this that are widely and often unknowingly violated and rarely but selectively enforced are inherently vulnerable to weaponization against the demons du jour.

How many foreign tourists on Waikiki or Miami Beach are carrying their alien registration certificates in waterproof pouches over their bikinis or board shorts, or  know that failure to do so is a crime? How many US citizens would want to be subject to reciprocal requirements when they travel outside the US?

Standard advice to tourists and other travelers anywhere is to carry only copies of your passport and any separate entry card or visa, not the hard-to-replace and valuable-to-thieves original documents. Leave the originals in a secure place in your hotel or lodging whenever possible.

Typical of this advice is the State Department wallet card of Smart Travel Tips send out with every new US passport:

[“Safeguard your passport. While overseas, carry *copies* of your passport ID page and foreign visa with you at all times.”]

The Alien Registration Act has quirks that cast doubt on its purpose or fitness for purpose. The law requires all foreigners to carry evidence of registration on their person at all times, but doesn’t require them to show these papers to police. Police or immigration enforcement officers need some independent basis to search a suspected foreigner for their immigration papers. There’s no statutory requirement for foreigners to have, carry, or  show passports, only registration papers. Foreigners, especially asylum seekers including those who are stateless, can lawfully be admitted to the US without passports.

Thousands of comments were submitted to the DHS in response to the new alien registration regulations promulgated this year. Almost all of the commenters objected to the registration requirement, not just the new registration procedures.

The revival of the  Alien Registration Act as a tool for tracking, intimidation, silencing, expulsion, or imprisonment of disfavored foreigners should be a sign that it’s time to repeal this law and all of the vestiges of the Smith Act as well as FARA.