America is now a 'papers, please' country -- and U.S. citizens are not exempt [View all]

Trump has already made us into a ‘papers, please’ country
U.S. citizens have the right to not be manhandled in the streets by masked agents of the state. But that’s not how it’s working in Trump’s America.

Dec. 21, 2025, 6:00 AM EST
By Anthony L. Fisher


(MSNow) One of the first lines of dialogue in the screenplay for “Casablanca” is, “May we see your papers, please?”

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President Donald Trump, without an act of Congress or even an executive order — but through his chaos-as-normalcy governing style and “just try and stop me” approach to any legal limits on his presidential authority — has already made this a “Papers, please” country for some of us — including U.S. citizens. And if we don’t recognize what’s happening to “the land of the free” very soon, Trump may fully normalize the concept that Americans should not only be carrying government-issued identification at all times, but proof of citizenship as well.

There isn’t a “Papers, please” law for U.S. citizens, but Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the court’s Sept. 8 stay order created the concept of what Drexel University law professor Anil Kalhan coined a “Kavanaugh stop.”

In layman’s terms, the justice wrote that while immigration enforcement officers must have “reasonable suspicion” to stop someone and inquire into their immigration status, a person’s “race or apparent ethnicity” or “speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent” can be considered relevant factors in justifying a stop. But, Kavanaugh continued, if a person’s legal status is established, then the person should be promptly let go.

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In practice, if not in letter, Kavanaugh’s opinion allows immigration officers to stop and detain anyone who looks like an immigrant. And let’s be real here, ICE isn’t scouring the country for Irish bartenders who overstayed their visas; they’re targeting people of color — including those originally from Africa and the Middle East, but overwhelmingly those from Latin America. And many U.S. citizens whose presumed ethnicity is seen as a “relevant factor” to immigration enforcement officers are being manhandled and even imprisoned because they didn’t have their “papers” readily available. ..................(more)

https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-brett-kavanaugh-ice-immigration-papers-please-crackdown