I worry what this app and systems like it might mean for me. I'm a US citizen, but I used to be an LPR. I never naturalized - I got my citizenship automatically by operation of law (INA 320, the child citizenship act). At some point I stopped being noodlesUK (LPR) and magically became noodlesUK (US Citizen), but not through the normal process. Presumably this means that there are entries in USCIS's systems that are orphaned, that likely indicate that I am an LPR who has abandoned their status, or at least been very bad about renewing their green card.
I fear that people in similar situations to my own might have a camera put in their face, some old database record that has no chance of being updated will be returned, and the obvious evidence in front of an officer's eyes, such as a US passport will be ignored. There are probably millions of people in similar situations to me, and millions more with even more complex statuses.
I know people who have multiple citizenships with multiple names, similar to this person: >>45531721 . Will these hastily deployed systems be able to cope with the complex realities of real people?
EDIT: LPR is lawful permanent resident, i.e., green card holder
An ICE officer can't just detain somebody for having an accent or whatever, but if they have probable cause to think the person may not be a citizen then they have a substantial amount of leverage to affirm that. Probable cause has been tested somewhat rigorously in the courts and really means probable cause and not the knee-jerk obvious abuses like 'he's brown!'
There is a lot of constitutional law here, not a lot of ambiguity. While mistakes happen, and ICE is clearly becoming more eager to violate the law (see TFA), that doesn't mean we should be unclear about what the law says. In particular, prioritizing the (incorrect) results from an app over any sort of claim or presentation of proof is illegal.
So how do you discourage this? We could start prosecuting and imprisoning people with fake documents, but that would send our already absurd prison population through the roof and cost immense amounts of money. An alternative way is exactly what this article is about.
As I said in a different comment, we US folks have decided as a society that we don’t want to have mandatory difficult-to-forge national ID. When asked this question democratically, US voters and their representatives have repeatedly* turned down this option and explicitly banned the Federal government from issuing Federal ID cards outside of optional passports for international travel. We made this decision precisely because we distrust the sort of Federal government that would require us to carry that sort of document. There is nothing accidental about this, and you can find explicit statements of this bipartisan consensus all over real Federal legislation; there’s really no possibility that we did this by accident or without due consideration of the tradeoffs.
You’re correct that this lack of standardized documentation makes the immigration enforcer’s job harder, since they can’t just force people to produce proof-of-citizenship on demand and they can’t detain US citizens, and they can’t necessarily trust every paper document they’re given. I’m sympathetic! But that’s the tradeoff we’ve made as a society. The answer is not “throw out the rule book and risk depriving citizens of their rights because our job is hard.” The answer is: respect the rules you were given and due the best job you can without depriving US citizens of their rights.
And PS this situation is hardly unique: we also make ordinary cops’ jobs harder by requiring them to respect suspects’ civil rights and demanding probable cause to make an arrest. It’s tough! The result there is that cops have to work harder and be smarter; they don’t just get to detain anyone they want just because they might vaguely hypothetically be a criminal.
And now you need every single one of these events to occur, simultaneously. The chances of this happening is practically zero. And even if somehow this does happen, which it won't, it's at worst a significant inconvenience for the person who somehow managed to win the reverse lottery. Though in this case perhaps it's not even entirely the reverse lottery - because there'd be a big paycheck awaiting them in lawsuits, crowdfunding, media fees, and so on.
I simply don't see false positives as a realistic concern here, whatsoever. Going with your analog with the police I'd mention e.g. DNA tests or finger prints. These do have non-zero failure rates, but they're still regularly used to convict people simply because the failure rate is seen as acceptably low. And in this case, the conditional probability we're speaking of is probably even lower, and with much less at stake!
You can’t start with this premise, though. Recent rulings allow stops based on “probable cause” such as a combination of “speaks Spanish”, “is brown”, and “is in a place where we think illegal immigrants might be”.
So like: any Latino US citizen, who happens to be working someplace like a landscaping company. Or a kitchen.
The idea that citizens aren’t likely to be targets is now laughable. And we have ample reporting indicating that in fact, citizens are being detained, for hours and hours (if not longer).
And as I was demonstrating above, the conditional probabilities required for a false positive from this app mean that it's practical effective accuracy rate will likely be 100%.
[1] - https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/23/new-milestone-over-2-mil...
…based on what, the independent research ProPublica did? DHS doesn’t even keep statistics on how many citizens they detain so I’m not sure we should be assuming the numbers here are that low.
In other words, ICE's errors are highly visible. That my approximation aligns with ProPublica's (which is probably a higher end ballpark since I doubt they were especially critical of any claims they discovered) is unsurprising.
I would be quite interested to know if you can cite sources on that.
> And we also live in the social media age where nothing gets more of those sacred likes and other such things (including that sweet sweet GoFundMe money) than framing oneself as a victim.
What, exactly, is your argument here? That it’s all fine because you think people will play victim and strike it rich on GoFundMe? I’m struggling to see what point you’re actually trying to make.
> They are actively trying to make a mountain out of every single molehill, yet they are clearly finding themselves annoyingly short of molehills.
Sources? Please list out what molehills were made into mountains. What evidence do you have that they are actively trying to do it because of their “bias”? You’re regurgitating tired, right-wing talking points. Back it up with evidence if you’re so sure about it.
> which is probably a higher end ballpark since I doubt they were especially critical of any claims they discovered
Well, sure. Let’s see some evidence that they weren’t critical enough with their reporting. My understanding is that they are a highly respected journalistic outfit. What makes you so sure they were playing fast and loose with the facts?
Now go frame by frame at about the 5.5s mark. You can see the individual in question charge and then thrust his body in front of the responding ICE officer (watch how he leans left into the officer before they are in physical contact) to create a physical altercation. He then attempts to grab the legs of the officer as he jogs away. The same guy then comes out for more, and pushes one ICE officer dealing with somebody else, and then starts grappling with another ICE officer before he's finally tackled and arrested.
Media Framing:
- Surveillance footage shows Ice agents pushing 79-year-old man to the ground (Guardian)
- Car wash owner files $50M claim over injuries sustained during immigration raid (ABC)
- 79-year-old US citizen pinned by ICE agents (Fox)
- California wash owner tackled, arrested 'impeding' ICE arrest (USA Today)
- U.S. citizen files civil rights claim after ICE raid at his car wash (NBC)
As this is the first video ProPublica featured, presumably they think that's the most compelling case. In any case it's certainly one of their cases which are supposed to be injust, yet there wasn't even the slightest injustice there whatsoever. And now he wants $50 million lol. I'd also add that ProPublica implies that the government dropping charges in cases is because of lack of merit. In reality it's going to be a balance of gain:loss from such. This is one of those cases where the charges were dropped, but obviously that was not done for lack of merit.
[1] - https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/florida-sheriffs...
[2] - https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
What you see as “thrusting” sure looks to me like he was trying to stop himself from a full-on run - why did he grab a door handle on the wall? Why would you grab and pull like that if you were trying to tackle?
And “grabbing his legs”… come on man. That looks a hell of a lot like an old man flailing after getting tackled.
And you think he grappled with the officer before getting arrested outside? It looks like precisely the opposite.
I’m sorry, I just can’t buy what you’re selling.