How immigration agents are trained to determine citizenship.

I hated doing bus checks at the I-8 checkpoint more than anything. The aisle was always cramped, and it exposed my gun side to passengers at a closeness that did not make me comfortable. At the time, I believed that if I asked everyone their citizenship, then I was enforcing the laws equally and not engaging in the dreaded racial profiling.

But I didn’t need to ask everyone to know she was undocumented. I could see it in her eyes when she handed me her old I551 card. And so, I looked at her card more closely because I knew.

“Get your stuff and come with me,” I ordered.

“Mande?”

“Consigue sus cosas! Venga con migo!”

She had been in the states for thirteen years. No criminal record came up.

ICE, CBP and Border Patrol all claim they never engage in racial profiling, but this is a lie. These agencies train their agents in the academies that the Supreme Court allows racial profiling in immigration policing. This is aligned with the agencies’ ideology that the 4th and 5th Amendments to the US Constitution do not exist within 100 miles of any land or sea border.

The US Supreme Court allows racial profiling in immigration arrests. Under United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, agents are taught:

“the Court’s position that Border Patrol agents should be accorded “wide discretion" in their border protection operations, and agents do not violate the Constitution when they refer motorists for inspection ‘largely on the basis of apparent Mexican ancestry.’” (p.107)

Everything you are witnessing today on TikTok and other social media platforms has been legal. You are just not used to seeing it. Our immigration enforcement agencies have always separated families in some way. They have always arrested the undocumented by sweeping them up off the streets without warrants. There has never been a time when they have not racially profiled. This is all standard immigration procedures.

This is what immigration policing has always looked like on your borders. It’s where they stop you driving your kid to school because you don’t look like you can afford that car (driving while Brown/Black.) It’s when they ignore your demands for arrest warrants, because they don’t need no stinking warrants in immigration policing unless they enter your home. It’s them not telling you they don’t have badge numbers and wearing civilian clothing with their faces covered. It’s the knowledge that they have coverup teams and intentionally designed failures for oversight agencies that prevent them from ever being held accountable.

If DHS is denying what we all know to be true and what my experience is as an ex agent, then this all begs the question: how are immigration enforcement agents actually trained to recognize Black and Brown undocumented people? Being undocumented is not something you can see with your eyes like you can see when someone steals something or assaults someone.

This all comes down to the required suspicion needed to conduct a stop and determine a person’s citizenship.

Peace officers are your local deputies, metropolitan police officers and state troopers. Legally, they need probable cause to stop and question you. This means an officer must see or have information that you likely committed a crime to stop and question you, and there are legal requirements for when they need to go the extra step and obtain arrest warrants. When officers make stops without probable cause or a warrant, their arrests are likely to be challenged and dismissed by the courts.

In immigration, because there is the issue that citizenship cannot be determined simply by looking at someone, the courts decided that “reasonable suspicion” of “illegal alienage” was enough. This “reasonable suspicion” includes simply existing within the 100 mile rule. If you happen to be living in this area that encompasses 2/3 of the American population, congratulations, you do not have the full protections afforded by the US Constitution according to the Supreme Court.

This “reasonable suspicion” is what courts have said allows racial profiling. The Supreme Court reasoned incorrectly that because most of those crossing illegally at the time were Mexicans, it was appropriate to consider one’s skin color when stopping them for a citizenship determination.

Other acceptable “reasonable suspicion” elements taught to immigration agents in the academies include: not speaking English, speaking English too well but looking poor, driving a car that appears to be out of their means, being on a small road close to the border, vehicle appears heavily laden, vehicle appears lifted, driving erratically, exiting the freeway too fast, looking at us while they drive past, being afraid to look at us when they pass, our experience as experts in human and drug smuggling, our experience that these roads are often used to smuggle…pretty much anything.

Now, I can hear the guffaws after you read that, but that is the truth. That is what the courts allow immigration agents to do when stopping people. That all is considered “reasonable suspicion.”

So, if DHS is claiming they do not racially profile, but I have demonstrated to you that they do and are legally allowed to do so, how are agents trained to spot Black and Brown migrants vs. Black and Brown citizens and how do they determine citizenship?

If agents are patrolling the border in between the ports and in the desolate areas, it is not hard to tell. It doesn’t matter what their skin color is, they have all crossed illegally. I have apprehended plenty of non-Latinos crossing illegally: Chinese, Israelis, Africans, white-Mexicans, Chinese-Mexicans, etc. They are crossing without inspection and agents are tracking them through the middle of nowhere. This provides probable cause because agents see the evidence of their illegal crossings and match the footprints to the wearer.

The problem becomes when agents go into the cities like we see in the ICE raids today. Agents have no idea when or if people crossed illegally in this scenario. The initial cause for agents to walk up to someone is always visual. That is the nature of our senses. If we have the ability to see, we see the color of their skin. To deny this simple fact and the biases it creates in a country steeped in racial biases is ludicrous. It was the sight of the woman that first drew me to her on the bus. And even though I asked everyone their citizenship, I was watching her before I ever got to her, vaguely listening to the responses white people gave me.

For all the decades of DHS, ICE, CBP and Border Patrol claiming that they are experts in determining citizenship, that they are the only ones who can do such serious investigations because they have all the specialized training, that only they know how to ask the questions to determine citizenship and that none of it is based in racial profiling, note that they never describe what this investigation is or how it is done. Yet, today these same agencies are pushing other law enforcement agencies through determining citizenship training speed classes as if any moron can do these inspections.

This brings us to the truth: determining citizenship is something anyone can do with minimal training because it is based in racial profiling, prejudice and wearing down the subject. First, they racially profile them. Then agents browbeat people for hours until they give in. That is how ICE, CBP and Border Patrol determine citizenship.

That is the training. That is it. Wear them down.

It is bonus points if you get a white undocumented immigrant. I say bonus points because agents bet nearly every shift who will catch the most people, who will break the most people. When agents do find a Canadian, Dutch, German or other white immigrant who is undocumented, it is often put into the press to show that we target whites too and therefore the agencies feel they can claim they are not racist. This is also why the agencies target heavily Latino populated schools for recruitment. Border Patrol and CBP are in these schools from kindergarten to college conditioning young Latinos to hate themselves and see their undocumented brethren as criminals.

But careful analysis has shown Latinos are not represented in management at the same rates they are in non-management positions. Latino agents are tokens for the agencies to deny their racist policies. Former Chief Raul Ortiz is a fine example of how a Latino agent can achieve rank. Ortiz is known among the Latino agents in Border Patrol as Whortiz because they claimed he was a whore who would sell out Latino agents for his own promotions and coverup his own sexual misconduct allegations of which there are many.

The bus was long gone, and I argued with her for four hours.

At first, she insisted her card was legit. It was an old light green card, and I knew those were impossible to determine. The picture was of a child, and I was looking at a woman who was in her forties. Still it was not uncommon to see these cards in the 1990s and early 2000s. When she claimed to have been in the US for decades, I asked why she had not learned English as I had been trained to do even though I personally knew of many legal migrants who never learned English well.

In the academy, when I asked what to do if the person would not admit they were “illegal,” we were instructed to ask questions about popular American culture: What is your favorite football team? What is your favorite American sitcom? What hospital were you born in? “If they cannot answer these questions, they are illegal,” our instructors said.

Four hours later, after keeping her from her children, after holding her in a freezing cell that was filthy and reeked, after telling her I could put her in federal prison…she broke and stated that the card was not hers.

She had three American born daughters. “Who will take care of them?”

“I guess you should have thought about that before entering without inspection,” I said. And then I sent her back to Mexico on the next bus without notifying or checking in on her children.

I disappeared her, and I do not know if she just gave in to my brutality or if she was actually undocumented. I practiced racial profiling as a Border Patrol agent. I was trained to do this. They are all being trained to do this today.

This is immigration policing.

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