Trump Pardons Giuliani- Meanwhile, ICE detains a citizen with a Real ID. Twice.

Like most Americans, Leonardo Garcia Venegas wants to earn an honest living in peace. Unfortunately, he lives in fear that he’ll be arrested just for showing up to work. Garcia is Latino and works in construction. Twice since May, masked federal agents have gone onto private sites where he was working and detained him along with every other Latino worker — and only the Latino workers.

Both times, officers ignored clear signs that they were intruding on private property without a warrant. Both times, Garcia told the officers that he was an American citizen and showed them his Real ID. Both times, the officers detained him anyway because, they said, they couldn’t be sure his Real ID was real.

After video of the first arrest went viral, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that officers arrested Garcia for obstruction because he “physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands.” Garcia’s first-person video of the incident shows that is not true. He was about 25 feet away from where law enforcement was detaining someone when an officer tackled him without giving any verbal commands — let alone asking any questions. He was kept in handcuffs for an hour after showing evidence of citizenship. Once officers confirmed he was a citizen, they released him. He has never been charged with a crime and DHS has never attempted to explain his second arrest, which lasted roughly half an hour.

Garcia’s experience shows how these raids are unconstitutional. For starters, construction sites are closed to the public, often fenced off and posted with “No Trespassing” signs. When the government wants to investigate on private property, it needs to get permission or a warrant.

After immigration officers enter these sites, they detain everyone — including citizens — who fits the administration’s profile for undocumented workers. But the Fourth Amendment forbids arresting or detaining someone without meeting a legal standard known as “particularized suspicion.” That means officers must have evidence that the individual they are detaining has done something wrong.

This constitutional requirement prevents stops based on general suspicion about people who look a certain way, live in a certain area or work for a certain company. For instance, the Supreme Court has said that someone’s presence in a high-crime area is not sufficient to justify even a brief investigatory stop. Even hanging out in a bar that’s being searched for drugs pursuant to a warrant is not enough. Officers must have evidence that a specific individual broke the law.

Even when officers have a more legitimate basis for a stop, someone showing a Real ID should almost always end it. Real IDs are presumptive proof of legal status because the federal government ensures that they are issued only to people who have proved their legal status to state authorities. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. recognized way back in 2012 that Real IDs would soon “suffice to establish lawful presence” in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security oversees the Real ID program. It requires states to use electronic-verification systems and to verify an applicant’s birth certificate and Social Security number. And it requires states to design Real IDs with a scannable barcode and other security features that prevent forgery. Any state ID that does not meet federal standards must include a prominent statement that the ID is not a Real ID.

The Bill of Rights protects people from unreasonable seizures. It’s surely unreasonable for government agents to run onto private property, detain people based on how they look and then reject the very ID that the government has demanded people obtain.