In Lawsuit Over Construction Raids, DHS Official Testifies ICE Agents Can't Trust REAL IDs
· Reason
At a federal court hearing in Mobile, Alabama, on May 28, government officials continued to argue that REAL IDs aren't reliable proof of citizenship and that federal immigration officers don't need a warrant to enter private construction sites.
Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant special agent in charge of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) field office in Mobile, Alabama, testified in a civil rights lawsuit that REAL IDs "can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship," according to a transcript of the hearing.
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The comments raised the eyebrows of Chief U.S. District Judge Anthony Beaverstock. If REAL ID is good enough for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), he asked, why would immigration enforcers not accept it? "Help me understand how that makes sense," he said.
Whether immigration agents can ignore government-issued IDs to detain suspected illegal immigrants is one of the central questions in a lawsuit filed last October by Leo Garcia Venegas, an Alabama construction worker and U.S. citizen. The May 28 hearing concerned a motion for a preliminary injunction filed by Venegas and the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, asking Beaverstock to block the government from continuing to preemptively detain him.
Immigration officers have detained and handcuffed Venegas three times since last May, despite his being a U.S. citizen. The first two arrests occurred during raids on private construction sites, where Venegas' lawsuit alleges officers detained workers based solely on their apparent ethnicity.
Agents detained Venegas for a third time, shackling him by the legs and arms, during a traffic stop this March—months after he had initiated litigation claiming the government was violating his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. In all instances, agents ignored Venegas' REAL ID, issued by the state of Alabama and identifying him as a U.S. citizen.
Institute for Justice attorneys argued at the hearing that the video evidence of Venegas' detentions, testimony from other cases around the country, and the Trump administration's own statements show that it's targeting the construction industry with warrantless searches and preemptively detaining anyone who looks Latino. Once officers detain someone, Institute for Justice attorney Jared McClain said, "it is incredibly difficult to end the stop, because the government has trained migration officers to discredit the very government documents that should dispel suspicion that someone is here unlawfully."
Venegas testified at the hearing that immigration officers detained him at the first construction site raid because he was trying to film his brother's arrest.
"I was trying to record and then one of the agents came at me because he didn't like that I was recording him and he tried to take my phone away," Venegas testified. "I kept yelling that I was a citizen so another agent came and helped him and they threw me on the ground. I yelled that I was a citizen and they handcuffed me anyway."
"They pulled my wallet out of my pants and they got my license out," Venegas continued. "They saw my license was a real ID, but they said it was fake."
Gehovani Alvirde Ruiz, another Alabama construction worker and permanent legal resident, also testified at the hearing. Ruiz testified that federal agents detained him in his front yard on February 1, 2025, and told him that both his Social Security card and permanent residency card were fake. The agents handcuffed Ruiz and transported him to an immigration detention center, where he was placed in a cell.
"One of the federal agents came into my cell where I was by myself and asked me where I had gotten this permanent resident card because it had been the best permanent resident card he had ever seen while working at that agency," Ruiz testified. "He asked me where I had gotten it and how much I had paid for it because he had never seen a better falsified copy than that one."
Ruiz was eventually released after roughly two hours in a detention cell. He said the agents told him there had been an error in their system, an explanation he found strange, since he had previously traveled abroad without any problems.
Ruiz testified that the experience made him feel "powerless and bad."
"I felt bad, very bad, because it was a long process to be able to get those documents," Ruiz said. "It wasn't just a financial burden but also I have lost a lot of time with my family in order to get those documents."
Also accompanying the Institute for Justice's motion for a preliminary injunction were 30 declarations filed in other lawsuits across the country by U.S. citizens with similar encounters.
"From LA to Minnesota to New York to Washington, DC, we have evidence that immigration officers are going on to work sites without warrants, rounding up workers based on how they look, immediately placing them in physical restraints, and refusing to credit their government-issued documents," McClain said.
ProPublica identified at least 170 Americans who'd been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an investigation published last October. For example, George Retes, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran, was tear-gassed and jailed for three days last July during an immigration raid in California. He said he was never allowed a phone call while he was incarcerated. The Institute for Justice is also representing Retes in a lawsuit against the U.S. government.
In the Florida Keys, a man filed a complaint with DHS in April after a Customs and Border Protection officer allegedly entered a private construction site and put a gun to the head of one construction worker.
The U.S. government argues that the alleged policies Venegas is challenging don't exist—and that even if they did, he wouldn't have standing to challenge them, because he neither owns nor controls the construction site, which they say is akin to an open field where immigration officers don't need a search warrant to enter.
"We don't believe that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy on an open job site where our agents arrived on the street that day," Lavoie testified.
Whether construction sites are considered public or private spaces under the Fourth Amendment appears to be a novel legal issue, but it was the government's position on REAL IDs that drew the most skepticism from Beaverstock at the hearing.
Lavoie previously argued in a December 11 court filing that "REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship" because "each state has its own REAL ID compliance laws, which may provide for the issuance of a REAL ID to an alien."
Pressed by Institute for Justice lawyers on that statement at the hearing, Lavoie said, "I'm no expert in REAL ID law" but repeated that a REAL ID "can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship." He said his statement wasn't based on specific state policies, but rather "numerous arrests of people possessing a REAL ID that have been determined to be here in the country illegally."
When asked if Alabama was a state that issues REAL IDs to aliens, Lavoie responded, "I can't paint it with a broad brush. It's an individual-by-individual person. It's not a state-by-state determination."
DHS is the agency that certifies and administers the REAL ID Act, and REAL IDs are now required for entry to federal property, including airport security checkpoints. The notion that a government agency wouldn't accept an ID it had foisted on the public would confuse many American travelers.
"Why was I sent home twice besides my failure to follow instructions when I got a REAL ID if it doesn't mean something?" Beaverstock asked Justice Department attorney Gaillard Ladd at the hearing. "Why does the airport accept the REAL ID when it's shown at TSA but [Homeland Security Investigations] or ICE doesn't accept it? Help me understand how that makes sense."
Ladd responded that agents "have seen in the field individuals that have STAR IDs that at one time perhaps the STAR ID was valid and now it's invalid because the person is no longer here legally."
"A person's legal status can change back and forth," Ladd continued. "Perhaps they were issued the STAR ID when they were here legally and then, subsequently, their immigration status changes."
Beaverstock has not yet issued an order regarding Venegas' motion for a preliminary injunction.
Venegas' class action lawsuit aims to have the alleged policies blocked from being enforced against him and other construction workers in the Sourthern District of Alabama. It also seeks damages for Fourth Amendment violations.
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