As Jacob Sullum over at Reason tells it, Penny McCarthy tried her best to tell government agents who she was, and accordingly, who she wasn’t. She had all the usual papers, but none of that mattered. The marshals decided she was Carole Rozak, who had a warrant for arrest for failure to report 25 years earlier, and confirming that the woman they seized was the woman who was wanted was not their problem.

As ICE agents are pushed by Stephen Miller to arrest 3,000 aliens a day, which incidentally will still fall thousands short per day of Trump’s “promise” to deport the “20 million” illegal aliens who “invaded” the nation, the potential for error increases exponentially. Just as the marshals couldn’t manage to tell Penny McCarthy from Carole Rozak, even with government issued identification, the problem for ICE agents distinguishing between legal immigrants, illegal aliens and American citizens is manifest.

American citizens are not required to possess any proof of their citizenship. Citizens have a constitutional right to walk about their world without any identification. If they drive a car, they are required to have a drivers license, but if they go to work, take public transportation or go for a stroll, they do not. There is no duty in America to “show your papers” upon demand, or even possess “papers” at all.

Non-citizens, on the other hand, are required to possess identification at all times when they are out in public showing that they are lawfully entitled to be here. After all, they are present at the largesse of the government and can be held to show proof of their right to be here. Fair enough.

But if a person of Hispanic appearance, name or language is out in public, there is nothing to facially distinguish between the person who is a citizen and the person who is not. A person who does not possess identification showing the right to be present in the United States may well be undocumented, or may well be a citizen. The former may be subject to removal. The latter, however, has a constitutional right to walk about without any papers at all.

To add to the dilemma, there are often a great many people of Hispanic ancestry with the same or similar names. Even if a person gives his name and the ICE agents were inclined to actually check whether the person is a citizen or alien, an unlikely event, it would be exceptionally difficult without more extreme measures like fingerprints or DNA to tell which Jose Garcia is being thrown to the ground, cuffed and seized.

For many people of Hispanic ethnicity, this reality that ICE agents seize without ascertaining citizenship, and the ease of confusion even if they did, creates an untenable situation. When ICE conducts a raid, what becomes of the person who doesn’t have their passport on them, or have a passport at all, who is taken to an ICE detention facility where they are denied any opportunity to call a lawyer or family, or obtain proof of citizenship?

And even if they explain to ICE agents that they are citizens and can prove it, will the agents care any more than did the marshals who seized Penny McCarthy? The old adage is “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” There is no god to sort it out on a plane to El Salvador or South Sudan, even if the person is as much of an American citizen as anyone else.