Congresswoman wants assurance ICE will recognize tribal IDs

New Mexico’s congressional delegation is pressuring the White House after reports of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents questioning tribal members, as well as a recent comment by President Donald Trump that you can tell some immigrants “could be trouble” by looking at them.

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., sent a letter along with the rest of New Mexico’s congressional delegation and four other Democrats, urging Trump to direct ICE agents to “stop harassing Native Americans and violating tribal sovereignty.”

“Nobody is safe,” Leger Fernández said. “The idea that Trump was only going to go after criminals who are undocumented is clearly ludicrous, if you are stopping Native Americans who have no criminal history, who are the quintessential Americans, but are being stopped, likely by what they look like. So, nobody is safe from ICE under these kinds of conditions.”

ICE has ramped up enforcement actions under the new Trump administration, fulfilling a Trump campaign promise to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants.

Mescalero Apache officials confirmed that an ICE agent asked a Mescalero Apache woman for her passport last week in a Ruidoso grocery store.

President Buu Nygren delivered a radio address to the Navajo Nation last week about reports his office received that Navajos have had “negative, and sometimes traumatizing, experiences with federal agents targeting undocumented immigrants in the Southwest.” He recommended Navajos carry state-issued picture IDs like a driver’s license or their Certificate of Indian Blood.

Leger Fernández’s office has received seven reports of ICE agents questioning tribal members in and near Santo Domingo Pueblo and the Navajo Nation, she said. In some of those incidents, ICE agents were not familiar with tribal IDs, according to Leger Fernández.

The letter from members of Congress also asks Trump to direct ICE to accept tribal IDs as proof of citizenship.

Tribal members “have clearly been in the United States and been in the Americas way before this was even a country,” Leger Fernández said. “So, acceptance of a tribal ID should be the easiest ID to accept for proof of citizenship. … The idea that we all need to carry our passports, that we all need to spend hundreds of dollars to prove our citizenship so we don’t get stopped and harassed by ICE is not the country that I think most Americans want to live in.”

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.