Actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have ramped up across the United States in the last year as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

However, there have been growing inquiries about how a U.S. citizen who was stopped by agents could prove their citizenship, Ava Benach, a partner with the law firm Benach Pitney Reilly Immigration in D.C., told WTOP. 

“A United States citizen has no obligation to produce evidence of his or her citizenship if requested on the street,” Benach said. “Be respectful, be polite. … Which is not a very satisfactory answer if you have masked men with guns yelling in your face.”

Concerns on ICE operations have grown after a federal agent fatally shot Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis. In the last year, agents have reportedly arrested citizens and tribal members during their crackdown.

Asked what the best form of ID establishes U.S. citizenship, Benach said that would be a U.S. passport.

“A passport has a photograph, it has a name,” Benach said. And it is uniform across all states, unlike a birth certificate.”

“If you’re stopped on the street of Bethesda, Maryland, and your birth certificate happens to be from Los Alamos, New Mexico, it may look completely unlike any birth certificate this ICE officer has ever seen,” Benach said.

“And carrying around a birth certificate, let’s face it, is kind of weird.”

Around this same time last year, the U.S. State Department reported that the number of passport holders was at an all-time high, with 170 million in circulation.

But Benach said many Americans don’t have passports. And those who do have passports may not be in the habit of carrying them around.

“But that’s really the best documentation a person has,” when it comes to proving citizenship, she said.

According to public data provided by ICE, arrests spiked in 2023, dropped in 2024 and fell off sharply in 2025. Data for 2026 isn’t available yet.