Indigenous actor Elaine Miles says ICE called her Oregon tribal ID ‘fake’

Every ICE agent deserves a nice long stay on a cruise ship, preferably without power, sewage, and with only hardtack infested with weavals.

Such bullshit.

Miles said the men, whom she worried could have been bounty hunters, did not identify themselves when she asked for their names and badge numbers while they detained her at a bus stop by the shopping center.

When the men did not believe Miles’ tribal ID, she pointed to a phone number for the Umatilla Tribal enrollment office on the back of the card.

“Call it,” she said.

When they didn’t, she took out her phone to call the office herself, but the agents tried unsuccessfully to take her phone, she said. That’s when a fifth agent in the SUV whistled over, and the agents went back to their vehicles and left.

To be fair, ICE agents have never seen a Native American ID before in their lives.

ICE deporting a Native American would be depressingly ironic.

Native Americans are… Mexicans right? /s

I have my tribal ID dismissed as fake all the time. My cousin started boycotting Walmart in the 90’s, because they refused to sell her beer. She doesn’t have a drivers license and (due to a quirk where her home state wouldn’t recognize her out-of-state birth certificate as valid) she couldn’t easily get a state ID. So she used her tribal ID. It worked in most places because she lived in an area with lots of natives. But Walmart’s company policy was to refuse tribal IDs… Meaning she couldn’t buy beer at Walmart, or use their pharmacy. So she started boycotting them all the way back in the 90’s due to that.

Hell, it happened to me just two days ago at the bank. I changed my name a while ago, and needed a photo ID with my old name on it. I had already changed my driver’s license and passport to my new name, so all I had on me at the time was my old tribal ID. The bank manager (a tiny blonde white lady) and I went back and forth about it for a little while… But it became clear that she had no intention of accepting it as a valid ID. So now I’ve been stuck dealing with some bureaucratic BS for the past two days.

My wife (who is just as white as the bank manager) was more surprised about the denial than I was, because it was the first time she had seen it get denied. Like she knew conceptually that it happened, but she hadn’t seen it happen in person until then. Luckily, my cases of denied ID have had much lower stakes than this article. But I wouldn’t doubt for a second that it happened to her, because I know from personal experience that tribal IDs get dismissed as fake all the time.

The irony of the descendants of immigrants into North America trying to detail Native Americans as immigrants is trully world-beating.

Imagine the chaos if highway patrol pulled you over and asked for your Driver Lic. You give it and they say, " nope, this is fake". Then break your car window, throw you to the ground, and zip tie your 5 year old who was in the back. How would people react to that?

Thats what ICE does.

ICE needs more training and supervision.