DHS agent tells court REAL ID can’t be used to confirm US citizenship

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement agent told a federal court that the REAL ID–compliant driver’s licenses that it certifies as meeting federal standards are unreliable for confirming U.S. citizenship.

Americans are required to obtain REAL ID to clear federal checkpoints, yet DHS now argues that the same credential may not be sufficient to quickly dispel suspicion of unlawful presence in the field.

The position is now at the center of a civil rights lawsuit brought by Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S. citizen who says he was illegally handcuffed and detained during immigration enforcement actions at private construction sites in Baldwin County, Alabama, even after agents found his Alabama REAL ID.

The lawsuit seeks targeted injunctive and declaratory relief that is aimed at stopping DHS from continuing the practices that led to Venegas’ detention and clarifying the limits of immigration enforcement against U.S. citizens.

After 20 years, billions in projected costs, and a deadline that kept receding into the future, the government’s position that a DHS-certified REAL ID is not sufficient to prevent an American citizen from being handcuffed and detained during an immigration raid raises the question of what, exactly, the program was built to guarantee?

The REAL ID framework requires states to verify identity and lawful status before issuing a compliant license for federal “official purposes,” and compliant IDs can be issued to U.S. citizens and to certain noncitizens with lawful status.

In a December 11 declaration, Philip Lavoie, acting assistant special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigation’s Mobile office said agents “needed to further verify” Venegas’s citizenship because states’ REAL ID compliance laws can permit issuance to noncitizens and based on training and experience, “REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship.”

“He [Lavoie] freely admits that HSI trains officers to treat REAL IDs as unreliable proof of lawful presence,” the lawsuit says. “He says REAL IDs are unreliable evidence of lawful status because some states issue them to illegal aliens … he says that agents kept [Venegas] detained after seeing his REAL ID in order to ‘verify his U.S. citizenship because … based on HSI Special Agent training and experience, REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship.”

Venegas alleges he was detained during immigration enforcement actions at private construction sites. He says masked officers entered the sites without warrants and detained workers based on appearance and occupation. He alleges officers retrieved his Alabama REAL ID but dismissed it as potentially fake. The declaration states he was handcuffed for about 18 minutes before his citizenship was verified and he was released.

In a December 18 filing, the Institute for Justice – which is representing Venegas – seized on DHS’s position as a striking contradiction. REAL ID, the group argued, is specifically built on documentary proof of citizenship or lawful status, and DHS is the agency that certifies state programs as compliant.

The group contends DHS’s practice of treating a REAL ID as insufficient evidence of lawful presence is part of a broader pattern of warrantless worksite incursions and detentions without individualized suspicion.

Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005 in the post-9/11 security push to standardize state driver’s licenses and ID cards for “official purposes,” including airport checkpoint screening. But implementation collided with state resistance, civil liberties objections, and the practical reality that DMVs would be asked to re-document vast numbers of residents and upgrade identity-proofing and document systems.

The federal enforcement deadline moved again and again, most recently to May 7 when the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began REAL ID enforcement at airport checkpoints under a phased approach that allows flexibility through May 5, 2027.

By the time that airport enforcement began, the federal government insisted that REAL ID was not a “national ID,” while critics argued it functioned like one in practice because it created a uniform credential required to move through core federal chokepoints and drove deeper data-sharing and document requirements across states.

DHS’s own early privacy assessment acknowledged an “overarching” concern that REAL ID could be perceived as creating a national ID or database, which is exactly the fear that fueled opposition in state legislatures and among privacy advocates.

From the beginning, cost was one of the program’s biggest fault lines, and one reason implementation stalled. In 2007 testimony, the National Governors Association (NGA) cited state estimates projecting the cost of REAL ID at more than $11 billion over the first five years, including about $1 billion in up-front costs to build systems and re-enroll license and ID holders.

NGA also cited DHS’s estimate that total costs would exceed $23 billion over 10 years, with more than 63 percent borne by states.

Civil liberties groups and state budget analysts echoed the “unfunded mandate” critique, arguing the program would force states to expand document verification, fraud controls, and card production while the federal government offered limited support.

In other words, while the exact national price tag has been debated for years, two things were consistent: the program was never cheap, and the federal government’s leverage over travel and federal access effectively pushed costs down to states and residents.

Even after states moved toward compliance, the program continued to generate practical and civil liberties problems that shaped the last decade of REAL ID politics.

One is the burden of access and paperwork, especially for people who have trouble producing underlying documents such as birth certificates or stable proof of residence.

In a 2024 report on barriers to identification, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that REAL ID’s supporting document rules have limited the types of documents states may accept, and advocacy groups told GAO those constraints can make it harder for vulnerable populations to obtain compliant IDs.

While DHS maintains REAL ID does not create a single federal database, the program’s standardization and verification ecosystem has long raised concerns about broader sharing of personal data and the security risks that can follow from large identity systems. Concerns DHS itself highlighted in early privacy documentation.

And now in the Venegas case there is the mismatch between what REAL ID is marketed to do and what it can accomplish in the field.

REAL ID is supposed to be harder to counterfeit and more reliable for identity assurance at federal checkpoints. Yet, DHS has now argued in court that a REAL ID is not reliable evidence of U.S. citizenship because states can issue compliant IDs to noncitizens and because agents believe REAL ID can be faked or misused.

An argument that, in practice, leaves wide discretion for immigration enforcement officers to detain a person even when the person presents the very credential federal law has spent two decades pushing Americans to obtain.

DHS has defended its actions by emphasizing that REAL ID is not an “immigration document” and that immigration law requires noncitizens to carry specific documentation.

Article Topics

DHS  |  driver's license  |  identity document  |  Real ID  |  REAL ID Act  |  U.S. Government  |  United States