Senate Democrats are threatening to shutdown the federal government for a second time over the recent death of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis by immigration agents. The Democrats have outlined three demands they want before voting on six funding bills before Saturday to avert another shutdown.
Without the funding legislation the government would partially shut down as funding ends Saturday for some federal programs.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), ranking member of the U.S. Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, said that “ICE is out of control,” yesterday in his remarks before Congress. Murphy was referring to Immigration, Customs & Enforcement (ICE) agents that have surged across several cities to detain immigrants.
“What we are asking is that these roving patrols, the profiling of people just based upon their skin color, or their accents, the show me your papers enforcement has to end,” said Murphy.
Murphy went on to add that what the Democrats are asking for is “no more secret police,” and that what the American people want is “masks off,” referring to the face masks worn by ICE agents, adding that ICE agents “need body cameras on.”
According to Murphy, there are three common ground things that Democrats and Republicans can agree on. They are “stop the roving patrols of our cities, no more secret police and accountability.”
Show Me Your Papers Enforcement
Murphy, in his comments called recent ICE operations as “show me your papers enforcement.” The idea that Americans of color or who have an accent must prove their U.S. citizenship to law enforcement is not new. It has been part of immigration enforcement for decades.
On November 9, 1991, Benjamin Murillo a U.S. citizen and high school football coach and two of his football players, Cesar Soto and Isaac Villalva were stopped by two Border Patrol agents. As the Border Patrol agents approached the vehicle, one of the agents pointed his gun at the coach’s head. An assistant coach approached the agents and informed that Murillo was a high school football coach, at which point the Border Patrol agent told him that it “was none of his business.”
Murillo and his two students were asked their citizenship and later released.
A few months later, on June 3, 1992, two high school students walking home from their graduation rehearsal were stopped by two other Border Patrol agents. After both students told the agents that they were United States citizens, both were brutally searched for weapons while one agent ridiculed one of the students “for exercising his constitutional rights.”
In another incident in 1992, the car in which four Hispanic high school students were in, parked at their high school was surrounded by three Border Patrol vehicles and removed from the car and taken to an immigration detention center. They were later released by immigration agents.
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Several other U.S. citizens reported similar experiences with Border Patrol agents, saying that they “had been insulted, humiliated, degraded” every time that immigration officials detained them because they were Hispanic.
After a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” between the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) and then-Border Patrol Sector Chief, Dale Musegades did not seem to resolve the harassment of Bowie High School students and staff by Border Patrol agents, a court ordered the Border Patrol “from stopping, detaining, and questioning an individual as to his or her right to be or to remain in the United States, unless the Border Patrol Agent has reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts involving more than the mere appearance of the individual being of Hispanic descent.”
Two Supreme Court rulings later would reenforce that the Fourth Amendment prohibited federal agents from assuming that skin color or accent were enough to suspect someone from being undocumented.
Supreme Court Ruled That “Mexican Appearance” Is Not Enough for Immigration Stop
The Bowie injunction built on a Supreme Court ruling that appearing to be Mexican was insufficient to allow federal agents to question occupants of a vehicle “solely on their appearance.” On March 11, 1983, Felix Humberto Brignoni-Ponce’s car was stopped because he “appeared to be of Mexican descent.” In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that stopping a vehicle because an occupant appears to be of Mexican descent violates the Fourth Amendment. Most important is that the decision addressed “roving patrols” used recently to question people about their citizenship.
In another Supreme Court opinion from 1973, the Court ruled in a split decision of five to four that the Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless searches of vehicles on roads near the border.
But state laws succeeded in circumventing the Court’s rulings against using race as a reason to suspect someone of being undocumented.
Show Me Your Papers Laws
In 2010, Arizona legislators enacted Arizona Senate Bill 1070 immigration bill that became notorious for its “show me your papers” provision. SB 1070’s Provision 1 allowed police to demand papers and investigate the immigration status of any person they suspected was undocumented. The Supreme Court upheld the “show me your papers” portion of the law. Texas followed next with its version of this immigration law.
Texas enacted Senate Bill 4 in 2023. It has been called the “show me your papers” law. Among the provisions in the bill includes allowing local and state police officers to arrest and charge anyone suspected of entering the country without legal status. Texans were now required to prove their right to be in Texas.
Adoption of Texas’ SB 4 has been blocked in court litigation. A court hearing held last Thursday may lift the injunction and allow Texas to start charging undocumented immigrants on state charges for being present in Texas without authorization. No word yet on when the court will issue its ruling in this case, but it is expected that SB4 will go into effect.
Notwithstanding the Supreme Court rulings, race-based immigration enforcement remains a tool used in immigration operations today.
The Minnesota Lawsuit
On January 12, 2026, the Attorney General for Minnesota, Keith Ellison, filed a federal lawsuit accusing Kristi Noem and several other federal officials, including Gregory Bovino, then acting as Commander of the U.S. Border Patrol of deploying immigration agents in Minneapolis as part of the Trump administration’s “desire to retaliate against perceived political enemies rather than good faith immigration enforcement, public safety, or law enforcement concerns.”
The lawsuit argues that U.S. citizens are being forced to prove their citizenship. For example, the lawsuit says that immigration agents “block all traffic and demand the citizenship of riders in every car.” The lawsuit adds that among the “unlawful” activities of federal agents in Minnesota include that “agents have racially profiled Minnesotans, resulting in unconstitutional and unlawful detentions.” In one example, the federal lawsuit states that “on December 10, 2025, two masked DHS agents tackled and arrested Mubashir, a Somali American man…despite Mubashir repeatedly asking that he be allowed to show them his legal identification.” After the agents detained the man for two hours, he was released, according to the lawsuit.
In another example, the lawsuit says that on January 8, 2026, “DHS agents took two young Hispanic men to the ground and handcuffed them after DHS agents observed them working at the front of a Target retail store.” Even after being told that one of the young men was a U.S. citizen, DSH agents held him at an unknown location for two hours, the lawsuit says.
In yet another case, a federal agent is recorded on video telling a man whose car they surrounded that “I can hear you don’t have the same accent as me, that’s why I’m asking” for his citizenship. The agent added that “I want to know where you were born.”
The lawsuit goes on to document another case where federal officials approached four men wearing Minneapolis city uniforms with city badges on their uniforms. Three of the men were Hispanic and the fourth was White. The agents demanded to know the citizenship and birthplace of the three Hispanic city workers while ignoring the White worker that was with them.
As per the lawsuit, Americans “are being detained or taken into custody based on race and ethnicity.”
The lawsuit alleges several constitutional violations by federal immigration agents, including forcing American citizens to prove their citizenship when an agent demands it.
When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was asked by a reporter on January 15 if her agency expected U.S. citizens to carry proof of their citizenship, she sidestepped the question. Noem responded that when ICE agents are in an operation, “there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may ask be asking who they are and why they’re there.” She added that individuals may need to “validate their identity.”
The Minnesota lawsuit and news media reporting show that notwithstanding what Noem did not say, but insinuated, the “show me the papers” immigration enforcement continues to force Americans of color to prove their citizenship by federal agents demanding it simply because of the color of their skin or the accents they have.