In Lawsuit Over Construction Raids, DHS Official Testifies ICE Agents Can't Trust REAL IDs

At a federal court hearing in Mobile, Alabama, on May 28, government officials continued to argue that REAL IDs aren't reliable proof of citizenship and that federal immigration officers don't need a warrant to enter private construction sites.

Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant special agent in charge of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) field office in Mobile, Alabama, testified in a civil rights lawsuit that REAL IDs "can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship," according to a transcript of the hearing.

The comments raised the eyebrows of Chief U.S. District Judge Anthony Beaverstock. If REAL ID is good enough for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), he asked, why would immigration enforcers not accept it? "Help me understand how that makes sense," he said.

Whether immigration agents can ignore government-issued IDs to detain suspected illegal immigrants is one of the central questions in a  lawsuit filed last October by Leo Garcia Venegas, an Alabama construction worker and U.S. citizen. The May 28 hearing concerned a motion for a preliminary injunction filed by Venegas and the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, asking Beaverstock to block the government from continuing to preemptively detain him.

Immigration officers have detained and handcuffed Venegas three times since last May, despite his being a U.S. citizen. The first two arrests occurred during raids on private construction sites, where Venegas' lawsuit alleges officers detained workers based solely on their apparent ethnicity.

Agents detained Venegas for a third time , shackling him by the legs and arms, during a traffic stop this March—months after he had initiated litigation claiming the government was violating his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. In all instances, agents ignored Venegas' REAL ID, issued by the state of Alabama and identifying him as a U.S. citizen.

Institute for Justice attorneys argued at the hearing that the video evidence of Venegas' detentions, testimony from other cases around the country, and the Trump administration's own statements show that it's targeting the construction industry with warrantless searches and preemptively detaining anyone who looks Latino. Once officers detain someone, Institute for Justice attorney Jared McClain said, "it is incredibly difficult to end the stop, because the government has trained migration officers to discredit the very government documents that should dispel suspicion that someone is here unlawfully."

Venegas testified at the hearing that immigration officers detained him at the first construction site raid because he was trying to film his brother's arrest.

"I was trying to record and then one of the agents came at me because he didn't like that I was recording him and he tried to take my phone away," Venegas testified. "I kept yelling that I was a citizen so another agent came and helped him and they threw me on the ground. I yelled that I was a citizen and they handcuffed me anyway."

"They pulled my wallet out of my pants and they got my license out," Venegas continued. "They saw my license was a real ID, but they said it was fake."

Gehovani Alvirde Ruiz, another Alabama construction worker and permanent legal resident, also testified at the hearing. Ruiz testified that federal agents detained him in his front yard on February 1, 2025, and told him that both his Social Security card and permanent residency card were fake. The agents handcuffed Ruiz and transported him to an immigration detention center, where he was placed in a cell.

"One of the federal agents came into my cell where I was by myself and asked me where I had gotten this permanent resident card because it had been the best permanent resident card he had ever seen while working at that agency," Ruiz testified. "He asked me where I had gotten it and how much I had paid for it because he had never seen a better falsified copy than that one."

Ruiz was eventually released after roughly two hours in a detention cell. He said the agents told him there had been an error in their system, an explanation he found strange, since he had previously traveled abroad without any problems.

Ruiz testified that the experience made him feel "powerless and bad."

"I felt bad, very bad, because it was a long process to be able to get those documents," Ruiz said. "It wasn't just a financial burden but also I have lost a lot of time with my family in order to get those documents."

Also accompanying the Institute for Justice's motion for a preliminary injunction were 30 declarations filed in other lawsuits across the country by U.S. citizens with similar encounters.

"From LA to Minnesota to New York to Washington, DC, we have evidence that immigration officers are going on to work sites without warrants, rounding up workers based on how they look, immediately placing them in physical restraints, and refusing to credit their government-issue…