Nika Bartoo-Smith
ICT and Underscore Native News
While walking to a bus stop in Redmond, Washington, on Nov. 3, Elaine Miles was stopped by four men wearing masks who got out of an unmarked vehicle to confront her. When they got closer, she recognized the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement badges worn on their belts.
“I [asked], ‘Why are you stopping me? And then they said, ‘We need to see your ID,’” Miles told ICT and Underscore Native News. “And I go, ‘Why do you need to see my ID? What did I do?’”
Miles is a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, a federally recognized tribe in Oregon. She is an actor, known for her roles in “Northern Exposure,” “Smoke Signals,” “The Last of Us,” and “Wyvern.”
When asked for her identification, Miles presented her tribal ID from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Federal government agencies are supposed to recognize tribal ID as a valid form of identification due to the nation-to-nation relationship between federally recognized tribes and the United States. Miles has never had any issues in the past. But in early November, the ICE officers who stopped her demanded to see another form of identification.
“I’m Native, and so I gave them my tribal ID. They looked at it. And the one guy, he’s like, ‘Oh, this is fake.’ And then the other guy [said], ‘Anybody can make this,’” Miles said.
Miles said she had to hand over her passport before the federal officers accepted her identification and let her go.
“On November 3, ICE was conducting targeted immigration enforcement traffic stops and encountered Elaine Miles driving a vehicle registered to an illegal alien. She was never arrested,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement to ICT and UNN. “Any claim that ICE questioned her tribal ID are FALSE. ICE officers are trained to recognize tribal IDs and accept them as proof of status.”
However, Miles says she was stopped while waiting for the bus.
When stopped, Miles remembers being struck by how the four men who approached her covered their faces and their badges were hard to identify.
“It was scary, you know, because after I think about it, I was like, ‘Were these guys even ICE or were they just bounty guys?’” Miles said.
Miles says she asked for their badge numbers, but the men would not give it to her. The immigrant enforcement department states on its website that “ICE law enforcement officers carry badges and credentials and will identify themselves when required for public safety or legal necessity.”
A New York congressional member introduced legislation in July that would require ICE officers to display badges and badge numbers.
Washington state is known as a “sanctuary state” under what was formerly called the Keep Washington Working Act that passed in 2019 and restricts how local law enforcement works with federal immigration enforcement agencies.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson responded to Miles’ incident on Facebook.
“This is becoming far too common: Masked people stepping out of vans, racially profiling residents of our country, and in this case, calling a Tribal ID fake. It’s disturbing. It’s un-American,” he said.
This instance is a clear example of racial profiling, according to Gabe Galada, an Indigenous rights lawyer in Seattle and a citizen of the Round Valley Tribe in California.
“I have yet to hear a story, either through the news or the community or word of mouth, that involves any light complected or blonde haired, blue eyed person being detained by ICE,” Galanda said. “Instead, the stories are about brown people, and in particular, dark-complected Indigenous or tribal people being stopped and detained by ICE. So that speaks to me, to the racial nature of these particular stops.”
The Homeland Security Department refutes this.
“Allegations that DHS law enforcement officers engage in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE. What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity,” McLaughlin said in a statement to UNN and ICT.
Lasting repercussions
Miles is one of multiple reports of Native people being stopped and asked to show citizenship documentation or temporarily detained by immigration authorities.
Her son and uncle were questioned by immigration enforcement recently.
Leticia Jacobo, a citizen of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, was nearly deported and the Navajo Nation has spoken up about 15 other Native people being affected by immigration raids in the southwest.
The lasting emotional impact has been one of the hardest parts of the whole interaction for Miles. Not only does she not feel safe walking around her neighborhood for fear of being stopped by immigration enforcement agents again, she is also flooded with hate messages online.
These messages include death threats, following her initial Facebook post on Nov. 19, about her interaction with ICE officers on Nov. 3.
Other messages from strangers have included sentiments such as “go back to the rez” and “we’re just gonna lynch you,” Miles said. Others have questioned her identity and reached out calling her “racist” and a “bigot.”
“It’s sad that our country is coming to that and it’s like we’re back in the 50s, it’s so racist. The bigotry that’s going on is, it’s sad,” Miles said. “I just hope and pray that people stop and stand together and fight these people [to] get our country back.”
For now, when Miles does leave her house she carries both her tribal ID and passport in fear of being stopped and questioned again.
“How could the first peoples of this country, the original peoples of these lands, ever be accused of not belonging here through a stop or detention? And then, more specifically, how could identification issued by a tribal nation to a tribal citizen not be deemed acceptable when, for example, state identification or driver’s licenses are generally acceptable to government,” Galanda said. “So there are broader conversations that flow from this about basic understanding and respect for tribal sovereignty, and, by extension, tribal citizenship and tribal identification.”
Galanda advises Indigenous people to carry all forms of identification, including tribal IDs, federal and state identification, with them at all times in case they are questioned by immigration enforcement.
He also urges Native Nations to “be more proactive to assure tribal citizens that if there is an inquiry about their belonging within the tribal nation, that the tribal nation will step forward and answer the inquiry.”
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation didn’t respond to ICT and UNN’s request for a comment before this story’s publication.
This story is co-published by Underscore Native News and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest.