REAL ID is increasingly being misrepresented...

Editor's note: ...as proof of U.S. citizenship, and that is both legally wrong and fiscally irresponsible. The program was never designed to establish citizenship; it only standardizes identity verification for limited federal purposes. REAL ID–compliant licenses are issued to both citizens and non-citizens with lawful status, making them an unreliable and inappropriate tool for determining citizenship. Despite this, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent upgrading state systems, retraining staff, and reissuing IDs, duplicating functions already served by passports, birth certificates, and naturalization documents. The result is a costly bureaucracy that creates confusion, offers a false sense of security, and wastes public funds while failing to prove what many institutions wrongly assume it does.
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DHS agent tells court REAL ID can't be used to confirm US citizenship

Admission raises questions about what REAL ID was meant to accomplish after decades of implementation failures and billions in projected costs

January 7, 2026 | By Anthony Kimery

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.

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Editor's note: The REAL ID Act was introduced in 2005 in the U.S. House as H.R. 418 by Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and was later attached to a must-pass appropriations bill and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Sensenbrenner's goal was to set federal standards for state driver's licenses and ID cards in the name of security, but REAL ID has since been widely criticized for failing to prove U.S. citizenship, creating costly bureaucracy, intruding on privacy, and imposing burdens on states and citizens alike. Given these flaws, lawmakers and advocacy groups argue Congress should rescind the REAL ID Act entirely and replace it with more effective, less invasive alternatives that protect civil liberties while ensuring legitimate security, such as restoring negotiated rule-making with state input or developing targeted identity-verification standards tied to clearly defined federal needs.

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