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ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Uphold Separation of Church and State
WASHINGTON
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Maryland, and allied religious and civil rights organizations filed a Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief today in support of a constitutional challenge to a giant government-sponsored cross.
The case, American Legion v. American Humanist Association, involves the government's display of a 40-foot Latin cross as a war memorial in Bladensburg, Maryland. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which owns and maintains the display, says its cross represents American soldiers of every faith who fought and died for their country -- even though the Latin cross is the preeminent symbol of Christianity.
If the Supreme Court sides with the commission, it could upend nearly 50 years of law under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from preferring one faith over others.
Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, had the following response:
"The Bladensburg cross sends a clear message of religious favoritism, in blatant violation of the Constitution. In this country, we should honor our veterans under one flag, not one specific religious symbol."
Dana Vickers Shelley, executive director of the ACLU of Maryland, commented:
"Maryland is a diverse state, with residents and veterans from many religious traditions or who do not practice religion. It is important for our government to be inclusive in the way that the sacrifices made on behalf of the country are honored."
Organizations joining the ACLU and the ACLU of Maryland on the brief include the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State; Anti-Defamation League; Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America Inc.; Hindu American Foundation; Jewish Social Policy Action Network; Men of Reform Judaism; National Council of Jewish Women; People For the American Way Foundation; Reconstructing Judaism; Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association; Union for Reform Judaism; and Women of Reform Judaism.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
'A Chilling Assertion': Trump Officials Falsely Claim Citizens Must Carry Immigration Docs to Prove Their Status
“There is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them," said an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California.
Dec 15, 2025
Federal law enforcement agencies are detaining US citizens who do not carry proof of their citizenship in what civil rights advocates describe as a flagrant violation of constitutional rights—and a top Trump administration official is claiming the government has the authority to do so.
A Somali-born Minnesota man was alarmed by the practice last Tuesday when immigration agents tackled him, handcuffed him, and arrested him, refusing to accept his REAL ID as proof of his legal residence in a video that was widely circulated on social media.
The man, who identified only as Mubashir, was placed into a chokehold and forced to his knees in the snow on his way to get food in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which has a large Somali population.
As the Sahan Journal describes:
Mubashir said he told officers multiple times that he is a US citizen and asked if he could show them his ID. Officers ignored him, dragged him in the snow, and pushed him into a car as witnesses yelled and blew whistles, according to the video of his arrest.
The arrest occurred as federal agents walked into nearby businesses in the Somali-heavy neighborhood, questioning people and asking them to show their passports. Mubashir said he was in the car with officers for about 20 minutes, asking them repeatedly if he could show them his ID. They refused, he said.
According to the report, officers asked if they could photograph Mubashir to check whether he's a US citizen—likely to run his information through a facial recognition application that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acknowledged it uses during immigration stops, including on US citizens without their consent.
Mubashir declined to have his photo taken, asking: "How would a picture prove I’m a US citizen?”
He was later taken to a federal building that houses an immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. Only after having his fingerprint taken was Mubashir allowed to present his ID and given permission to leave.
Officers refused to drop him back off at Cedar-Riverside, instead telling him to walk home more than seven miles in the midst of a snowstorm, which had led authorities to issue a weather advisory.
“I deserve to be here like anyone else—I’m a US citizen,” Mubashir said. “I can’t even step outside without being tackled—no question—because I’m Somali.”
"I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say 'police.' That's embarrassing," Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said to Mubashir during a press conference on Wednesday.
According to legal experts, there is no requirement under US law that American citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment's notice.
In comments to KQED, a public radio station in San Francisco, earlier this month, Richard Boswell, a law professor at the University of California Law School, called it “most troubling” that US citizens have felt the need to carry their ID to avoid harassment.
“There is no reason why government officers can or should be questioning people about their citizenship without any reason to suspect that they are noncitizens who are here unlawfully,” he explained.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noncitizens must carry proof of their legal status, such as a green card or a foreign passport with stamps indicating a lawful visa.
About two dozen states require residents to identify themselves if stopped by law enforcement. But none require citizens to carry a physical ID at all times, except in specific cases, such as operating a motorized vehicle.
And, as Bree Bernwanger, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, explained, “there is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them." Unless police have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the US unlawfully, she said, "there shouldn’t be a reason to have to carry your papers, because immigration agents aren’t supposed to stop people or detain them."
But as backlash rolled in from the video of Mubashir's arrest, the man leading Trump's mass deportation crusade, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, seemed to falsely suggest via social media that citizens are required to carry proof of their citizenship.
"One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A REAL ID is not an immigration document," he wrote in response to a post about Mubashir's arrest, which noted his citizenship.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, responded that "in no way does the INA require citizens to carry immigration documents" and that Bovino is "just letting his jackboot thugs presumptively detain whomever they like."
Add to this that HSI just filed a declaration in our case challenging these policies saying they can’t trust REAL IDs as proof of status.So showing your papers isn’t even enough to end the stop.
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— Jared (@jaredmcclain.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Immigration lawyer Jared McClain later noted on social media that, in response to a class-action suit arguing against indiscriminate workplace raids, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) argued that an Alabama construction worker, who was kept in handcuffs even after presenting multiple REAL IDs to agents, had still not done enough to prove his citizenship, according to the federal officers.
"This is the official policy—not a one-off," McClain said.
Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the filing was "official confirmation that ICE HSI believes that it can, in fact, detain US citizens for immigration checks, and keep them handcuffed while they have their biometrics run."
"That is a chilling assertion," he said.
ProPublica found in October that at least 170 Americans have been detained by immigration agents, sometimes for days, with some having been "dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot."
But months after the report was published, top administration officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—continue to emphatically deny that any US citizens have been detained during the second Trump administration.
At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Noem abruptly left before Democrats could grill her on reports that citizens had been arrested, claiming she had to speak at a different committee hearing. Reports later found that the hearing had already been cancelled, leading to accusations that Noem misled Congress.
In response to Bovino's assertion that REAL IDs are not immigration documents, Nicole Foy, a reporter at ProPublica, told the Border Patrol commander: "We've been trying to request an interview with you for months now about the enforcement operations you're leading and the detention of US citizens."
"Why does a US citizen need to carry immigration documents?" she asked. At press time, Bovino had not publicly responded to Foy's question.
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Trump Admin Sued for Withholding Documents in President's Scheme to 'Pocket Taxpayer Money'
"If senior officials are processing this grift behind closed doors... that is not just bad optics, it is a direct threat to government integrity."
Dec 15, 2025
A democracy advocacy organization is stepping up pressure on the federal government to release more information on President Donald Trump's scheme to receive a $230 million payout from the US Department of Justice.
Democracy Forward on Monday filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) complaint against the DOJ and the US Department of Treasury, alleging that both agencies have so far refused to turn over any records related to what the group describes as Trump's "stunning effort to obtain a $230 million taxpayer-funded payout for investigations into his own misconduct."
The group notes that it has already filed multiple FOIA requests over the last several weeks, and in response neither DOJ or Treasury has "produced a single substantial record or issued a legally required determination."
The complaint asks courts to compel DOJ and Treasury "to conduct searches for any and all responsive records" related to Democracy Forward's past FOIA requests, and also to force the government "to produce, by a date certain, any and all non-exempt responsive records," and to create an index "of any responsive records withheld under a claim of exemption."
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said her organization's lawsuit was a simple demand for government transparency.
"People in America deserve to know whether the Department of Justice is entertaining the president’s request to cut himself a taxpayer-funded $230 million check," Perryman said. "If senior officials are processing this grift behind closed doors—including officials who used to represent him—that is not just bad optics, it is a direct threat to government integrity."
Democracy Forward's complaint stems from an October New York Times report that Trump was lobbying DOJ to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars to him as compensation for the purported hardships he endured throughout the multiple criminal investigations and indictments leveled against him.
Trump was indicted in 2023 on federal charges related to his mishandling of top-secret government documents that he'd stashed in his Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as his efforts to illegally remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election. Both cases were dropped after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
When asked about the DOJ payout scheme in the wake of the Times report, Trump insisted he would give any money paid out by the department to charity and asserted that he had been "damaged very greatly" by past criminal probes.
Perryman, however, insisted that Trump was not entitled to enrich himself off taxpayer funds.
"President Trump may think he can invoice people for the consequences of his own actions," she said, "but this country still has laws, and we demand they be enforced.”
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Trump’s Mass Deportation Agenda Could Kill 400,000 Direct Care Jobs in US: Report
A new analysis warns the president's assault on immigrants risks setting off "a cascading crisis in senior and disability care that will harm families across the economic spectrum."
Dec 15, 2025
An analysis released Monday provides a more focused look at the economic impacts of US President Donald Trump's lawless mass deportation agenda, estimating that his administration's policies could kill nearly 400,000 jobs in the direct care industry, which employs home health aides, nursing assistants, and others.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis shows that if the Trump administration achieves its stated goal of deporting one million people per year over the next four years, "the direct care industry would lose close to 400,000 jobs—affecting 274,000 immigrant and 120,000 US-born workers."
"This dramatic reduction in trained care workers would compromise home-based care services, forcing family members to scramble for informal arrangements to support relatives who are older or have disabilities," wrote EPI's Ben Zipperer, the author of the new analysis.
The estimate builds on earlier EPI research warning that Trump's deportation policies could destroy nearly 6 million total jobs in the US, an economic impact that comes in addition to the pain and human rights abuses inflicted on families across the country.
So far, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the administration is on pace for fewer than 700,000 deportations by the end of 2025—well short of its goal.
But it's not for lack of trying: In recent months, masked agents have been rampaging through American cities and detaining people en masse, often targeting job sites. Immigration agents have reportedly been instructed to prioritize "quantity over quality," leading to the detention of mostly people with no criminal convictions.
"Rather than creating jobs for U.S.-born workers as proponents claim," he added, "mass deportations eliminate employment opportunities for citizens and immigrants alike."
Recent research indicates that Trump's mass deportations are harming local economies across the US. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted in August that "the early warning signs show a growing labor shortage, rising prices, terrified employees, and employers left in the lurch without any tools to ensure workforce stability."
"Should these operations continue unabated over the next three and a half years," he continued, "the situation could become far worse for the nation as a whole."
Zipperer wrote Monday that the direct care sector is "highly vulnerable to these enforcement actions," as it "relies heavily on immigrant labor."
"The Trump administration’s deportation agenda threatens to trigger a cascading crisis in senior and disability care that will harm families across the economic spectrum," Zipperer warned. "If the direct care workforce contracts by nearly 400,000 workers due to deportations, millions of older adults and people with disabilities will be left without the professional assistance they need to remain safely in their homes."
"Rather than creating jobs for U.S.-born workers as proponents claim," he added, "mass deportations eliminate employment opportunities for citizens and immigrants alike while dismantling a care infrastructure that seniors, people with disabilities, and families depend on."
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