Friday, March 21, 2025
A simple plastic red card explaining the constitutional rights available to undocumented immigrants is becoming a red-hot item among people in America who fear raids by immigration police sent out by President Trump.
The card is standard ID card size and meant to be carried in a person’s wallet where it can easily be pulled out and shown to any immigration officer. One side describes an immigrant’s rights in English. The other side is a translation into one of 19 other languages, including Farsi.
Some people suggest the card is red because it is like a soccer referee’s Red Card that is shown to an offending player. In this case, it is shown to an offending immigration officer to show that the holder knows that he or she has the right to remain silent.
The card also explains that the holder knows there is no requirement to open the door to an immigration officer unless that officer can slip a search warrant under the door signed by a judge something immigration officers only very rarely obtain. The card is nothing new. It’s been around almost two decades. The non-profit Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) in San Francisco prints them at a shop in California.
The New York Times reported it now is working on orders to print nine million cards more than it has printed in the 17 years since it created the card. Thomas D. Homan, the man just appointed by President Trump to rid the United States of undocumented immigrants, complained to CNN in January, “They call it ‘Know Your Rights.’ I call it, ‘How to escape arrest’.”
The New York Times quoted a construction worker, Luiz, 40, who was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on February 2 as he was headed to church. They asked if he had “papers” and he handed them the Red Card without saying a word. The agents pressured him to disclose his immigration status. He never said a word.
They looked at the Mexican identification card he had in his wallet and radioed to headquarters to see if he was wanted for any offense. He wasn’t. They let him go. “The Red Card saved me,” he told the newspaper. “I tell all my friends, just show the card and shut up.” The cards can be printed from the ILRC website at www.ilrc.org/red-cards-tarjetasrojas. (Tarjetas rojas is Spanish for “red card.”)
