U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained indigenous actress Elaine Miles in Redmond, Washington while she was heading to the bus stop for a shopping run — then accused her of faking her tribal ID, reported The Seattle Times on Thursday.
"Miles, an Indigenous actor best known for her roles in 'Northern Exposure,' 'Smoke Signals,' 'Wyvern' and 'The Last of Us,' handed them her tribal ID from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon," said the report. "Federal government agencies recognize tribal ID as a valid form of identification, and Miles has used it to travel back and forth to Canada and Mexico without any issues."
But these agents, who were all wearing vests and masks and driving in a pair of black SUVs without front license plates, refused to accept the ID, claiming it was "fake" and that "anyone can make that."
According to Miles, her son and her uncle have had similar issues, being temporarily detained by ICE agents who refused to acknowledge their tribal IDs as legitimate.
“What we’re talking about here is racial profiling,” Gabriel Galanda, a tribal rights attorney in Seattle told The Times. “People are getting pulled over or detained on the street because of the dark color of their skin.” (Galanda is not representing Miles.)
This comes at a moment when the Trump administration's policies around ICE and Border Patrol arrests are coming under increasing public scrutiny, and at a moment when the Supreme Court issued a ruling that made racial profiling by immigration officers far easier.
In another recent incident in September, federal DHS agents threatened to deport a Delaware woman back to her native country, identified only as a country in Central America, to within contact of her abusive ex-husband, who was already deported due to her own cooperation with police.