Yeah, this is unfortunately why, immediately after the election, there was a surge of posts on Lemmy and elsewhere telling transgender people to rush a passport application or renewal while Biden was still in office. Basically within weeks of Trump assuming power, dealing with the federal government has been Hell on earth for transgender people.

They have a database of trans people. If you were ever issued a passport with an F gender marker, they would know you changed it.

If you try to renew, you’ll get the passport back with two holes punched in it with a letter telling you to apply again with an F gender marker.

Edit: Some transgender people have been issued the passport anyway with the gender they were assigned at birth. This causes problems because your appearance would not match the gender stated on the passport and thus would subject you to additional scrutiny at checkpoints. That’s not even mentioning the countries where being transgender is just illegal, although I don’t imagine you have many plans to visit those places.

It’s a good theory but it isn’t true. Google doesn’t show it to anyone.

Google says it doesn’t sell your personal info to third parties. While you would be well within your reason to suspect this isn’t true, it is actually legally relevant because it means, as a consequence, Google doesn’t provide a “do not sell my personal information” opt-out link which would otherwise be required by California law (where Google is headquartered).

I think the idea is that you are interested in a topic, and so they show you an advertisement that says “Product A does X!” You might not think about it nor click on it, but maybe later on, you need to do X, and then you remember, “hey, Product A does X, I should check it out.” And then that maybe turns into a sale for them.

Assuming I’m reading the abstract correctly, it’s about twice as effective.

Advertisers pay by the click. Click the Chick-Fil-A advert and waste more of their money.

You can use uBlock Origin (browser extension) to block all advertisements. Then in the event you visit a site you want to support, turn it off.

Uh, do you know what a “travel document” is? They’ve been required for international travel since the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. The “travel document” part of it has nothing to do with ethnicity.

You’re confusing two statements:

1. A passport card is a travel document. Nothing wrong with this.
2. A passport card can help you get out of situations with ICE if you appear Hispanic. This one is the one which is fucked up.

Yep, I found the evidence. It supports my point of view. I’ll paste it below.

I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.

Look, I came into this expecting people to understand that most (arbitrary percentage greater than 50 but less than 100) interactions with anyone, ICE or not, are reasonable. You don’t hear about these, because they’re not interesting enough to get posted on the Internet. If your information comes from the Internet only, you will think everything is extreme. I don’t like to use the term “terminally online”, but it’s a problem common with people typically described as being “terminally online”—not realising that real life is a lot more boring than it would appear from clips that people share of ridiculous interactions.

It’s always difficult to deal with these types of comments because despite it being obvious that they show an extremity bias because the person who made them has a viewpoint influence by an extremely cherry-picked data set, they technically are logically sound.

Edit: I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.

Look here mate, you and I both know there’s probably no empirical evidence whatsoever about this. It’s a heuristic based on observations of how law enforcement works and what people choose to post on the Internet. This is like how people post a picture of a deformed boxed pie they bought at the grocery store to complain about it and then you assume that all pies are deformed. No, people only post the bad ones online to complain about it, but if I were to assert that “at least 80% of pies are fine and not deformed” and you choose to reply with “Where do these numbers come from? internet magic?”, I think you can see the inherent ridiculousness of that reasoning.

I really hate that on the Internet you really have to explain to people that the things they see posted there are almost always the exceptions rather than the rule.

Edit: I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2-3 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.

It’s a guess without any empirical evidence whatsoever. However, the only reason why you believe it “contradicts evidence” is because nobody ever talks about ICE encounters that go down peacefully. People only ever talk about and post about ICE encounters that are outrageous. So all the encounters you have ever heard of will be ones where someone gets wrongfully arrested/beaten up by agents/etc.

When I saw them, they were checking everyone and arrested 0 people in the time I observed them.

I should not have to explain to you that what you see on the Internet has a heavy selection bias towards the extreme and that for every one video of something stupid happening there’s hundreds more unfilmed of ordinary interactions which aren’t interesting enough to get posted at all.

Edit: I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.

You can apply for a card without getting the book, or you can also apply for the book without getting the card. There’s a combo deal where you can get both for slightly cheaper than if you get them individually.

If you already have a card, applying for a book counts as a “renewal” rather than a new application.

You can take your own photograph or re-use a previous one. It’s free to apply through the post office. Just $30 for the fee to issue one. That’s all I paid for mine.

Edit: This is assuming you have a passport already. If you don’t, then yes, there’s a $35 acceptance fee.

I am not going to lie and say it’s 100% effective. But it most certainly will quickly get you out of ICE’s attention 80% of the time when you are not wanting a confrontation at that time.

Edit: I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.

This is actually not super common. I was personally stopped by them and I was let go after showing my passport card. Ideally, ICE should not be arresting any citizens, but it happens anyway because they’ll hire anyone who can breathe and do a decent seig heil. Nonetheless, a thing that works 80% of the time is still worth having.

Edit: I have managed to create a statistic for this. There are 22,000 agents which work for ICE, although this number was 12,000 prior to Trump’s hiring surge (source). ICE claims they made 26,600 arrests in 2025 (source). This means each agent makes about 2 arrests per year on average at most. So unless you believe that most agents are checking only three or four people a year, this would indicate most people are being let go.

Why? That’s like saying an EU national ID card is a valid travel document within the Schengen area.

I got checked by ICE in Portland and they let me go when I gave them my passport card. Of course, it really does depend on whether you got an agent with an IQ of 90 or an IQ of 70. But it doesn’t hurt to have one.

I have been stopped by ICE and was let go after showing my passport card.

It’s not a guarantee, but it doesn’t hurt.