A troubling incident unfolded in Redmond, Washington, where Native American actress Elaine Miles was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while she was simply walking to a bus stop to go shopping. According to the Seattle Times, the agents claimed she was carrying false identification — even though the document she presented was her tribal ID.
Miles, an Indigenous performer known for her roles in Northern Exposure, Smoke Signals, Wyvern and The Last of Us, handed over her tribal identification card issued by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon. As the newspaper notes, federal agencies recognize tribal IDs as valid identification, and Miles has long used hers to travel in and out of Canada and Mexico without any difficulty.
The agents — wearing tactical vests and masks and driving two black SUVs with no front plates — refused to accept the ID, insisting it was “fake” and that “anyone can make that.”
Miles says her son and her uncle have faced similar treatment, temporarily detained by ICE officers who declined to acknowledge their tribal IDs as legitimate.
“What we’re talking about here is racial profiling,” tribal rights attorney Gabriel Galanda told the Seattle Times. “People are getting pulled over or detained on the street because of the dark color of their skin.”
The episode comes as the Trump administration’s approach to ICE and Border Patrol operations faces heightened scrutiny — and just weeks after a Supreme Court ruling made racial profiling by immigration officials significantly easier.
In September, the justices ruled 6–3 that immigration officers may consider factors such as race and ethnicity when suspecting someone of being an undocumented immigrant. In Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, the Court lifted an injunction that had previously barred those practices. The decision now permits agents to rely on elements such as language, accent or physical appearance to justify stopping individuals during immigration enforcement operations.