Elaine Miles, a Native American actor best known for her role in the television series Northern Exposure, has said she was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Seattle, Washington, who told her that her tribal identification document 'looked fake'.
Miles, who is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, was walking to a bus stop in Redmond when four masked men stopped her. She presented her tribal ID card, but an ICE agent allegedly replied, 'anyone can make that.' Despite Miles urging them to call the tribal enrolment office to verify the card, the officers refused. She called the office herself, and after one officer tried unsuccessfully to take her phone, the group released her and left.
Miles told the Lakota People’s Law Project on Facebook: 'Tribal IDs—the government issued those damn cards to us like a pedigree dog! It’s not fake!' She alleges that similar incidents have happened to her son and uncle, who were also detained by ICE officers who would not initially accept their tribal identification.
Seattle-based Indigenous rights attorney Gabriel Galanda described the incident as racial profiling, adding that the agents' refusal to accept Miles' ID reveals 'a fair amount of ignorance about tribal citizenship generally in society and in government'. The encounter occurred on the same day that ICE agents made several arrests at Redmond’s Bear Creek Village shopping centre, prompting the city council to disable its licence-plate-reading cameras.
Miles said she is now afraid to leave the house alone or at night. Galanda noted that the detention of Native Americans evokes the country’s troubled history with Indigenous peoples, saying, 'It’s also deeply troubling that in 2025, the first people of this country have to essentially look over their shoulders.'
