The Pinky Promise Problem: The Illusion of Unenforceable Reforms
Travelers hitting the airports for spring break are being met with a grim reality: security lines stretching out the terminal doors and wait times exceeding three hours. With the DHS shutdown now in its second month, TSA agents are missing full paychecks, callouts are skyrocketing, and the system is buckling.
Compounding this domestic chaos is our unconstitutional war with Iran. As the conflict escalates and the threat of retaliation grows, the pressure on congressional Democrats to “just fund the department” has intensified. Amid this tension, the White House has sent a letter to Senate Republican appropriators detailing what it says are concessions. The offer includes body cameras, limits on enforcement at sensitive locations, increased oversight, a requirement for visible officer identification, and a ban on deporting—and not knowingly detaining—US citizens.
But we must be clear-eyed about the nature of these concessions. As I recently explained, without a clear path to the courthouse—where violators are held accountable and victims are made whole—reforms remain purely illusory. At their core, they’re unenforceable suggestions, not binding protections.
Many of the current proposals are framed as significant compromises when, in reality, they’re simply commitments to stop doing things that are already prohibited. As Politico’s Josh Gerstein notes, a policy not to deport US citizens “is a hell of a concession.” These negotiations reveal a disturbing baseline. Obeying the law should be the minimum standard, not a bargaining chip.
The most dangerous aspect of these proposals is the ludicrous suggestion that the government will follow the law, let alone its own policies. Senator Tina Peters (D‑MN) points out, “We pinky promise to follow the laws we already have isn’t going to cut it.” History suggests that she’s correct.
DHS has a comprehensive use-of-force policy, but its component agencies simply ignore it. Likewise, the Trump administration has a long and documented track record of lying about—and illegally detaining—US citizens. In the last year alone, hundreds of citizens have been wrongfully caught in its immigration dragnet. These aren’t just paperwork errors; we’ve seen cases where documented proof of citizenship was ignored, and US citizens were held incommunicado for days.
If the government is willing to knowingly detain US citizens and then lie about it, it will certainly ignore other unenforceable suggestions. Furthermore, these concessions are structured in a way that actively invites abuse. For instance, the administration could easily flout body camera and identification requirements by simply reclassifying immigration enforcement teams as undercover, citing tactical exigencies. We have already seen agents refuse to provide their names or employers, hiding instead behind balaclavas and generic “Police” patches. Without an enforceable mandate that bans masks and creates a stiff penalty for refusing to identify themselves, the requirement to display visible identification and identify themselves upon request becomes a choice.
Even the proposed limits on enforcement at sensitive locations, like schools and hospitals, are a hollow gesture. Because these guidelines contain broad national security exceptions, including national security needs, flight risks, and public safety, they invite agents to claim an exigency to justify an intrusion. Without a path to the courthouse, a victim has no standing to sue an individual officer for violating the law. The same applies to the suggested ban on detaining and deporting citizens—a practice that is already illegal yet continues because the lack of personal liability ensures there is no deterrent to stop the machinery of the administration’s mass deportation regime from churning.
The core of the problem is that these reforms are largely unenforceable. While the Senate debates where an agent can stand or whether their camera is turned on, they are ignoring the lack of a statutory right for victims to sue individual agents for constitutional violations. Rights become an illusion if the only thing stopping a government officer from violating them is their own sense of right and wrong.
True reform isn’t found in a body camera clip that stays buried on a federal server; it’s found in a courtroom where an agent can be held personally accountable for overstepping the Constitution. Until a statutory path to the courthouse is on the table, the reforms being proposed by the White House and congressional Democrats alike are nothing more than political theater. The long lines we endure at TSA checkpoints today are the price of a deeper failure: the persistent refusal of congressional Republicans to curtail the ability of masked, unidentifiable agents to roam neighborhoods and terrorize their own constituents. Until we stop funding these abuses and create a mechanism for personal accountability, nothing will change.