Charles Creitz Quotes Heritage Foundation Expert Three Times, Calls It News
Yahoo News Syndication Standard: "If Fox Said It, That's Close Enough to Journalism"
Charles Creitz recently wrote an article for Yahoo News about businesses refusing service to ICE agents and Border Patrol officers (Creitz, 2026). The article frames this as some kind of debate or controversy. It is not. The law is clear, settled, and unambiguous. Private businesses have every legal right to refuse service to ICE agents, and anyone suggesting otherwise is either confused or attempting to mislead the public.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Zack Smith, quoted in the Creitz article, calls this behavior “shameful” and says it is “ultimately harmful to businesses” (Creitz, 2026). Smith is entitled to his opinion about shame. He is wrong about any suggestion that this behavior is legally questionable. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is clear, and occupation is not a protected class. End of discussion.
The Protected Class Question Is Not Complicated
Under federal law, businesses cannot discriminate against customers based on race, color, religion, or national origin (CNN, 2018). That is it. Those four categories exhaust the protected classes under federal public accommodation law.
Political affiliation is not a protected class. Employment is not a protected class. Being a federal law enforcement officer is not a protected class.
A 2019 opinion piece on Police1, written by Chris Chung who was then a former law clerk for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, explicitly acknowledged this reality while arguing in favor of changing it (Police1, 2019). Chung noted that the Protect and Serve Act of 2018, which passed the House of Representatives, would only extend hate crime protections to law enforcement officers and would not create public accommodation protections (Police1, 2019). That legislation did not become law. It does not exist. Law enforcement officers are not and have never been a protected class under federal public accommodation law.
The CNN legal analysis is equally clear. When White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was refused service at a restaurant in 2018, legal experts confirmed that political affiliation is not a protected class under federal law (CNN, 2018). Sanders worked for the Trump administration, and the restaurant was not legally required to serve her. The same principle applies to ICE agents.
Smith says in the Creitz article that businesses may have the legal right to refuse service but that it is not “morally” the right thing to do. Perhaps he is correct about morals. Perhaps he is not. Either way, this is a moral argument, not a legal one. The claim that businesses are doing something legally questionable is simply false. They are not.
The Surveillance Question Is Far More Serious
While the legal question is settled, there is a legitimate and serious question about what ICE is actually doing with its expanded surveillance capabilities, and this question deserves aggressive scrutiny.
The ACLU has documented that ICE and CBP are using a mobile application called Mobile Fortify that allows agents to point a phone at anyone in public, compare their faces against government databases containing millions of images, and access intimate personal data (ACLU, 2025). The ACLU states plainly that Congress has not authorized this expansion in federal police power (ACLU, 2025).
Let us read that again. Congress has not authorized this. The executive branch is implementing massive new surveillance capabilities through internal policy decisions rather than statutory authorization. A 2023 DHS policy governing facial recognition technology was quietly removed from the DHS website early in the current administration without being replaced (ACLU, 2025).
The EL PAIS reporting indicates that ICE signed a 1.4 billion dollar contract in September 2025 for new surveillance technologies including iris scanning applications, spyware that can hack smartphones remotely, and location tracking software (El Pais, 2025). Senator Ron Wyden told The Washington Post that ICE was still drafting usage policies for these programs as of mid-September 2025 (El Pais, 2025).
Senator Wyden. A United States Senator. Saying the agency is still writing the rules. After signing a 1.4 billion dollar contract.
The Reuters coverage of CBP expansion of facial recognition confirms that a 1996 law mandating the creation of an automated entry-exit system to track visa overstays has never been fully implemented (Reuters, 2025). The new rule expanding facial recognition is a regulatory action, not a new congressional authorization (Reuters, 2025).
What DHS Documents Actually Show
The DHS Privacy Impact Assessment for ICE Use of Facial Recognition Services documents that ICE authority for these programs comes from existing statutes including Section 701 of the USA PATRIOT Act and various provisions of the U.S. Code (DHS, 2020). These are general authorizations that the agency has interpreted broadly to justify specific surveillance programs.
The document makes clear that facial recognition usage is governed by internal DHS policies and privacy impact assessments rather than specific congressional authorization (DHS, 2020). This is how administrative agencies operate. They take general statutory language and fill in the details themselves.
The concern here is not that ICE is acting unconstitutionally. The concern is that ICE is implementing profound expansions of government surveillance power through internal policy decisions rather than through the democratic process where such decisions belong. The Constitution vests legislative power in Congress, not in the Department of Homeland Security.
ICE Agents Are Not a Protected Class and Should Not Be Treated as Such
The Creitz article quotes Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin calling the situation “shameful” and noting that agents are being stalked (Creitz, 2026). Stalking is a crime and should be prosecuted as such. That is a separate issue from businesses making informed decisions about which customers to serve.
Being an ICE agent is a job that someone chooses to perform. Individuals who take that job can be criticized for the policies they implement. Citizens have every right to express disapproval of government policies through economic means including refusal of service. This is as American as the Boston Tea Party.
The employees at these gas stations and hotels have their own First Amendment rights and conscience protections. No employee should be compelled to provide service to an organization they find morally objectionable. The demand that service workers smile and serve agents who may be separating families or conducting biometric surveillance of civilians is a demand for compelled association that has no basis in any law I can find.
Summing this up
The Creitz article presents a false controversy. The law is clear. Businesses can refuse service to ICE agents. This is not up for debate. The suggestion that businesses are doing something legally questionable is simply false.
Smith is entitled to call the behavior shameful. He is entitled to advocate for legislation protecting law enforcement officers from service refusal. But he should not imply that current law restricts business discretion when it clearly does not.
The more substantive questions about ICE surveillance programs deserve serious attention. Those programs operate on policy decisions rather than congressional authorization. An agency is implementing massive new powers while writing its own rules after the fact. This should concern every citizen who values democratic accountability.
But let us be clear about what the gas station and hotel workers are doing. They are exercising their legal rights. They are expressing their political views through economic action. They are refusing service to employees of an agency that is implementing controversial policies without clear legislative authorization. There is nothing illegal about this. There is nothing shameful about this. It is the exercise of liberty in a free country.
I’m going to got off on a tangent here. I’m tired of effortless, thoughtless rage baiting. I’m tired of bullshit being pushed of as thoughtful opinion.
If you want to read a one sided, completely un-researched article with little to no substance you can read Creitz’s crap here. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/don-t-support-ice-gas-110034309.html
Works Cited
ACLU. (2025, November 13). Face recognition and the ‘Trump terror’: A marriage made in hell. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ice-face-recognition
Chung, C. (2019, July 23). Class protection for police under public accommodation laws. Police1. https://www.police1.com/legal/articles/opinion-why-the-senate-should-consider-class-protection-for-officers-under-public-accommodation-laws-eNGgFMeo3owYyoEy/
CNN. (2018, June 29). Here is why some businesses can deny you service but others cannot. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/us/when-businesses-can-deny-you-service-trnd/index.html
Creitz, C. (2026, February 3). ‘I don’t support ICE’: Gas station refusal ignites debate over denying service to federal agents. Yahoo News. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/don-t-support-ice-gas-110034309.html
El Pais. (2025, October 21). ICE intensifies surveillance of immigrants with facial recognition programs, human tracking, and social media monitoring. EL PAIS English. https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-10-21/ice-intensifies-surveillance-of-immigrants-with-facial-recognition-programs-human-tracking-and-social-media-monitoring.html
Hesson, T. (2025, October 24). US expands facial recognition at borders to track non-citizens. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-expands-facial-recognition-borders-track-non-citizens-2025-10-24/
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2020, May 13). Privacy impact assessment: DHS/ICE/PIA-054 ICE use of facial recognition services. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy-pia-ice-frs-054-may2020.pdf