For fellow Americans living in cities where ICE is active, many people, especially those of Hispanic descent, are already carrying around passports on their persons at all times because they’re rightfully afraid of being forcibly disappeared or deported to some random South American country.
A passport card can be obtained for $30 from the Department of State. It is considered exactly equivalent to a passport within the US, but it’s the size of a credit card. It is a valid travel document for land and sea travel within North America and the Caribbean. It also counts as a Real ID. The card is good for ten years.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html
Do not do this if you are transgender or have an X gender marker. They will cancel your passport and tell you to apply for a new one with your sex assigned at birth.
Set aside for a moment that ICE has a habit of thinking IDs are fake, I really wonder if this is a point where it might be worth prioritizing. If it’s increasing the likelihood of being deported, kidnapped, tortured, or similar, than I think there’s a legitimate question of whether dealing with the gender dysphoria is worse than that. I’m not saying it necessarily isn’t, that may be different from person to person, but it’s definitely something that should be considered carefully.
Of course, the safest option is probably trying to get the hell out of the US, but I’m not going to get into that can of worms.
For most people it’s not about gender dysphoria. It’s about discrimination. If you appear to be male but your id shows female, you have been immediately identified as being trans which is a very dangerous thing in America right now