You think you are a citizen today because you've always been a citizen, you have papers to prove it. It's never even been questioned. What if those papers get destroyed? What if the officer interpreting your papers is employed by someone who doesn't like you because you're disobedient. Without rule of law your status as a citizen doesn't protect you. Without a functioning judiciary capable of providing consequences to those who violate rule of law, you have no one to appeal to.
This administration complains about single judges restricting their actions. That should literally terrify you. The judges are not stopping the administration, they are ruling that the law is stopping the administration. When the administration says it is judges stopping it, it is claiming that there is no law, only the actions of loyal or disobedient men.
We are in a constitutional crisis. We are effectively lawless. Right now, we cannot depend on the law to restrict powerful people's actions. We have no predictability about what is possible, and therefore no way to act as if the law protects us.
An opening scene of The Handmaid's Tale paint this vividly: two characters' marriage licenses are simply not recognized.
What gives papers power is the powers that recognise them. If authority just stops recognising your citizenship or homeownership or bank account, for that matter, your papers go back to being shitty kindling and bits in a void.
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
--A Man for all Seasons
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...
> He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
> He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, [...]
> For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world
> For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences