Summary
The Trump administration has announced a new registry for undocumented immigrants, requiring them to self-report, provide fingerprints, and list their addresses.
Those who fail to comply could face fines or prosecution under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The move aligns with the administration’s broader crackdown on illegal immigration and mass deportation plans.
Critics, including the National Immigration Law Center, warn the registry could be used to target individuals for deportation, drawing parallels to past government efforts to register noncitizens for national security purposes.
This is because being undocumented is not a crime.
This will create a crime that undocumented people can be charged with. Probably a second degree felony to guaranteed a prison sentence and allow regular law enforcement to be used to arrest these people.
People should have seen this coming when they started making other lists, but sex offenders were an easy target. Who would speak up about such a list?
By the time your group is on a list; for example, if Trump decides to enforce federal marijuana laws on blue states, then it’ll be far too late to say anything (you dirty criminal).
The executive doesn’t get to create crimes. I want to see where in the US code they’re drawing the idea for criminal punishment. The cited code doesn’t provide for any punishment. As read on it’s own it’s effectively toothless.
Edit to add-
Okay, I finally found the punishment section. It’s 8 USC 1306 and yeah we can see why it hasn’t been used before. Six months in jail or 1,000 dollars fine for willfully failing to register. For which they essentially have to prove a thought crime, (you knew and did not register). Failure to update an existing registration is simply removal.
So the law hasn’t been used because we already have the authority to remove unregistered immigrants and paying for their short jail stay is a ridiculous mismanagement of money.
Willfully failing to register doesn’t mean ‘you knew and did not register’, ignorance of the law isn’t a defense.
Willfully failing to register means ‘you didn’t register and you were not in a coma or otherwise prevented to doing so by things outside of your control’.
Ignorance of the law is actually a defence in many situations. You’re thinking about the reasonable person standard, ignorance of things like lying for monetary gain isn’t a defence. Not knowing you’re supposed to fill out more paperwork through a language barrier is exactly where it’s a defence.
Failing to register will be considered a crime and being here illegally is already considered a crime. How are they planning to compel immigrants to comply?
Complying with govt demands seems to go against any sense of self-preservation
Being here illegally is not generally a crime. It’s a civil infraction. Making it a crime to fail to register effectively criminalizes a previously legal issue.
I’m just going down the thread pointing this out, but the executive doesn’t get to make up crimes. I want to see where in the US Code this is punished criminally, not where there’s a toothless mandate to register. (That hasn’t been enforced in 85 years)
Edit to add -
Okay, I finally found the punishment section. It’s 8 USC 1306 and yeah we can see why it hasn’t been used before. Six months in jail or 1,000 dollars fine for willfully failing to register. For which they essentially have to prove a thought crime, (you knew and did not register). Failure to update an existing registration is simply removal.
So the law hasn’t been used because we already have the authority to remove unregistered immigrants and paying for their short jail stay is a ridiculous mismanagement of money.
So the law hasn’t been used because we already have the authority to remove unregistered immigrants and paying for their short jail stay is a ridiculous mismanagement of money.
Good gods! So this administration is going to go hard on this method aren’t they?
Yep. Fill those private detention centers. Or the government ones with support contracts.
Hmm, I wonder what else started out as a registry…something that went down in history not long after the great depression.
I’m sure all of them will hurry up and report themselves to this new registry. Brilliant plan
Yeah i don’t really understand this. Someone is comparing it to early holocaust but the jews where legal citizens, i assume they already had traceable paperwork.
Why would an undocumented immigrant who they do not know exists hand themselves over like that if the rhetoric on it has been super clear. They want all of them gone.
I could reason that this is just a setup to then expand the definition of illegal citizen but i still don’t see this working.
Maybe we are “lucky” in that by following the original hitler handbook they ignore that at least some historic awareness of such events and the internet exists?
because undocumented immigrants are people.
like any group of people, a handful of them are bound to be fucking stupid.
think statistically. in a nation of 100s of millions this fascist power grab is less boneheaded than it appears on the surface; a tragedy fs
They can also be intentionally misled by fascist powers. Threatening sweeping punishments for failing to comply but severely underselling the ramifications might convince an undocumented immigrant trying to avoid those punishments.
