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.
Hmm, I wonder what else started out as a registry…something that went down in history not long after the great depression.
It’s a safe bet IBM will jump at the chance to manage this one too.
Oh the federal government has been testing a registry for years now. This isn’t new. We have a sex offender registry and next we’re going to have an immigrant registry.
But you did not speak up, because you were not a sex offender.
Someone should write a poem about this …
We’ve had this law since World War 2. It hasn’t been used since and not for a lack of anti-immigrant sentiment. I want reporters to do their fucking job and report why the people who did things like Operation Wetback (the actual name, not my exaggeration) didn’t see fit to do this.
Edit to add -
Doing AP’s job for them, I found the punishment. 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.
I don’t know why, but your post response gave me this visual imagery of a man in a suit entering names on a list using an old-fashioned typewriter…
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.
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.
As has been seen since fascism took over, they will absolutely target legal immigrants and play it off as minor and infrequent.
This sets a dangerous precedent. If they can add this group to the list now, who will be next? Will they target transgender individuals, people of color, or those who practice religions that differ from the state’s official stance? This raises serious concerns about the erosion of civil rights and the potential for discrimination under the guise of policy enforcement.
Will they target transgender individuals, people of color, or those who practice religions that differ from the state’s official stance?
You and I both know they will. They require an ingroup and an outgroup. Once the current outgroup is gone, they find a new one to replace the boogeyman.
It’s also frightfully similar to Nazi Germany requiring Jews identify themselves with armbands.
First they created the sex offender list, you didn’t speak up because you were not a sex offender.
Then they created the immigrant list, you didn’t speak up because you were not an immigrant.
Etc etc.
History repeats because nobody learns
How much is this going to cost tax payers (sound expensive)? Where is Elon on this one?
Probably buying shares in whatever company has the no-bid contract to build it.
Just get them armbands
Armbands can be removed. Maybe tattoos instead?
I’m all in for carving Schwartz because on people’s foreheads
Pieces of flair.
So this is interesting. (In a bad way of course, because why can’t they do even one good thing?) But first there’s no specified punishment in the statute. And I’m having trouble finding a punishment listed anywhere for not registering. The executive can’t just make up an authority to punish people.
Then there’s the fact that this law hasn’t been used since World War 2. Not even the 1950’s red scare tried to use it. It’s very likely this law was meant to be used in complement with extraordinary powers relating to World War 2. Powers the government hasn’t had access to since then.
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.
The Dreamers program they hate so much also did this, only then it was evil
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