https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/14/trump-administration-alien-registration-act-00403535

The Alien Registration Act requires non-citizens to register with the federal government. That provision hadn’t been enforced in 75 years.

Demonstrators protest against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies on June 9 in Louisville, Kentucky. | Jon Cherry/AP

By Hassan Ali Kanu

06/14/2025 07:00 AM EDT

Federal officials have begun carrying out President Donald Trump’s orders to enforce a World War II-era criminal law that requires virtually all non-citizens in the country to register with and submit fingerprints to the government.

Since April, law enforcement in Louisiana, Arizona, Montana, Alabama, Texas and Washington, D.C., have charged people with willful “failure to register” under the Alien Registration Act, an offense most career federal public defenders have never encountered before. Many of those charged were already in jail and in ongoing deportation proceedings when prosecutors presented judges with the new charges against them.

The registration provision in the law, which was passed in 1940 amid widespread public fear about immigrants’ loyalty to the U.S., had been dormant for 75 years, but it is still on the books. Failure to register is considered a “petty offense” — a misdemeanor with maximum penalties of six months imprisonment or a $1,000 fine.

In reviving the law, the Trump administration may put undocumented immigrants in a catch-22. If they register, they must hand over detailed, incriminating information to the federal government — including how and when they entered the country. But knowingly refusing to register is also a crime, punishable by arrest or prosecution, on top of the ever-present threat of deportation.

“The sort of obvious reason to bring back registration in the first place is the hope that people will register, and therefore give themselves up effectively to the government because they already confessed illegal entry,” said Jonathan Weinberg, a Wayne State University law professor who has studied the registration law.

But the Trump administration also has another goal. It says one purpose of the registration regime is to provoke undocumented immigrants to choose a third option: leave the country voluntarily, or, in the words of the Department of Homeland Security, compulsory “mass self-deportation.” Those efforts, alongside the administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and a more aggressive approach to immigration raids, are meant to achieve a broader, overarching campaign promise: the largest deportation program in the history of America.

“For decades, this law has been ignored — not anymore,” the department said in a February announcement that it would enforce the law. The department called “mass self-deportation” a “safer path for aliens and law enforcement,” and said it saves U.S. taxpayer dollars.

The Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions about its enforcement policies.

A long dormant law will now affect millions

The Alien Registration Act was passed in 1940, amid fears about immigrants’ loyalties. A separate provision of the statute criminalizes advocacy for overthrowing the government. For about two decades, that provision was used to prosecute people who were accused of being either pro-fascist or pro-Communist.

The registration provision, though, remained largely dormant, and had not been enforced in 75 years. It applies to non-citizens, regardless of legal status, who are in the U.S. for 30 days or longer.

Certain categories of legal immigrants have already met the requirement. Immigrants who have filed applications to become permanent residents are considered registered by DHS, for example. And even some undocumented U.S. residents are already registered: U.S. residents who have received “parole” — a form of humanitarian protection from deportation — are also considered registered.

Still, DHS estimates that up to 3.2 million immigrants are currently unregistered and are affected by the new enforcement regime. The administration has created a new seven-page form that non-citizens must use. The form requires people, under penalty of perjury, to provide biographical details, contact information, details about any criminal history and the circumstances of how they entered the U.S.

After DHS issued regulations to enforce the registration requirement in April, the administration announced that 47,000 undocumented immigrants had registered using the new form.

A legal challenge and a series of prosecutions

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and other advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s move to revive the registration requirement in March.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, initially expressed skepticism toward the administration, saying in a recent hearing that officials had pulled a “big switcheroo” on undocumented immigrants. But McFadden in April refused the plaintiffs’ request to temporarily block the policy, saying the Coalition likely lacks the legal standing to sue because it has not shown that it would be harmed by the policy. The group has appealed McFadden’s decision.

In the meantime, the administration has begun to prosecute people for failure to register for the first time in seven decades.

The prosecutions so far have stumbled.

On May 19, a federal magistrate judge in Louisiana consolidated and dismissed five of the criminal cases, saying prosecutors had no probable cause to believe the defendants had intentionally refused to register.

Judge Michael North wrote that the Alien Registration Act requires “some level of subjective knowledge or bad intent” behind the choice not to register. The prosecutions, the judge wrote, are impermissible because most people are simply unaware of the law, and the government “did not provide these Defendants — as well as millions of similarly situated individuals here without government permission — with a way to register” since 1950.

But North also pointed out that the government may have an easier path to proving probable cause in the future, given that DHS created a new registration form in April. And government attorneys have appealed the five dismissed cases.

The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana declined to comment on recent charges filed under the law.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said the office “is aggressively pursuing criminals in the district and will use all criminal justice resources available to make D.C. safe and to carry out President Trump’s and Attorney General Bondi’s direction to support immigration enforcement.”

The other federal district attorneys whose offices filed charges did not respond to a request for comment.

Michelle LaPointe, legal director at the American Immigration Council, an immigrants’ rights advocacy group, said these initial cases are the “tip of the iceberg.” LaPointe is among the attorneys representing the Coalition in its lawsuit against the administration.

“I don’t expect them to abate just because there were some dismissals,” LaPointe said, pointing to North’s statements about future charges. “They have already stated that they intend to make prosecution of the few immigration-related criminal statutes a priority for DOJ, and it’s very easy for them to at least charge, even if they’re not always gonna be able to sustain their burden to secure a conviction.”

Weinberg, the Wayne State law professor, agreed that the administration will likely continue attempting broad enforcement.

“If they bring a whole lot of prosecutions and end up losing all, they may step back,” Weinberg said. “If they bring a whole lot and win a few, they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s the basis on which we can move further’” and appeal — potentially all the way to the Supreme Court, he noted.