The Trump administration will require immigrants without legal status to register and give their fingerprints to authorities as part of its crackdown on border crossings.
Anyone 14 or older who has been in the U.S. for 30 days or longer and does not have legal status must register, the Department of Homeland Security said.
Those who do not comply could be fined or jailed.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, once a person is fingerprinted, DHS will give them “evidence of registration,” which those over 18 will be required to carry at all times.
Greg Chen, the senior director of government relations at American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Associated Press that the new requirement could create a “nationwide show-me-your-papers regime” where anyone who “appears foreign”—U.S. citizen or otherwise—could be harassed.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Tuesday that immigrants who comply with the requirement “can avoid criminal charges and fines and we will help them relocate right back to their home country.”
Noem claimed that by allowing people to depart without charges, the administration was setting them up to return and immigrate through conventional means.
“What this does is provide them an opportunity to come back some day and to be part of the American dream,” she told Watters. “If they don’t register, they’re breaking the federal law which has always been in place, we’re just going to start enforcing it.”
The administration justified its decision by citing a practice from the 1940s that was written into the Immigration and Nationality Act. The law requires fingerprinting and registration of immigrants 14 and over within 30 days of arrival.
In a post on its website, the National Immigration Law Center said the law was used to crack down on people seem as “communist or subversive.”
“Any attempt by the Trump administration to create a registration process for noncitizens previously unable to register would be used to identify and target people for detention and deportation,” the organization said.
“In so doing, Trump would revive one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history, when the government used its registration information on Japanese noncitizens to force thousands into internment camps, together with thousands of others who were U.S. citizens of Japanese descent.”
Shortly after taking office last month, Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, and his administration has moved swiftly to pursue his promise to deport millions of immigrants.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, along with other law enforcement agencies, have escalated raids on communities in several American cities, Trump ordered that immigrants without legal status be denied some federal benefits, the Pentagon ordered some 1,500 troops to the southern border, and the detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base is being converted into a holding facility for deportees.
Trump also moved to end birthright citizenship, but that action has been blocked by a federal appeals court pending legal challenges.
