News that the Trump Administration is proposing a registry for people in the U.S. without legal status sent shockwaves through immigrant communities this week, raising fears about how to grapple with what some say is a Catch-22.
Adrian Ventura, an immigrant rights activist in New Bedford, said the policy seems aimed at scaring people and facilitating immigration raids.
“This whole tide is like a psychological attack on the most vulnerable people,” he said in Spanish. “Most people won’t be fooled by this.”
Under President Trump’s Alien Registration Requirement, many immigrants would have to inform the government of their presence, and risk prosecution if they fail to comply. One advocacy group estimates the registry could apply to millions of people — particularly those who entered the U.S. without inspection and had no subsequent contact with the federal government.
Those currently in immigration proceedings, or recipients of work permits, are already considered to have registered.
The registry has not actually launched, but officials are encouraging people to create accounts with United States Citizenship and Immigration Service.
Daniel Kanstroom, an Immigration law professor at Boston College, said the policy creates a dilemma: People who do register fear they could be called in at any moment to face removal proceedings. And people who don’t register “could be subject to criminal prosecution,” he said.
Lawyers can’t ethically advise people not to comply with a law, Kanstroom said. Instead, they’ll have to inform clients of the risks involved, and people can decide for themselves whether to register.
Efforts to track immigrants date far back in American history, to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. During World War II, the Alien Registration Act was used to track Japanese and other immigrants. And after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, the government created a registry for people from two dozen Muslim majority nations and North Korea. That led to thousands of people facing immigration proceedings in the first year, according to the American Immigration Council. It was phased out in 2016.
Kanstroom said when the U.S. has enacted these registries, there has often been a common thread: “anachronistic moves by prior governments, during times of great fear or stress or war,” and in some cases aimed at “anarchists or communists or socialists or Chinese workers.”
Parts of the new registry could be vulnerable to legal challenges, he added. Requiring people to register could violate Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, for example. It’s also questionable whether the government can compel people to carry documentation of their registration, as asserted in the new policy.
But Kanstroom said the broader policy — asserting the government’s ability to establish a registry for immigrants — is likely to stand.
“There is statutory authority to do this,” he said, citing the World War II-era registration law.
The new registry is welcomed by backers of Trump’s deportation agenda.
“The federal government said, ‘Hey, we need to know who’s here,’ ” said Tom Hodgson, the former sheriff of Bristol County who ran the Trump 2024 campaign in Massachusetts. “There’s all kinds of people who are here and we need to know — much like you’d want to know about any criminals in your community.”
Hodgson acknowledged that not everyone lacking legal status is a criminal. But failure to comply with the new registry could increase the likelihood that people will be targeted for enforcement.
“This will be effective also because there’s going to be people who are going to self-deport, who are just saying, ‘You know what? It’s not worth it. I’ll go back to my country,’ ” he said.
Hodgson said people can then try to return to the United States “the right way,” with permission to be here. That may require new immigration laws, he noted. But that part isn’t up to Trump — it’s up to Congress.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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