U.S Immigration officials say that the Trump administration is creating a register for all individuals who are in the country illegally and that those who fail to self-report may be subject to penalties or legal action.
According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, all individuals who are in the United States unlawfully are required to register, produce their fingerprints, and identify their address.
The registration process, which would be applicable to anybody 14 years of age and older, was justified by a part of the complicated immigration legislation known as the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The statement comes as the administration looks to fulfil campaign pledges to illegally deport large numbers of citizens and close the border to prospective asylum applicants.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Service announced on its website that it would shortly develop a registration form and procedure.
President Donald Trump first laid out plans for establishing a registry in one of his ten executive orders on immigration issued on the day of his inauguration.
The order mandated that Homeland Security “immediately announce and publicise information about the legal obligation of all previously unregistered aliens in the United States to comply.”
failure to register would be considered a crime, and the administration has said its initial priority target for deportation is people who’ve committed crimes in the US.
The National Immigration Law Center, an immigration advocacy group, said in a posting on its website before the Tuesday night announcement that “the Alien Registration Act of 1940 is the only time the US government carried out a comprehensive campaign to require all noncitizens to register”.
The organisation said under that process, people had to go to their local post office to register, and the goal was to identify “potential national security threats broadly characterised as communist or subversive”.
