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 U.S. government carried out a comprehensive campaign to require all noncitizens to register.”.
In one of his 10 inauguration day executive orders related to immigration, President Donald Trump initially outlined plans for creating a registry and required that Homeland Security “immediately announce and publicize information about the legal obligation of all previously unregistered aliens in the United States to comply.".
The Trump administration is creating a registry for all people who are in the United States illegally, and those who don't self-report could face fines or prosecution, immigration officials announced Tuesday.
It cited a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act — the complex immigration law — as justification for the registration process, which would apply to anyone 14 and older.
The organization 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 characterized as communist or subversive.”.
