The Trump administration is creating a registry program for immigrants who are in the country illegally, asking them to provide personal and biometric information or face fines and prison time in another immigration enforcement move.

Everyone 14 or older and in the U.S. without legal status will be required to give the federal government fingerprints and provide an address. It’s another escalation of the administration’s efforts to remove an estimated 11 million people in the country illegally. The administration said creating the registry will help compel them to leave the country voluntarily, a message it has repeatedly tried to send.

“President Trump and (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi) Noem have a clear message for those in our country illegally: leave now. If you leave now, you may have the opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

The registry is focused on people who are already in the country and haven’t interacted with the government through other means like applying for asylum or a work permit. Immigrants who have already interacted with the government would not need to register, but will be required to submit changes of their address.

A similar registry was created after 9/11 that required men and boys from mostly Muslim countries to provide photographs and fingerprints to the federal government, which then resulted in tens of thousands of people being deported. Some immigration advocacy groups have already warned the new registry could be used to help find additional targets for deportation.

It’s unclear what level of compliance the administration will receive even with the threat of criminal penalties. Some immigration experts said it could have the opposite of its intended effect and send more people into hiding and skipping work or school out of fear of being deported.

“It’s one of these things where it does create a lot of fear in communities and people are going to be less likely to go to school or go seek medical care or maybe even go to their jobs,” said Erin Corcoran, a professor at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.

Creation of the registry was included in executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office that have also limited routes to requesting asylum, an attempt to end birthright citizenship and revoking types of protected status.

Altogether, the administration is trying to deter people from even coming to the border or trying to get into the U.S., a push that has had some early initial success with arrests and encounters falling during Trump’s first month in office. Arrests for illegal crossings fell 39% in January from December at 21,593, the lowest level since May of 2020. Noem said earlier this week that CBP encountered just 200 people at the southwestern border on Saturday, the lowest figure for a single day in 15 years.

But the expanded efforts are also already running into obstacles, primarily in the form of limited resources available to the administration to carry out its sweeping goals. Federal law enforcement agents from other agencies have been reassigned to immigration enforcement and detention capacity has already reached its limits, prompting further urgency from Republicans in Congress to pass funding to hire more personnel and to expand space.

The creation of a registry system could also quickly run into logistical hurdles in the resource-strapped and legally complex immigration system.

“How would they operationalize this? Do they have the resources to do so? Do they have the ability to do so? Do they have the data systems to do so?” Corcoran said. “Even if people did come forward and were willing to comply, could they actually even implement the program right now with what they have?”

The administration’s move to criminalize being in the country illegally would be a considerable shift, changing the violation from a civil offense to a criminal one. That change is likely to be challenged in courts as an executive overreach, along with several other executive actions being debated in the nation’s courts.

In its announcement, the administration said it had legal justification to enforce the registry through the 1940 Immigration and Nationality Act that prompted a government push to get immigrants to register annually at local post offices. The system was dumped during the 1960s over issues with the cost and questions as to whether it was worth the resources.

“The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws — we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce. We must know who is in our country for the safety and security of our homeland and all Americans,” McLaughlin said.

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