A 60-year-old lawful permanent resident in Chicago was fined $130 last week after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents found he wasn't carrying his green card -- a routine stop that ended without detention but signaled a renewed federal focus on enforcing a long-dormant rule requiring immigrants to keep proof of registration on them at all times.
For decades, a little-known provision of federal law has required adult non-U.S. citizens to "at all times" carry proof of registration. That mandate, long unenforced, is now back in use under a Trump administration policy directing agencies to "faithfully execute the immigration laws."
Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice for comment via email outside of normal office hours on Tuesday.
A 60-year-old lawful permanent resident in Chicago was fined $130 last week after ICE agents discovered he wasn't carrying his green card -- a routine stop that ended without detention but signaled a renewed push by federal authorities to enforce a long-ignored requirement that immigrants keep proof of registration on them at all times.
Under a renewed Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has begun citing lawful permanent residents for failing to carry their green cards -- something technically required under federal statute but rarely enforced for decades.
The move raises practical and constitutional questions about how far the government can go in policing documentation, and what it means for millions of legal residents now being reminded that compliance with immigration law doesn't end with approval of a visa or green card.
What The Law Says
Section 264 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires the government to issue an alien registration card or certificate upon registration, and subsection (e) requires adults to carry it: "Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him."
Violations are a misdemeanor.
Although the INA historically described a $100 maximum fine, DHS has long read the general federal sentencing statutes to allow a higher monetary penalty (still with a maximum of 30 days' imprisonment).
In March, DHS memorialized that interpretation when it implemented a modernized registration process: "Noncompliance is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 or imprisonment for not more than thirty days, or both."
What Changed In 2025
On January 20, President Trump signed Executive Order 14159 directing agencies to "faithfully execute the immigration laws," revoking prior guidance that had narrowed enforcement discretion.
In Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights v. DHS, advocacy groups sued to block the rule, saying: "The requirement that millions of noncitizens carry physical documentation at all times is neither necessary for enforcement nor consistent with constitutional guarantees of equal protection. It invites arbitrary policing and racial profiling under the guise of documentation checks."
However, the judge declined to reach the merits, stating: "Because Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that any of their members face a concrete, particularized injury traceable to the Rule or redressable by this Court, they lack Article III standing. The Court therefore does not reach the merits of Plaintiffs' claims."
The case underscores that the rule remains in effect while litigation continues.
How Attorneys Explain The Requirement
Immigration scholars emphasize that the modern registration-and-carry regime is more complicated than the plain text suggests.
Professor Jonathan Weinberg of Wayne State University Law School has written that today's framework is "convoluted, confusing, and significantly incoherent," because the original, universal post-office registration system disappeared decades ago and many people are deemed "registered" through other immigration filings.
Likewise, a detailed historical analysis by Nancy Morawetz, Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law, and Natasha Fernández-Silber immigration attorney and researcher, cautions against assuming there is a comprehensive, one-size-fits-all registration system. "In truth, no such system exists today," they argue, pointing to regulatory changes since the 1940s that narrowed who must register and what documents exist.
That perspective helps explain why day-to-day enforcement of the "carry" mandate was rare in recent decades outside certain border and checkpoint contexts.
Enforcement, And Why You're Seeing Tickets Now
The administration's 2025 actions sought to "re-animate" dormant pieces of the statute by both defining who counts as already registered and creating a process for those who are not.
Federal notices explain that, going forward, people who register (or who are already registered through other filings) must keep evidence with them; failure to do so can be charged as a misdemeanor.
In Chicago, stepped-up federal activity under "Operation Midway Blitz" has brought greater scrutiny to residents' documents, which is the backdrop for the $130 ticket reported by NBC Chicago, noting that this specific practice -- ticketing lawful permanent residents for not carrying papers -- had been "rarely seen" locally until now.
What DHS/ICE Say
DHS and USCIS point to the statute and the interim final rule. USCIS's public guidance states that adults must carry "evidence of registration," and the Federal Register notice recites -- 8 U.S.C. § 1304(e) -- "at all times carry" clause and the available penalties.
ICE did not respond to NBC Chicago's same-day request for comment on the Rogers Park ticketing, but the agencies' position is clear from its rulemaking and guidance.
Bottom line for lawful permanent residents (and others):
As enforcement intensifies, the safest practical advice from immigration attorneys is unglamorous: keep valid registration evidence with you, keep it current, and seek individualized counsel if you receive a citation or have never been registered under the INA.
[Note: Nothing in this article is legal advice].
Rueben Antonio Cruz, when ICE agents pulled up onto the street, October 9, 2025: "They asked us if [we] have papers. I said I do but I don't have them on me."
American Immigration Council: "The Trump Administration's Registration Requirement for Immigrants: A Rapid Analysis" (Feb. 2025): "...the Trump administration is giving itself another tool to use against immigrants: the threat of criminal prosecution."
Nancy Morawetz and Natasha Fernández-Silber, in "Immigration Law and the Myth of Comprehensive Registration," University of California, Davis Law Review (2014): "The history of registration's demise has left little by way of a coherent registration scheme in the United States. Registration requirements today are largely illusory, with huge swaths of the non-citizen population exempt from registration and carry requirements. Moreover, the administration of the registration laws has become fundamentally haphazard and dysfunctional."
Jonathan Weinberg, in "The Puzzle of Alien Registration," Wayne State University / SSRN (2016): "Section 264(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act exemplifies a long American tradition of requiring certain groups to carry legitimating documents -- free blacks in the antebellum South, Chinese under the Geary Act, men subject to draft registration, and aliens under section 264(e)."
What happens next will hinge on how far the federal government takes enforcement and how courts respond. The DHS is expected to clarify whether fines like the recent Chicago case will become standard, while civil-rights groups prepare new legal challenges arguing that the rule invites profiling and exceeds federal authority.
Congress may hold oversight hearings, and local police agencies will need guidance on their role in checking immigration papers. Meanwhile, immigration lawyers are urging clients to carry proof of registration to avoid citations.
The outcome -- whether through court rulings, agency policy, or political pushback -- will determine if this revived "carry your papers" mandate becomes routine practice or retreats again into obscurity.