For the first time in Arizona, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are using a Cold War-era law to ticket legal immigrants for minor offenses like not carrying their immigration documents, a break from the agency’s longstanding focus on people in the country illegally.
In the past year, federal agents in southwest Arizona issued more than 100 citations to individuals that included permanent residents, visa holders and international students under a 1952 provision enacted to track noncitizens, according to law enforcement records reviewed by AZCIR. The tickets typically carry fines of about $80, though the statute allows for up to 30 days in prison and fines as high as $5,000.
Citations remain in federal records for 30 years and can complicate green card or citizenship applications, potentially making people more vulnerable to deportation as the Trump administration expands efforts to revoke legal status. Most tickets are resolved administratively, which means recipients forfeit the opportunity to challenge the stops in court.
The enforcement shift follows President Donald Trump’s first-day executive order directing federal agents to prioritize all immigration laws. A subsequent memo instructed U.S. attorneys to pursue criminal prosecutions under Section 1304(e) of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, the “carry your papers” provision at the center of the recent citations.
“This is what distinguishes the Trump administration from previous administrations,” said S. Deborah Kang, an immigration historian at the University of Virginia who studies border enforcement. Trump “is one of the first presidents in the past half-century who has gone after not only undocumented immigrants, but also legal immigrants.”
All of the Arizona tickets were issued by agents in the Yuma Sector, which runs from the Imperial Sand Dunes in California to the boundary between Yuma and Pima counties. Some stemmed from routine inspections at ports of entry or Border Patrol checkpoints near the U.S.-Mexico border, while others followed agents approaching people at rest areas and bus stops. Most resulted from roving traffic stops on southern Arizona highways, as drivers traveled east of Yuma.
Border Patrol agents must have “reasonable suspicion” of a crime before stopping a vehicle—a lower standard than probable cause, but one that still requires some factual basis. In nearly all of the cases reviewed by AZCIR, agents did not document a specific reason for the stop.
CBP did not respond to detailed questions over the past six weeks, including about the agency’s protocol for documenting reasonable suspicion after conducting a traffic stop.
“The U.S. Border Patrol continues to utilize all available tools to apply consequences for individuals [who] violate federal law,” a CBP spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
For Arizonans, the tactic echoes the state’s infamous 2010 “show me your papers” law, Senate Bill 1070, which led to discriminatory enforcement and was largely struck down after widespread public backlash. Even under SB 1070, though, the enforcement provision requiring legal immigrants to carry their papers never made it past the courts.
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Records show that in cases when nationality was recorded by Border Patrol, a majority of those cited were from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Citations were less common among people from China or the Middle East, and only one European was ticketed during roving highway patrols.
“We’re seeing what is unmistakably racial profiling, both in Arizona and elsewhere in more contentious places like Minneapolis,” said Noah Schramm, immigrants’ rights and border policy strategist at ACLU Arizona. The tickets permit federal agents to “terrorize Arizona communities in a way that we haven’t seen since the days of SB 1070.”
The practice has been used sporadically since CBP was formed in 2003, with roughly 260 such tickets issued nationwide through 2024, according to data from the Central Violations Bureau, a national administrative system that processes federal citations. Enforcement began to pick up in the past few years in areas near the Mexican border, as first reported by San Diego-based inewsource. But it has since moved inland to cities like Chicago, and related prosecutions, though still uncommon, increased in the first half of 2025.
Experts say the consequences could extend well beyond the people who receive citations. Anyone who could be perceived as an immigrant may feel compelled to carry papers at all times, creating “spillover effects even for U.S. citizens,” said Annie Lai, an immigrants’ rights attorney and professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
“The idea that we are a place where everybody has to carry their papers is not American,” she said. “That’s not the kind of country that I think a lot of people think we should be.”
In Arizona, the revival of the decades-old 1304(e) provision—which makes it a federal misdemeanor for noncitizens not to carry their immigration documents at all times—is playing out during routine encounters that once would have been unlikely to trigger immigration enforcement.
In one instance, a Border Patrol agent approached a Canadian citizen with a U.S. green card walking from his hotel in Yuma to get breakfast, stating in his written report that he was checking whether the man needed help. After asking whether he was a U.S. citizen, the agent cited him for failing to carry his green card.
At a Love’s Travel Center on Interstate 8 in Yuma, an agent greeted an Arizona State University student from South Korea and asked whether she was carrying her student visa, the agent’s report stated. When she said it was at her apartment, he issued a ticket.
Several citations began with calls from local police or Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers during vehicle stops. In one case, police requested translation assistance from Border Patrol. The agent then took the individual into custody and issued a ticket.
In all, those cited include permanent residents, people on work visas, international students and at least one person with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status—all legally present in the U.S. but not carrying immigration documents when they were stopped. Others were Mexican nationals with border crossing cards but without an accompanying I-94 form documenting their legal entry and authorized length of stay.
Multiple people told agents they did not know they were required to carry their papers at all times, according to reasonable suspicion statements obtained by AZCIR. Many immigrants don’t routinely carry green cards, which cost up to $465 to replace, though immigration attorneys are beginning to recommend otherwise.
Some people showed photos of their documents or other forms of ID, including driver’s licenses, but were still cited.
Agents have also stopped people on rural highways within a couple hours’ drive of the border, issuing more than 70 tickets for immigration offenses along Arizona interstates in the past year.
In almost all vehicle stops reviewed by AZCIR, agents did not document a justification for pulling drivers over in their statements of reasonable suspicion.
Attorneys said agents aren’t necessarily required to include that explanation in the report itself, since they can provide it later during court testimony. But when tickets are resolved administratively, as most have been so far, the stop is never contested in court. That means the government’s rationale for the traffic stop may never be subject to additional review.
The lack of documentation—and scrutiny—raises constitutional concerns under the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures, lawyers told AZCIR.
“When a report specifically instructs officers to list the reason for a stop—and the officer does not do so—it certainly casts into question the legitimacy of the stop,” ACLU Arizona immigration attorney John Mitchell said.
A small but growing number of cases are now being prosecuted by U.S. attorneys for violating registration requirements, among other immigration laws. From Jan. 20 to July 2025, prosecutors have filed seven such criminal cases in Washington, New Mexico, Texas and Alabama, compared with 10 such cases in all of 2024 and none in the nine years prior, as reported by inewsource.
Immigration experts say the decision to pursue legal residents can reverberate beyond the individuals cited.
By targeting legal immigrants, especially in places where mixed-status families are common, the administration “can signal to the undocumented members of that person’s family or community to be on notice,” Kang said.
“If this can happen to a legal immigrant, then of course it can happen to someone without papers,” she said. Ultimately, the message is that “no one is safe.”
The initial legal basis for today’s “carry your papers” law is the 1940 Alien Registration Act, a World War II-era national security law that created an inventory of noncitizens. Twelve years later, during a time of anti-Communist fervor, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act made it a crime for immigrants not to carry their documents.
But that law was structured around registration, not deportation. It promised noncitizens who registered a path to citizenship, and made failing to register—not entering the country illegally—a crime.
Though the statute remained on the books for decades and was rarely enforced, the Trump administration has begun actively deploying it as part of a broader push to resurrect little-used provisions of laws that affect both legal and undocumented immigrants.
Federal officials have directed unauthorized immigrants to register with the government and fined those who remain in the country up to $1,000 per day. The administration has also invoked the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants based on alleged gang affiliations and is pursuing efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship for children born to parents who are undocumented or have temporary legal status.
In Arizona, federal agents have also begun citing permanent residents and visa holders for failing to notify immigration authorities of address changes within 10 days of moving, another seldom-enforced law that carries penalties of up to 30 days in jail and fines of up to $5,000. A missed address update is now grounds for deportation, unless the person can justify the lapse or show it wasn’t a deliberate violation.
“Federal law is full of a lot of different provisions and requirements that this administration … resurrected and used in ways that have never been used before,” said Hiroshi Motomura, an immigration law professor at UCLA.
The enforcement push is unfolding alongside a temporary U.S. Supreme Court order issued in September 2025 that allows federal agents to consider race or ethnicity in traffic stops while the court decides whether the approach is constitutional. Civil rights advocates say the so-called “Kavanaugh stops” effectively rubber-stamp racial profiling in ways that state and federal courts previously rejected under Arizona’s SB 1070.
Border Patrol has emerged as a primary enforcement arm of these revived tactics. Created in 1924 to police the border, today’s expanded agency now operates far beyond it, acting as a de facto federal police force at the president’s discretion. Trump’s inland operations have led to violent clashes with the public, including two high-profile killings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Taken together, legal scholars say, the revival of dormant statutes and the widening reach of federal enforcement mark a broader shift in how immigration law is being applied—one aimed at redefining the boundaries of American identity.
“This is a move to turn the clock back to a narrower version of who belongs in America,” Motomura said.
