According to an exclusive report by Fox News, the Oversight Project of the Heritage Foundation is filing Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Selective Service System and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records of how many “illegal immigrants” may have violated US law by failing to register with the SSS for a possible future military draft. Fox News quotes the FOIA request as alleging that, “there is widespread criminal non-compliance by such aliens”.
The Oversight Project appears to misunderstand both immigration and Selective Service law. With respect to “illegal immigrants”, seeking asylum isn’t illegal – it’s a human right. By international treaty, penalties cannot lawfully be imposed on refugees for “illegal entry or presence”. And failing to register with the Selective Service System is a crime only if it is “knowing and willful”, which it usually isn’t. Most immigrants are unaware, until the question comes up on an application for naturalization, that they are supposed to sign up for a possible U.S. draft even if they aren’t U.S. citizens.
But quotes in the Fox News article from Executive Director Mike Howell and Chief Counsel Kyle Brosnan of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project suggest that the goal of their FOIA requests is to put pressure on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to embark on bound-to-fail attempts to prosecute immigrants for failing to register with Selective Service:
“Howell said the FOIA request’s results could go beyond the scope of just determining whether undocumented residents of the U.S. may have attempted to avoid the draft – but also potentially offer an additional avenue for… mass deportation plans.
“With failure to register with SSS being a felony and a deportable offense, Howell said that… it could provide simplified legal grounds for the mass deportation plans of the Trump administration.
“‘You can turn a class of individuals into potential criminals overnight. What it also means is you don’t need ICE necessarily to do it. [Alleged SSS violators] would be prosecuted by DOJ. That means they’re in other beds that aren’t ICE beds. So you’re looking at all of them being in federal prison potentially, as opposed to taking up space in ICE custody,’ Howell said.”
Immigrants shouldn’t be scared, however, by these threats of deportation or prosecution for not having signed up for the draft.
Hellbound and Down 