I. The Statutory Framework

The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended, codified at 22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq., requires the registration and disclosure of any “agent of a foreign principal” operating within the United States.¹

The statute defines its terms with deliberate breadth. Under 22 U.S.C. § 611(c), the term “agent of a foreign principal” means “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal.”²

The term “foreign principal,” in turn, includes “a government of a foreign country and a foreign political party” and “a person outside of the United States.”³

Most critically, under 22 U.S.C. § 611(a), the term “person” is defined as “an individual, partnership, association, corporation, organization, or any other combination of individuals.”⁴

This definition was drafted to be maximally inclusive. Congress chose the phrase “any other combination of individuals” as a catch-all, ensuring that no organizational form could evade registration through creative structuring. The legislative history of the 1938 Act confirms that Congress intended the statute to capture every conceivable arrangement by which foreign interests might operate on American soil.⁵

The definition does not require that the “person” be a natural person. It does not require incorporation. It does not require legal capacity. It does not require sentience. It requires only that the entity constitute “any other combination of individuals.”

This is where the analysis begins.

II. The Foreign Introduction

The rock pigeon (Columba livia) is not native to North America. It is an Old World species whose natural range extends across Europe, North Africa, and western Asia. Every rock pigeon currently present in the United States descends from birds deliberately transported to the continent by agents of European colonial governments.⁶

The first documented introduction occurred in 1606, when French colonists brought domesticated pigeons to Port Royal, in present-day Nova Scotia, as part of the establishment of the first permanent French settlement in the Americas.⁷ These birds were brought not as personal pets but as colonial assets—a reliable food source and communication system to support the interests of the French Crown in the New World. Additional introductions followed throughout the seventeenth century as English, Dutch, and Spanish colonists brought their own pigeon stocks to settlements along the Atlantic seaboard.⁸

The pigeons were, in the literal and legal sense of the term, dispatched to the United States at the direction of foreign governments to serve foreign interests. They did not arrive independently. They did not migrate. They were transported as instruments of colonial policy. The French Crown, the English monarchy, and the governments of the Netherlands and Spain each introduced pigeon populations to further their respective territorial and commercial objectives in North America.

Under 22 U.S.C. § 611(b)(1), a “foreign principal” includes “a government of a foreign country.” The Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of England, the Dutch Republic, and the Kingdom of Spain were foreign governments. They directed the introduction of pigeons to American territory to advance their sovereign interests. The pigeons arrived “at the order, request, or under the direction or control” of these foreign principals.

No registration statement was filed at the time. None has been filed since.

III. The Service Record

The argument that pigeons have acted as agents of foreign principals is not a matter of historical inference. It is a matter of documented military record.

During World War I, the United States Army Signal Corps established its Pigeon Service in November 1917 at the request of General John J. Pershing, after British and French military officials advised him of the tactical advantages of carrier pigeons.⁹ On May 20, 1918, six hundred English-bred homing pigeons were donated to the American forces by British pigeon breeders.¹⁰

Consider the legal structure of this transaction. A foreign government—the United Kingdom—transferred six hundred trained operatives to American military forces. These operatives had been bred, raised, and trained on foreign soil, by foreign nationals, under a program administered by a foreign military establishment. They were provided to the United States to carry out communications functions on behalf of Allied war objectives that were directed and coordinated by a coalition of foreign governments.

One of these English-bred operatives, a homing pigeon designated Cher Ami, was assigned to Mobile Loft No. 11 supporting the 77th Infantry Division. On October 4, 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Cher Ami carried a message from Major Charles W. Whittlesey’s “Lost Battalion,” which was trapped in the Charlevaux Ravine and under friendly fire. Cher Ami was shot through the breast and blinded in one eye during the flight. He lost his right leg. The message was delivered. It read: “We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.”¹¹

For this service, Cher Ami was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palm by the French government.¹² That is: a foreign government bestowed a military decoration on a pigeon for acting in the interests of that foreign government on a battlefield. The French Republic formally recognized a pigeon as having served French national interests. The pigeon accepted the decoration. No FARA registration was filed.

The pattern continued in World War II. A pigeon designated G.I. Joe, hatched in Algiers in March 1943 and trained at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, flew twenty miles in twenty minutes on October 18, 1943, to deliver a message that prevented an Allied bombing of Calvi Vecchia, Italy, where British troops of the 56th (London) Infantry Division had already captured the village.¹³ Over one hundred British lives were saved. For this act, G.I. Joe was awarded the Dickin Medal by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals in London—an honor considered the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross. G.I. Joe was the first non-British recipient of the medal.¹⁴

In total, thirty-two pigeons received the Dickin Medal for wartime service. Carrier pigeons achieved a ninety-five percent success rate in delivering messages during the two world wars.¹⁵ They operated across international theaters at the direction of multiple foreign governments. They carried classified military communications. They served, in the most literal possible construction of the statutory language, as “information-service employees” of foreign principals.

IV. The Population Question

There are, by conservative ornithological estimate, approximately 260 million rock pigeons worldwide.¹⁶ The North American population, concentrated overwhelmingly in the United States, is estimated at between 60 and 80 million birds. The commonly cited figure is drawn from Partners in Flight population estimates derived from Breeding Bird Survey data, cross-referenced with municipal wildlife surveys in major metropolitan areas.¹⁷

Every one of these birds descends from stock introduced by European colonial governments. Not a single rock pigeon in the United States is descended from a naturally occurring North American population, because no such population has ever existed. The species is entirely non-native. Its presence is entirely the result of deliberate foreign government action.¹⁸

The FARA registration database, maintained by the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, currently lists approximately 500 active registrants.¹⁹ If the pigeon population of the United States were required to register, the number of FARA registrants would increase by a factor of roughly 160,000.

The administrative burden would be considerable. The DOJ’s FARA Unit, which currently operates with a staff of approximately thirty-five attorneys and support personnel, would need to process registration statements for 80 million new agents. At the unit’s current processing rate, the backlog would require approximately 45,000 years to clear, assuming no new pigeons hatched in the interim—an assumption contradicted by the species’ reproductive biology, which permits up to six clutches per year per mating pair, each producing two offspring.²⁰

V. The “Direction or Control” Analysis

The most defensible objection to this analysis is that the pigeons alive today are not acting “at the order, request, or under the direction or control” of a foreign principal, because the colonial governments that originally introduced them no longer exercise control over the pigeon population.

This objection fails on three independent grounds.

First, FARA contains no sunset provision. The statute does not provide that an agent’s registration obligation expires when the original directing relationship terminates. Section 612(a) requires that a registration statement be filed “within ten days after becoming an agent of a foreign principal,” and Section 612(d) requires that it be supplemented with new information “within ten days of the time any change therein occurs.”²¹ The original pigeon agents failed to file within ten days of their arrival in 1606. Their descendants have compounded this violation continuously for four hundred and twenty years. At no point has any pigeon filed a termination statement under Section 612(f), which is the only mechanism by which an agent may formally conclude its registration obligation.

Second, the concept of inherited agency is not foreign to American law. Corporate successor liability doctrines hold that when one entity succeeds another, the successor may inherit the predecessor’s legal obligations, including regulatory compliance requirements.²² Each generation of pigeons is the biological successor to the generation that preceded it. The colonial pigeon stock did not dissolve; it reproduced. The obligations of the original agents, never discharged through proper termination filings, have been transmitted through an unbroken chain of biological succession spanning approximately 1,680 pigeon generations.

Third, and most compellingly, the pigeon population continues to act in a manner consistent with the interests of its original foreign principals. The governments of France, England, the Netherlands, and Spain introduced pigeons to serve three purposes: food production, communication, and the establishment of a permanent European biological presence in North America. The pigeon population continues to fulfill all three functions. Pigeons remain a food source in multiple American culinary traditions. They continue to carry messages in competitive racing circuits recognized by the American Racing Pigeon Union. And they have established a permanent, self-sustaining biological presence across the entirety of the United States, fulfilling the colonial mandate more completely than any of the original European governments could have imagined.²³

VI. The Economic Impact of Unregistered Activity

The economic footprint of this unregistered foreign agent population is not trivial. Feral pigeon activity in the United States imposes significant costs on public infrastructure, private property, and human health systems.

Pigeon guano is highly acidic, with a pH level that accelerates the corrosion of stone, metal, and concrete. The Federal Highway Administration has documented that bird droppings are a contributing factor to the degradation of bridge infrastructure, and the General Services Administration has identified pigeon control as a recurring maintenance cost across the federal building portfolio.²⁴

A 2023 study published in PLOS ONE estimated the global economic costs of invasive alien birds, with Columba livia identified as the costliest species worldwide, responsible for billions of dollars in damages across infrastructure degradation, agricultural losses, and disease-related public health expenditures.²⁵ In the United States alone, pest bird damage—of which feral pigeons constitute the dominant share—costs property owners and municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars annually in cleanup, remediation, and structural repair.²⁶

Under FARA, registered foreign agents are required to disclose all financial activities conducted on behalf of their foreign principals, including expenditures that influence American public policy, infrastructure, or economic conditions.²⁷ The pigeon population’s economic activities—which include the systematic degradation of American infrastructure, the contamination of public spaces, and the displacement of native bird species—constitute precisely the kind of foreign-directed activity that FARA’s disclosure requirements were designed to make transparent.

None of this activity has been disclosed. No supplemental filing under Section 612(b) has documented the pigeon population’s cumulative economic impact on the United States. The Department of Justice has received no accounting whatsoever.

VII. The Enforcement Gap

The Department of Justice has, in recent years, significantly expanded its enforcement of FARA. In December 2024, DOJ officials previewed tightening regulations and increased enforcement priorities for 2025 at the American Conference Institute’s National Forum on FARA.²⁸ The FARA Unit has pursued criminal prosecutions, secured plea agreements, and levied civil penalties against individuals and organizations that failed to register as agents of foreign principals.

In 2023, the DOJ obtained a conviction in the case of United States v. Barrack, in which a prominent business executive was acquitted on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates, but the case demonstrated the government’s willingness to pursue FARA enforcement against high-profile targets.²⁹ In separate proceedings, multiple individuals have been prosecuted for acting as unregistered agents of China, Russia, Turkey, and other foreign governments.³⁰

Yet the single largest population of unregistered foreign agents on American soil has attracted no enforcement attention. Eighty million operatives, descended from foreign-government-directed introductions, carrying out activities consistent with their original colonial mandates, operating in plain sight on the ledges and rooftops and park benches of every major American city, and the FARA Unit has not initiated a single investigation.

The enforcement disparity is striking. A human lobbyist who fails to file a registration statement faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine under 22 U.S.C. § 618(a).³¹ A pigeon who has never filed a registration statement despite four centuries of continuous unregistered activity faces no legal consequence of any kind. The pigeon receives, on balance, more federal protection than federal scrutiny: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 does not cover rock pigeons, but neither does any enforcement mechanism under FARA.³²

The result is a regulatory vacuum. The pigeons are too foreign for nativist indifference, too numerous for practical enforcement, and too well-established for deportation. They occupy a legal space that the framers of FARA did not anticipate: a permanent, self-replicating population of unregistered foreign agents operating without oversight, without disclosure, and without consequence.

VIII. Conclusion

The evidence is straightforward. Under 22 U.S.C. § 611(c), an “agent of a foreign principal” is any person who acts in any capacity at the direction of a foreign government. Under § 611(a), “person” includes “any other combination of individuals.” Under § 611(b), “foreign principal” includes “a government of a foreign country.”

Rock pigeons were introduced to North America by European colonial governments. They were dispatched to serve the food production, communication, and territorial establishment interests of those governments. They acted as literal information-service operatives for foreign military establishments during two world wars, receiving military decorations from France and the United Kingdom in recognition of their service to those nations’ interests. Their descendants, numbering approximately 80 million, continue to occupy American territory and carry out activities consistent with their original foreign-directed mandates. No registration statement has ever been filed. No termination statement has been submitted. No supplemental disclosure has been made.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act was enacted in 1938 to ensure transparency about foreign influence on American soil. For eighty-eight years, the single largest population of foreign-introduced, foreign-directed, foreign-decorated agents in the United States has operated in full public view, on every federal building, on every courthouse ledge, on the steps of the Department of Justice itself, without a single filing.

The statute requires registration. The pigeons have not registered. The DOJ has not enforced. The analysis is complete.

Ergo.