Sam Bishop is 26 and lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. He has never had a driver's license, opened a bank account, or boarded a plane. He cannot legally work, rent an apartment, or enroll in college. He exists in America without existing on paper.
Sam was born at home in Keene, New Hampshire, delivered without a doctor, nurse, or midwife. His parents, whom he describes as drug users and anti-government extremists, opposed government documentation on principle. No birth certificate was ever filed. Without one, he cannot obtain a Social Security number, passport, or basic photo ID. Each missing document leads to another closed door.
He spent years contacting lawyers, state agencies, social workers, and elected officials. Private investigators turned up nothing. A genealogist and DNA test yielded no extended family. Police records from his childhood towns were blank. His parents have vanished entirely, off the grid and untraceable.
Sam is not alone. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people across the United States are what researchers call "unregistered Americans." All lack the documents required to prove they are citizens. All are trapped in what legal experts term "evidentiary statelessness."
Sam's parents gravitated toward off-grid communities aligned with sovereign citizen ideology, a loose movement that views the U.S. government as an illegitimate corporation and treats official documentation as tools of state control. His childhood was unstable and violent. He remembers ending up in strangers' homes, surrounded by adults in various states of intoxication. At 16, after a confrontation with his father, Sam left with nothing but the clothes on his back.
He hitchhiked to Detroit, lived homeless for a time, and eventually found his way to Worcester seven years ago. Since then, he has held only cash-paying jobs, moving between lawyers, state agencies, and bureaucratic dead ends. One told him to find an immigration attorney. That attorney sent him to a family law attorney, who referred him to a probate attorney, who directed him back to immigration law. Around and around.
The stress has marked him visibly. He sleeps only a few hours a night. A dental clinic said his teeth looked decades older than they should. His blood pressure is dangerously high. He suffers panic attacks so severe they become "almost like a physical pain." Yet he volunteers constantly, works multiple gigs, and advocates for local causes late into the night, as if movement itself might solve what the law cannot.
The path that created Sam and others like him is widening. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, a movement called "freebirth" has grown, with women choosing to give birth at home without medical professionals. Most are not motivated by ideology. But sovereign citizen ideas have begun circulating in parts of the freebirth community, particularly online and among people skeptical of mainstream medicine and suspicious of government authority.
Nikki, a former freebirth coach who asked to be identified by first name only due to professional concerns, witnessed tragedies including babies who died because their mothers lacked knowledge of newborn resuscitation or avoided prenatal care. She has since become disillusioned with the extreme ideology that sometimes accompanies unassisted birth. Yet she described freebirthing as "trendy" since the pandemic, drawing thousands of women into online communities where conspiracy theories about birth certificates and Social Security numbers circulate freely.
Within some of these groups, the logic has veered into conspiracy. Parents believe a birth certificate makes their child property of the state. A Social Security number turns people into "tax cattle" or "collateral for the national debt." Nikki acknowledged that reliable sources supporting these claims are difficult to find. In her research, she has yet to locate official government statements confirming any of them.
A sovereign citizen influencer named Veda Ray has begun marketing courses and guides to mothers about having babies "out of the system" and avoiding birth certificates. Her online products cost between roughly $200 and $7,000. Another prominent figure, Bobby Lawrence, began encouraging followers in 2021 to apply for "non-citizen national" passports, claiming these carry special legal status that removes them from "corporate citizenship." In reality, applicants are issued standard U.S. passports identical in legal effect to any other. Many sovereign citizens do not fully grasp this and believe their version carries special power.
Experts worry the spread of these movements will create more unregistered Americans. Betsy Fisher, a law professor at the University of Michigan who studies this population, said her "concern is that the numbers will grow as these kind of fringe movements become more and more common and accepted."
The scope of the problem remains unclear, but watchdog groups estimate several hundred thousand people in the U.S. identify as sovereign citizens. The movement has no central leadership, instead operating through a loose network of self-appointed gurus each selling their own mix of conspiracy theories and pseudo-legal documents, often for substantial fees.
When Sam and a reporter visited Grafton, New Hampshire, a small town of 1,835 that was once the hub of a failed libertarian Free State Project, they hoped to find someone who remembered his family. John Babiarz, the former fire chief and two-time gubernatorial candidate, seemed intrigued by Sam's predicament at first. But when Sam explained he could not legally work or pay taxes, Babiarz's tone shifted.
"You're completely off-grid," Babiarz said. "There'd be people that would kill for that privilege. You're a man without a country. That's beautiful. You don't have to pay Social Security, Medicare, whatever."
Sam stared at him. Babiarz then rushed to add, "But if you don't want that, I can understand that too."
Sam does not want it. He wants a normal life. He wants to drive, have a bank account, and work legally. "I really don't feel like that's asking for much," he said.
Other unregistered Americans share similar stories and similar longings. The Jackson brothers in Idaho, Matthew, Tim, and Benjamin, were born at home and never registered because their parents wanted to keep them "protected" from government. Matthew lives in a camper van near his father's place in Lowman, Idaho, a rural town with a population of 44 and a one-room schoolhouse. He wants to travel and meet new people. He wants to get married. Instead, he feels stuck.
Abigail Colón, a mother of two in Augusta, Georgia, whose parents embraced sovereign citizen beliefs when she was young, wants a driver's license so she can take her children to the playground and pediatrician. Samuel Buffington, homeless on the streets of Dallas, filed a lawsuit against the state agency that issues birth certificates and won in 2022, but court staff would not give him his judicial order without an ID to prove who he was.
Larissa Mak, who lived with her mother outside Portland, Oregon, was born in a home without medical assistance. Her mother never registered her birth and avoided questions about the missing documents. Growing up, Larissa was homeschooled and rarely saw a doctor except once as a baby, when a hospital misspelled her name. She wanted a simple life, a job at a bakery, her GED. For years, she wondered if those things would ever be possible.
In late December, after seven months working with an attorney from United Stateless, an advocacy organization, Larissa's passport application was approved. She had submitted sworn statements, census records, affidavits from friends and family, a chronological photo album of her life, a list of every address she had lived at, and finally a DNA test proving she was her mother's daughter. When the passport arrived, she took what she called "the deepest breath, the realest breath" she had ever felt. She cried. She signed up for her GED as soon as the local office reopened after the holidays.
Not everyone has been that fortunate. Samantha Sitterley, an attorney with United Stateless, said parents who keep their children entirely out of the system believe they are protecting them. "But not having a legal identity is torture." The path from birth to ordinary life has become a journey that many unregistered Americans may never complete.
Author James Rodriguez: "The cruel irony is that some parents chose this to protect their kids from government overreach, only to hand them a life sentence of invisibility and exclusion."
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