Sovereign Citizens Movement

The Sovereign Citizens Movement is a label applied to a loose collection of anti-government individuals and groups whose core tenet centers on the illegitimacy of the American government. The term is generally seen as originating in a 2013 paper from the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Government, although some actions, including a high-profile event in Arkansas in 2010, were committed prior to that date by individuals who were reportedly members of the loosely organized movement.

Some of the movement’s member organizations are believed to be the Moorish Nation, Washitaw Nation, and Republic of the United States of America, but at base the movement’s members are united not by any organizational structure but rather by a shared general ideology. For the most part, the movement is made up of individuals who believe, as outlined in the UNC paper, that the U.S. governmental structure, especially as laid out in the Constitution—including courts and law enforcement—is illegitimate and holds no authority over them. While they will sometimes make distinctions, at least rhetorically, between the federal government and state governments, members’ failure to accept the legitimacy of state-issued driver’s licenses or license plates, state and local law enforcement, or state courts shows that they consider themselves beholden to no American governmental authority, seeing all as illegitimate.

Due to their disdain for the law and the government’s authority, they will often refuse to obtain a Social Security card, register a car, carry a driver’s license, or even use zip codes. Instead, they are known to carry fake ID cards as well as use fake license plates, and when stopped or questioned, they often offer paperwork, which they call an affidavit of truth, that asserts that, given their status as sovereign, law enforcement has no right to stop their vehicle.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classifies the sovereign citizens movement as a domestic terrorist movement, and law enforcement agencies nationwide are trained on how to deal with the potentially violent members and how to handle encounters with them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of Montgomery, Alabama, tracks the movement and reported in 2024 that there were ninety-one documented sovereign citizen groups in the United States. Meanwhile, a 2023 report by the Anti-Defamation League observed that sovereign citizen groups had seen an increase in their numbers as the nation’s political divide has grown. These groups appear to be drawing support from people tied to the anti-vaccine movement, QAnon, and other fringe groups. The movement has also spread extensively throughout jails and prisons.

The SPLC’s Mark Potok said that sovereign citizens claiming membership of a Moorish American Nation are a recent development in the sovereign-citizen movement, and one that illustrates the appeal and the prominence of what he calls a rapidly growing sector. Potok stated that there may be as many as 100,000 active sovereigns nationwide, while perhaps as many as 200,000 are experimenting with the ideology, given that it offers a way to free oneself from governmental constraints and avoid taxes, fines, and regulations. Potok stated that it is a “more explicitly criminal movement than other [separatist] groups” the SPLC monitors, adding, “They want services but don’t want taxes… There are quite a few people around the country simply trying to take something for nothing using sovereign techniques.” He said, “It is a movement that promises something for nothing in a time of real financial hardship,” adding, “A lot of [sovereign citizens] are just pure opportunists, trying to get out of a foreclosure or get out of taxes… It’s not a surprise it’s spreading so quickly.”

The movement hit close to home in Arkansas on May 20, 2010, when a routine traffic stop in West Memphis (Crittenden County) led to the shooting deaths of police officers Brandon Paudert and Bill Evans, who had stopped a minivan on Interstate 40 due to an irregular license plate. As the driver, Jerry Kane of Ohio, was being questioned, his son Joe leaped out of the van and opened fire with an AK-47. The Kanes quickly returned to their vehicle and sped off, leaving one of the fatally wounded officers on the side of the road, with the other in a ditch, where first responders found them. About an hour later, the van was identified in a Walmart parking lot. The vehicle was quickly surrounded by authorities, and as the Kanes tried to escape, the minivan was rammed by another, and a shootout ensued. The Kanes wounded two more officers and were killed. Subsequent investigation revealed that the Kanes were deeply involved with the Sovereign movement.

Two years after the West Memphis shootout, Little Rock (Pulaski County) police engaged in an incident that reflected an increasingly common occurrence between police and adherents of the movement. After deputies pulled them over for fraudulent tags, Marco McCormick and his wife Chandra Russey (a.k.a. Queen Chandra Bey) presented deputies with homemade IDs. The couple said they were exempt from federal, state, and local laws. Becoming belligerent and defying the officers’ authority, the couple struggled with the officers, leading McCormick to be tasered. The couple, who threatened to sue the police, were arrested and initially charged with a variety of different offenses. While they were ultimately released on bail, and a subsequent deal with prosecutors prevented their serving time in jail, the incident was another reminder of the movement’s presence in the state.

At the time, Little Rock Police detective Todd Hurd, a specialist in monitoring gang activity in the city, said that “sovereign-citizen” types have been in and out of central Arkansas since as far back as the 1980s, while noting that law enforcement was seeing more people handing them fake documents and using “legalese, mumbo jumbo” to get out of traffic tickets. But he acknowledged that it was hard to know if the movement was in fact growing or whether law enforcement was simply more aware of it.

The movement again brought a spotlight on Arkansas in early 2024 when squatters who claimed to be part of a sovereign citizen group, one with a history of violent interaction with law enforcement, were the subject of reports by both Fox News and the New York Post. The media outlets reported that Sharp County authorities had been investigating the squatters since August 2023, apparently acting on information from a local resident that a couple had “moved into an RV and an ‘enclosed property’ owned by someone else. The pair allegedly built a permanent structure, dug a septic line, installed solar panels and began storing large amounts of water.”

While the police confronted them and served them with multiple eviction notices, they refused to abandon their RV-based site. They said they were members of the Moorish National Republic and presented authorities with “a false legal document claiming the ground was sovereign property and said they could not be forced to leave.”

In late January 2025, law enforcement personnel “executed a search warrant on the squatters and arrested the two individuals without incident.” The suspects initially refused to identify themselves, but the male suspect subsequently did, saying he was Saleem Yosiyah YisraEl. The search turned up multiple vehicles on the property, all with “fictitious license plates,” as well as evidence of scams being conducted from the RV and involving the U.S. Postal Service and several thousand dollars of Iraqi currency.

In the fall of 2025, the movement made another public appearance in Little Rock when the prosecution of a self-described sovereign citizen on federal drug and firearms charges led him to file a federal lawsuit against two judges and an attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Little Rock. Forty-year-old Jeren Mills from Blytheville (Mississippi County) filed the lawsuit on September 10, six days before a federal jury in Jonesboro (Craighead County) found him guilty on four counts: possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, possession of firearms in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime, possession of an unregistered firearm, and possession of firearms by a felon. Despite prosecutors’ efforts, Mills was granted pretrial release, the judge determining that it was rare that sovereign citizens were violent as the infamous Kanes had been. But he was classified as a fugitive after he did not appear for the second day of his trial. His lengthy and rambling lawsuit had declared that he was a “sovereign Moorish American individual.” On the opening day of the trial, Mills had filed an “affidavit of truth” in federal court in which he asserted that he was not “subject to any entity anywhere” (the irony of Mills resorting to the courts for relief seemingly escaping him).

For additional information:
Bowden, Bill. “County Sovereignty Law Raises Concerns.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 2, 2020, pp. 1A, 8A. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/feb/02/county-sovereignty-law-raises-concerns-/ (accessed June 12, 2026).

Carless, Will. “What’s a Sovereign Citizen? Trump Rally Gun Suspect Shows Radical Signs, Sheriff Says.” USA Today, October 13, 2024.

Ellis, Dale. “Sovereign Citizen Factions Say They Are above US Law.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 29, 2025, p. 2B. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/sep/28/sovereign-citizens-range-from-harmless-cranks-to/ (accessed June 12, 2026).

———. “‘Sovereign Citizen’ Sues Judges, Attorney before Disappearing during Trial.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 29, 2025, pp. 1B, 2B. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/sep/28/sovereign-citizen-from-blytheville-sues-2-judges/ (accessed June 12, 2026).

Lancaster, Grant. “Sovereign Citizen Arrest Reported.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 27, 2024, p. 8B. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/jan/26/sharp-county-sheriffs-reports-arresting-2-members/ (accessed June 12, 2026).

“A Quick Guide to Sovereign Citizens.” UNC School of Government, Revised November 2013. https://www.sog.unc.edu/sites/www.sog.unc.edu/files/Sov%20citizens%20quick%20guide%20Nov%2013.pdf (accessed June 12, 2026).

Rumpf-Whitten, Sarah. “Arkansas Squatters Claiming to Be Sovereign Citizens Refuse to Move RV Parked on Private Property.” New York Post, January 27, 2024. https://nypost.com/2024/01/27/news/arkansas-squatters-claiming-to-be-sovereign-citizens-refuse-to-move-rv-parked-on-private-property/ (accessed June 12, 2026).

“Sovereign Citizens Movement.” Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/sovereign-citizens-movement/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1359746550 (accessed June 12, 2026).

Willems, Spencer. “Lawmen See More ‘Sovereign Citizens.’” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 23, 2012. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2012/apr/23/lawmen-see-more-sovereign-citizens-20120423/ (accessed June 12, 2026).

William H. Pruden III
Raleigh, North Carolina