A group of lawmakers claimed Wednesday that Democratic-run states are inadvertently making their drivers’ data available to U.S. immigration authorities through a little-known digital loophole.
In letters published that same day, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and 39 other lawmakers of his party urged Democratic governors to ensure that their residents’ data was not being collected by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has become the spearhead of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program.
“We urge you to block ICE access,” the letters stated. “This common-sense measure will improve public safety and prevent Trump officials from using their state’s data for unjustified and politicized actions, while allowing continued collaboration in serious crime cases.”
Driver’s license data is shared among state, local and federal law enforcement agencies through a nonprofit organization called Nlets. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and another Department of Homeland Security agency, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), also have access to the system, the letter states. Both agencies together made almost 900,000 queries to the database during the year before October 1.
Several Democratic states, as well as numerous counties and cities, have imposed varying levels of restrictions on police cooperation with ICE. However, the letter noted that only a handful of states — including New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota — had blocked ICE from accessing data shared through Nlets, in part because state employees were unaware of the final destination of the information.
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“Due to the technical complexity of the Nlets system, few state government officials understand how their state shares resident data with federal and other state agencies,” the letter explained.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment. Nlets, whose acronym refers to its former name, National Telecommunications System for Law Enforcement, did not respond either.
The governors’ offices of the four states that blocked ICE access to their data — as well as Washington, which the letter said had recently banned such access, and Oregon, which was in the process of doing so — also did not respond to requests for comment.
The push to isolate ICE from state data is another example of how state and local officials are trying to thwart or slow down Trump’s mass deportation effort.
Ryan Shapiro, executive director of the government transparency group Property of the People, said this case also illustrates how data-sharing agreements between state, local and federal law enforcement agencies are often so complex that many officials are unaware of the extent of the information they share about their citizens.
“State agencies are often much better at collecting information than they are at protecting it,” he said.
With information from Reuters
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