Dem governors unwittingly share DMV data with ICE, lawmakers warn
A group of 40 congressional Democrats is warning blue-state governors about a data “information gap” that has given U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unrestricted access to their residents’ driver’s license and registration information.
In letters led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York, the lawmakers implored 19 Democratic governors to cut off ICE’s access to the International Justice & Public Safety Network, or Nlets, which houses that DMV data.
The data from residents in every state, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories is provided to the nonprofit network, which then makes that data available to roughly 18,000 federal, state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement agencies across the country and Canada.
But in their letters to the governors, Democratic lawmakers make clear that each state can decide which data it makes available via Nlets. States can also limit queries from federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies and choose to bar certain agencies from accessing any data.
According to the lawmakers, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Washington have already cut off ICE’s access to Nlets, while Oregon is in the process of doing so.
“We urge you to block ICE’s access,” the lawmakers wrote, “and to consider going further by blocking access to other federal agencies that are now acting as [President Donald] Trump’s shock troops. This commonsense step will improve public safety and guard against Trump officials using your state’s data for unjustified, politicized actions, while still allowing continued collaboration on serious crimes.”
Congressional Democrats said that in the year leading up to Oct. 1, more than 290 million queries for DMV data were facilitated by Nlets. According to the lawmakers, 292,114 of those requests came from ICE, while another 605,116 were made by Homeland Security Investigations, another DHS component.
The lawmakers expressed specific concern over the 41 states that share driver’s license photos through Nlets. Those images can then be analyzed by federal agencies with facial recognition technology — a revelation that comes amid reports of ICE’s use of the Mobile Fortify app, “which can instantly identify individuals using over 200 million photos,” per the letter.
“ICE’s Mobile Fortify is reportedly able to access data from Nlets,” the lawmakers continued. “It remains unclear if ICE is using drivers’ license photos for facial recognition.”
The Democratic lawmakers said they believe it is now “abundantly clear that a major reason that so few states have locked down the data they share through Nlets is because of an information gap,” and that governors should immediately request meetings with their respective Nlets coordinators.
They also suggest making public any statistics on data requests and disclosures to ICE and HSI over the past two years, in addition to shutting off database access to those agencies, as well as U.S. Border Patrol.
“To be clear, blocking agencies’ unfettered access to your state’s data through Nlets will not prevent federal law enforcement from obtaining information needed to investigate serious crimes,” the lawmakers wrote, “but taking these measures will significantly increase accountability and reduce abuse by permitting your state employees to review data requests from blocked agencies first.”
News of Democrats’ letter, which was first reported by Reuters, comes as ICE continues its technical ramp-up in service of the Trump administration’s unrelentingly ruthless immigration crackdown. A contract solicitation published by ICE in June sought proprietary data and tech to monitor up to a million people, while DHS is vastly expanding its collection of biometrics data for immigration benefits.
ICE is also fighting in court over its data-sharing agreement with the IRS, having already requested nearly 1.3 million taxpayer records.
