To the surprise of the White House, handing poorly trained armed individuals the unchecked power to detain anyone on American soil is deeply unpopular. States governed by Democrats and Republicans are blocking Immigration and Customs Enforcement from accessing the personal data held in their states’ databases. California and Washington became the latest states to lock out ICE in November. The two states discovered that the agency was using a national police data-sharing platform to access driver’s license and license plate databases through local and state police departments.
In a report released last week, University of Washington researchers verified nine instances where ICE arrested drivers after searching their license plate numbers in the Washington Department of Licensing’s database. It’s impossible to determine the full impact of the practice because federal agencies accessed DOL data over 2.6 million times last year. Angelina Godoy, the director of UW’s Center of Human Rights, told KUOW:
“The state is granting them that access on the good faith assumption that they’re only going to use it for criminal investigations, and the data that we’ve presented here shows that is not the case. They are using it in ways that are contrary to state law.”
ICE relies on access to state-run databases
ICE’s access was only made possible by the Washington State Patrol and Nlets, a nonprofit national police data-sharing platform. Despite being locked out on November 18, the federal agency has stubbornly continued to submit thousands of database inquiries. However, UW noted that eight of nine searches that led to arrests on civil immigration charges were conducted by Customs and Border Protection. CBP’s access is still under review due to Washington’s position on the border with Canada.
Washington wasn’t the only state to discover ICE’s abuse of Nlets. According to NPR, California discovered that 20 local police departments had granted database access to the federal agency despite a state law prohibiting the sharing of license plate data with entities outside the state. Rob Bonta, California Attorney General, sent warning letters to every non-compliant agency. All but one shut down access. The El Cajon Police Department was the only agency that refused to cut access, and the State of California is now suing the city.
Bonta believes that ICE’s use of Nlets is common in other states, such as Texas. However, not every state is on board. Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, Minnesota, New York and Washington have also cut ICE off from database access over the past year. Elected officials on both sides of the aisle realize the dangers of ICE being able to track anyone with a license plate or a driver’s license. When an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good on a Minneapolis street last week, it was the ninth shooting by an ICE agent since September. Every victim was in their car.
