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A group of lawmakers said Wednesday that Democratic-led states are unknowingly giving data about their residents to US immigration authorities.
Sen Ron Widen And 39 other Democratic lawmakers urged like-minded governors to close a little-understood digital loophole that drivers‘The data is available to immigration authorities Letter Released on Wednesday.
“We urge you to block snowAccess to,” the letters said. “This common sense step will improve public safety and protect trump Authorities are using your state’s data for inappropriate, political actions, while still allowing cooperation on serious crimes to continue.”
Driver’s license data is shared between state, local, and federal police forces through a non-profit organization called Enlets. ICE and another Department of Homeland Security entity, Homeland Security Investigations, also have access to the system, and the two agencies together have answered about 900,000 queries, the letter said. database In the year before 1 October.
Several Democratic states, as well as several counties and cities, have imposed various levels of restrictions on law enforcement cooperation with ICE. But the letter said that only a handful states usa — which includes New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota — had blocked ICE from accessing data They shared it through Annalets, partly because state government employees had no idea where it was going.
“Due to the technical complexity of the NELETS system, few state government officials understand how their state is sharing resident data with federal and out-of-state agencies,” the letter said.
ICE did not respond to messages seeking comment. NELETS, whose acronym is similar to its earlier name, National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, also did not respond to messages. Governors’ offices in four states were identified as blocking ICE, as well as Washington state, which the letter said had recently barred ICE from its data, and Oregon, which the letter said was in the process of doing so, did not respond to messages.
The push to cut ICE off from state data is another example of how state and local officials are trying to thwart or slow Trump’s mass deportation effort.
But Ryan Shapiro, executive director of the government transparency group Property of the People, said it’s also an example of how data-swapping arrangements between state, local and federal law enforcement bodies are often so complex that officers don’t understand what they’re sharing about their citizens.
“State agencies are often far better at securing information than they are at collecting it,” he said.