US immigration authorities have accessed driver’s licenses databases across the nation, searching millions of people’s photographs without their knowledge, privacy researchers said on Monday.
The revelations have raised significant alarms in Utah, Vermont and Washington, in particular. Those three states have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and permits, but also have appeared at times to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents seeking access to those databases, said Georgetown Law School experts, who obtained the government files through records requests.
“Undocumented folks are coming out of the shadows in these states to get driver’s licenses and come into compliance with the law,” said Harrison Rudolph, an associate at Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology, which shared the records with the Guardian. “They are never told when they go into the DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles] to get a license that they also may be submitting their face to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That is a huge bait and switch, and it’s deeply unfair.”
In Utah, the state DMV database was the subject of nearly 2,000 facial-recognition searches from outside law enforcement and federal agents, including ICE and the FBI, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, which first reported on the records.
One official noted in the records that the Utah database included more than 5 million driver’s licenses and state ID photographs.
Redacted Vermont records showed that immigration authorities and other federal agents have at times received state approval to conduct searches of the DMV “facial recognition photo repository.”
One file said the purpose was to compare the photographs with those of suspects and, potentially, to apprehend them.
A Vermont DMV spokesperson on Monday said that the state had stopped the use of facial recognition software in May 2017 and that “no information has been shared” since then.
The records from Washington state also showed that immigration agents made facial recognition requests to the state’s licensing department.
State officials last year admitted to the Seattle Times that the department, which issues driver’s licenses, had regularly provided ICE with photographs and license applications.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said at the time he was ordering a stop to the practice, though the status of that policy was unclear.
There has been a growing push across the US to allow undocumented people to have driver’s licenses, with the understanding that it improves their lives and aids public safety, but that information should not be used by ICE to pursue deportations, activists said.
“It’s putting people in this impossible situation,” said Jacinta Gonzales, an organizer with the group Mijente, noting that state IDs are supposed to help undocumented people avoid arrest. “It’s a lose-lose for immigrants.”
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