Immigration agents still access WA licensing data, UW report shows

More than a half dozen years after Washington began limiting access to driver’s license data for immigration enforcement, federal officials were still using the information for immigration arrests as recently as late last year, a report released Thursday shows.

And despite the state implementing new restrictions twice last year, some immigration authorities still have access to driver’s license data, according to state officials and the report by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights.

Gov. Bob Ferguson stands “prepared to take further action,” according to a 10-page joint statement by his office, State Patrol and Washington’s Department of Licensing. But the statement said the governor “will do so with reason and care.”

“Governor Ferguson is committed to complying with applicable laws and finding the right balance in protecting individuals’ data without compromising legitimate law enforcement investigations of criminal acts that are necessary to preserve public safety,” the statement continued.

The UW center report documented nine cases of immigration arrests between August and November last year that followed queries by federal agents to Nlets, a national computer system that allows law enforcement agencies to access state driver’s license data, criminal history and other information stored throughout the country. Such queries, in Washington, go through a State Patrol platform called ACCESS, which acts as a “switch” to send information back to Nlets and the requesting parties, according to the UW report and state officials.

The Seattle Times, separately, obtained information about another case – the widely publicized arrest of Kirkland high school theater manager Fernando Rocha – indicating federal agents queried Nlets for state licensing information six times before his arrest last July.

Officials can enter a driver’s license number into Nlets and retrieve the registered owner’s information, including their home address, date of birth, height and hair color. They can also get a photo. Officials can then check that information against Department of Homeland Security data for alleged immigration violations and use the data to verify or identify targets for arrest, according to the UW report.

In several cases tracked by the UW center through public disclosure documents and ICE records, federal agents looked up information on a truck or van, then followed the vehicle and made a traffic stop leading to an arrest.

Federal agents queried Nlets about one man’s license plate after he left a Latino grocery story, saying in reports they were “performing systems checks on vehicles moving near the location of a targeted subject,” according to the report. They determined he lacked authorization to be in the U.S. and arrested him. The man later told UW researchers he had been pistol-whipped, tased and pepper-sprayed in his eyes as he was arrested.

Such arrests, aided by state licensing information, have turned roads into immigration enforcement “hunting grounds,” the UW report says.

Washington’s attempt to limit driver’s license information sharing started in 2018, after the Seattle Times revealed that the Department of Licensing was routinely giving out data to immigration agents directly by email. Then-Gov. Jay Inslee halted the practice.

But immigration agents remained able to access data through computerized systems, including one controlled by the licensing department. A King 5 investigation led the state in August to revoke U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to that system. That still left Nlets as a point of access.

Dozens of Democratic elected officials, including U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden from Oregon, sounded an alarm about immigration enforcement implications of Nlets late last year. Washington officials, in their joint statement, said the state cut off ICE’s access to Nlets on Nov. 19.

But Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, director of the UW center, said she was told in writing last month by a State Patrol spokesperson that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, which investigates criminal activity such as drugs and weapons smuggling, continued to have access to Nlets.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection also has access to the system and conducted eight of the nine queries documented by Godoy’s center. Seven of the nine cases involved civil immigration violations rather than criminal activity, according to the report.

The state is now reviewing CBP’s use of Nlets, according to the officials’ joint statement, which also presented reasons why the agency’s continued access might be important. CBP might, for instance, use Nlets “to find out that the man about to board a plane with a small child is wanted for human trafficking,” the statement said

It added that queries do not reveal the purpose data is sought and therefore objected to suggestions in the UW report that state officials are actively participating in civil immigration enforcement. The statement called parts of a draft report reviewed by state officials “misleading” and “incendiary.”

At a news conference Thursday, Godoy and other immigrant advocates nevertheless presented the state’s role in sharing driver’s license information as a betrayal of public trust and a violation of a 2019 state law that limits most forms of state cooperation with immigration enforcement.

”Washington has long said it is a welcoming state,” said Burien City Councilmember Hugo Garcia, who, like others, pointed out that the state was the first in the country to allow all residents driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status. But faith in the state collapses, he said, “when state systems are used directly or indirectly to aid immigration enforcement.”

Noting he is an immigrant himself and speaking initially in Spanish at the news conference, held the day after an ICE official fatally shot a woman in Minnesota and the same day two people were allegedly shot by federal immigration agents in Portland, Garcia said many immigrants are feeling “fear that something as ordinary as driving to work, taking your kids to schools or picking up groceries, could lead to detention or separation from your family.

He said he met with one Burien man detailed by immigration enforcement agents while taking his kid to school. The child walked home alone afterwards.

Advocates called for a comprehensive way to end information sharing with immigration officials, rather than partial measures, though how to do so isn’t totally clear.

The UW center’s report looked to New York, which it said has cut off Nlets access to both ICE and CBP. (Washington officials’ statement said New York has only partially stopped CBP access.) But in the news conference, some acknowledged that other federal agencies could also access Nlets and share information with immigration agents.

Under President Donald Trump, many federal agencies have been drafted to work on immigration enforcement. Information about Rocha, the Kirkland theater manager, obtained through public disclosure appears to show the Drug Enforcement Administration conducted one Nlets search, along with others conducted by ICE and CBP.

The UW report also suggested a technical configuration that would limit Nlets searches in Washington to data from enhanced driver’s licenses, which are held only by U.S. citizens.

In their joint statement, Washington officials cited historic challenges to limiting Nlets access, including lawsuits and threats to federal funding. Officials did not respond to an email asking whether those challenges still exist.