Despite Connecticut’s vow to fight Trump, ICE has access to
Published 4:22 pm, Friday, March 3, 2017



Gabby Perez, 17, of Danbury, holds a "Immigrants make America great" sign at a "Day without immigrants"
rally at the Danbury City Hall Thursday, February 16, 2017.

Despite Gov. Dannel P. Malloy pledging to shield non-criminal undocumented residents from President Trump’s immigration crackdown, Connecticut has a wide-ranging agreement with the federal government that gives ICE access to state data including Department of Motor Vehicles records.

That includes detailed information, including the names and home addresses, of 27,953 mostly undocumented immigrants who signed up for the state’s “drive-only” licenses, and potentially another 25,906 who have applied for them.

The Malloy administration says that federal privacy laws restrict the federal government’s ability to use that data as part of Trump’s plans for mass deportation. But an executive order Trump signed after taking office says that federal privacy laws don’t apply to undocumented immigrants.

“It’s like an intact list with everybody illegal on it,” said Danbury-based immigrant rights organizer Rolando Castro. “They know where everybody's at.”

When the Department of Homeland Security released memos late last month pledging to hire 10,000 ICE officers, reinstate local and federal deportation cooperation and expand the federal definition of criminality for undocumented immigrants, Malloy told local police departments that they don’t have to cooperate with the crackdown and that the state won’t hand over incriminating information to the federal government.

But, experts say, his pledges might do little to stop a DHS crackdown since the feds already have access to the Connecticut On-Line Law Enforcement Communications Teleprocessing system, or “COLLECT,” through a state and federal agreement that is renewed annually.

Malloy, when asked about COLLECT DMV data, said “we’ll enforce our laws and exercise our rights under the constitution in support of our laws.”

Spokesperson Kelly Donnelly said the state gives the DMV commissioner discretion over releasing information and records, and commissioner Michael Bzdyra, like police chiefs, was advised last month not to take any special action against undocumented immigrants, she said.

“No one can go to the DMV and ask for a mass download,” Donnelly said.

What’s unclear, immigration lawyers and advocates said, is if the state has already unwittingly set the stages for a “mass download” if or when ICE agents see fit.
To protect residents from being profiled, there are a slew of state and federal privacy laws that make it illegal to use COLLECT to pull up the names and addresses of a subset in the data like undocumented immigrants, said Michael Lawlor, state under secretary for criminal justice policy and planning.

But those laws no longer protect undocumented immigrants, Trump wrote in a Jan. 25 executive order titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.

“Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information,” the order says.

State officials also say the COLLECT interface is an effective way of keeping ICE from using Connecticut’s system as a pool to fish undocumented immigrants from. COLLECT searches are logged, and any agent using the system must be cleared to use the data set. On every search, an agent has to input their name and who they are searching for, therefore making a massive information pull difficult, Lawlor said.

But immigration rights advocates say the fact that the information is accessible trumps the state’s protective stances and safeguards.
Several city immigrant advocates said residents with drive-only licenses don’t know what to think about the program in the Trump era.

“They’re all so on their toes,” Castro said. “We know nothing until something happens.”

If ICE decides to use COLLECT despite privacy laws and the state’s wishes, it’ll likely turn into a court battle, said Douglas Penn, a Stamford-based immigration attorney affiliated with the national American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“In an ideal world, DHS attorneys would see they need probable cause,” such as Lawlor’s pull-over example, Penn said.

Yale University clinical law professor Michael Wishnie said he doubts the federal mandate to waive privacy rights for undocumented immigrants could be construed as a mandate to waive state ones. Other experts agreed.

Wishnie said that the state could renegotiate its agreement with the federal government if ICE starts using COLLECT in ways the state sees unfit.

“This is very significant considering that it appears that the DMV makes its data available to ICE,” he said.

Malloy has been very careful to limit the state’s cooperation with ICE, and this agreement and its consequences seem “incongruous” with the state’s stance, he added.

“This appears to be a blanket data dump,” he said.

Drive only licenses, put into effect in 2015, have been heralded as a step toward legalizing routine aspects of undocumented life.

Just last week, Danbury-based immigrant rights organizer Wilson Hernandez was among several other activists in Hartford lobbying against a bill to kill the program.

But Hernandez said he and other advocates have mixed feelings about the program.

“Whoever carries (drive-only) licenses are really automatically identified,” Hernandez said. “Many of my friends have them, they are very concerned, rightfully so.

State Rep. Peter Tercyak (D-New Britain), who co-sponsored the drive-only bill back in 2013, said legislators didn’t consider whether the program could be used against undocumented immigrants back when they were crafting it. But, echoing Lawlor, he stressed that COLLECT’s interface is an effective protection against federal agents using the database against the state’s wishes.

Tercyak added that those with drive-only licenses aren’t all undocumented. For example, a citizen could get one if they chose not to get a REAL ID-compliant license or forgot to bring proof of citizenship when they visited the DMV.

Though U.S. citizens can get a drive-only license, there is little incentive for them to do so and the program is marketed to undocumented immigrants. The drive only application checklist is available in Spanish and the DMV overview webpage says the “DMV has stated a Drive-Only program for undocumented individuals who are 16 or older and cannot establish their legal presence in the United States or may not have a Social Security number.”

Under Trump, the Obama-era program and other ID initiatives for undocumented immigrants now have his immigration crackdown shadowing them. In Bridgeport last week, the city again delayed implementing city ID cards fearing they could be used to identify undocumented residents.

The Department of Homeland Security pays the state about $27,600 a year for “access to this database to perform criminal research and background checks in order to enhance ability to identify and locate criminal aliens,” according to the state’s COLLECT agreement.

In February's DHS memos, the agency expanded the definition of “criminal” undocumented immigrant and did away with Obama-era restrictions on who can be sought for deportation.
Law experts say the DHS now paints undocumented criminality with a broad brush.

The state-DHS arrangement has an annual opt-in caveat every year through 2020. No contract spelling out what federal agencies can or can’t see in the state database — which includes DMV records, state prison records and criminal histories — exists, state officials said.

Immigration experts are calling on the state to cut or curtail DHS access to the database when the agreement comes up for renewal in June.

“If no contract exists, it’s likely the case that the feds have been turned loose,” said Dan Barrett, Connecticut ACLU legal director. “Unless I can see some restrictions that means there are none … there’s an unavoidable inference of that. Are there no limitations on the feds’ use of COLLECT?”

Lawlor said opting out is unrealistic because every police station needs the program to do their daily work, which largely has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. The state can’t just pick which federal agencies it works with, he said.

“Universal access to this information is how every state does it,” Lawlor said.

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