Trump Lawsuit Against Driving Access Seeks to Grab Undocumented People’s Data

For the six years Marina, 35, had no valid driver’s license, she felt constant fear when behind the wheel. She would limit her travels to what was strictly necessary, forgoing professional, educational and leisure opportunities.

“I felt persecuted and had too much fear,” she told Truthout in Spanish. “It was something that impacted all of the days of my life.”

In the rural part of western Massachusetts where she lives, driving is essential. But until recently, only those with valid work permits could get their licenses.

Residents left behind included undocumented people — some of whom are asylum seekers, some of whom are international students. It also affects residents who have applied for a new status and are waiting for their applications to be approved.

Marina said the restrictions also impacted minors who were weighing leaving high school before graduation because they couldn’t figure out transportation from their schools to their jobs and had to help feed their families, sometimes on their own.

That’s why she supported the Massachusetts 2022 referendum to change the law, bringing food and drinks to campaigners and helping with collecting signatures.

In July 2023, access to driver’s licenses was expanded to all in Massachusetts, joining neighboring New York State and now 18 other jurisdictions. Other states like Wyoming and Florida have attempted to invalidate these out-of-state licenses, with Tennessee and Florida passing similar laws. Half a dozen other Republican states have considered similar legislation this year.

Other states don’t invalidate licenses but still criminalize those unable to obtain one. On May 6, Ximena Arias Cristobal, a 19-year-old Georgia resident who arrived in the U.S. the year after Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) cutoff, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after a mistaken traffic stop. Despite dropped charges, Arias-Cristobal is still in ICE custody, facing deportation.

Driving rights are also being targeted in court. On February 12, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sued New York State for its 2019 Driver’s License Access and Privacy Act (or “Green Light Law”), which makes driver’s licenses available to New Yorkers regardless of their immigration status. This type of legislation has helped immigrants access jobs, participate in their children’s education, make medical appointments, and more. Without these laws, immigrants are more likely to be criminalized, as they risk being stopped while driving without authorization. Giving all immigrants legal access to driver’s licenses also means there are fewer untrained, untested, uninsured drivers on the road.

The History of Driving Access in the United States

The history of driver’s license access in the United States is convoluted. Driver’s licenses are part of state jurisdiction, and between 1980 and 2015, 122 pieces of legislation were enacted in different legislatures, according to a Research & Policy Brief by the UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

Before the 1990s, anyone could get a driver’s license from their state of residence. That changed at the turn of the millennium and ramped up after September 11, 2001. Because the al-Qaeda attackers had driver’s licenses, the 9/11 Commission Report recommended that the federal government set standards for different types of identification documents, including driver’s licenses. But the 9/11 commission did not specifically discuss access to driver’s licenses for undocumented people.

In 2005, the federal REAL ID Act created national standards for driver’s licenses. The act allowed states to give driving privileges to all residents only if there were differences between licenses issued to undocumented people and licenses issued to all others. That created a two-tiered driver’s license system. Still, states continued to pass legislation restricting driving. By 2011, only New Mexico, Utah and Washington State allowed all residents to obtain licenses.

That trend shifted in the early 2010s, when officials in 17 states confirmed that people who held DACA status could apply for a driver’s license. Nine states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada and Vermont — also enacted laws expanding driving rights, along with D.C. The next decade, seven more states — Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia — changed their laws too, bringing the count to 19 states and D.C.

Researchers and governments have studied the positive effects of these laws, finding that crashes went down by 5 percent; babies’ birth weight improved; undocumented women became more likely to work; hit-and-runs decreased by 20 to 50 percent; insured drivers increased; consumers bought more large items like cars, household appliances and houses, benefiting the local economy; revenue was generated for states via license fees; and the number of organ donors increased. It also disincentivized undocumented people from having a fake license or from falsely claiming they live in a state that does have driver license access.

Different States, Different Versions of the Same Right

All 20 jurisdictions passed different versions of their laws, with crucial differences. Some were more flexible with the documents they required, others traded that accessibility for requiring fingerprinting by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Some states clearly differentiate between licenses given only to undocumented immigrants and licenses given to the rest, thereby “outing” undocumented people. In other states, a license for an undocumented migrant isn’t different in any way. In Massachusetts, for example, a driver’s license is accessible to anyone. A REAL ID is only accessible to citizens and permanent residents. But both citizens and permanent residents can still have a regular license.

Finally, some states have more protections against sharing data with federal agencies.

DMV records are “the only comprehensive internal security database,” argued a 2005 issue of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin. In comparison, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) only has information about some citizens and some noncitizens.

Some states give full access to their DMV records, other states require a court order or arrest warrant and some jurisdictions explicitly prohibit their DMV from sharing information. For some jurisdictions, it’s unclear. At least seven states had shared personal information from drivers with the ICE since 2020, according to a 2021 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.

New York State’s Green Light NY privacy protections are at the center of Trump’s administration lawsuit, Jose Perez, general counsel at the national nonprofit LatinoJustice PRLDEF, told Truthout.

“This law has nothing to do with immigration. It is not a pathway. It doesn’t provide legal status,” he said. “What they want to do is be able to come to New York, give us your records applications, and do what we tell you to do, because they want to go searching for immigrants.”

On April 2, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, together with Rural and Migrant Ministry, INC., New York Immigrant Coalition, Hispanic Federation and Make the Road New York filed an amicus curiae brief in support of New York State’s motion to dismiss the complaint.

Driving Access in New York State

Until 2001, New York State residents applied for driver’s licenses without having to provide social security numbers (SSN). But in 2004, the DMV started sending out letters to those for whom it couldn’t verify the SSN.

In 2007, then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer issued an executive order restoring driver’s license access. But then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and current New York Gov. Kathleen Hochul opposed it. At the time, Hochul was Erie County’s county clerk, an elected official who administers the DMV in New York State. The backlash led the governor to backtrack, and political momentum was lost, said Emma Kreyche, director of advocacy, outreach and education at the Worker Justice Center of New York.

A decade later, 2018 New York State election results created another window of opportunity. The Green Light campaign leadership was unique to other grassroots campaigns in the state, Kreyche said. A lot of those active in the campaign were from outside of New York City, where public transportation is unreliable.

“It was an issue propelled forward by immigrant community members in areas of the state where you hadn’t traditionally seen a lot of immigrant organizing,” she said. “You had rural farm workers from Wyoming County, six hours from New York City, coming to Albany, and you had a lot of folks from the suburbs in Long Island, places that were not always seen as politically progressive.”

Perez is optimistic that the 16-page lawsuit will be dismissed in the same way that a previous challenge in 2019 was.

He called the lawsuit “baseless and frivolous” and the press conference it was announced at “a joke.” “I can’t believe that these people are lawyers and they sign this and go public with it,” he said.

Perez argues that criminalizing immigrants is part of a political project, rather than an adherence to existing laws. Entering without inspection or overstaying a visa is a civil matter, not a criminal one, he said.

“The narrative that is coming out of Washington and people like Governor DeSantis is ‘You’re an immigrant, you’re illegal. You’re undocumented, you’re a criminal. And that’s the net public narrative, because they’re doing partisan political pandering to their supporters and base.”

But advocates like Kreyche believe that even a frivolous lawsuit creates a lot of fear and uncertainty.

Western Massachusetts resident Marina said she has been more cautious under the new administration. She might not travel again to other states like she did between 2023 and now. Her activism is less outspoken. But she’s still there.

And she’s a little safer than she used to be, thanks to her driver’s license.