The law, which took effect in December, allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses across the state, while barring DMV officials from providing ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency with access to DMV databases.
The law is aimed at ensuring that federal immigration agencies will not be able to use new DMV data to target, arrest and deport those who are living in the U.S. while undocumented.
Condemning the law, ICE Acting Director Matthew Albence said the Green Light Law put communities and officers “unnecessarily in harm’s way.”
“Short of taking our guns away, I can think of no law that would be more dangerous to our officers and our agents,” Albence said.
Albence said “preventing an ICE or CBP officer” from accessing tools to do their job “is reckless, irresponsible, unnecessary and downright dangerous.”
The ICE chief led the press conference by branding lawmakers’ decision to introduce the legislation as “unfathomable,” particularly, he said, given that it comes less than 20 years after 9/11.
“This is a pre-9/11 mentality in a post-9/11 world,” Albence said, appearing to suggest that barring access to DMV data could similarly put the lives of New York residents in danger.
Albence said access to DMV data was necessary for ICE agents to “do our jobs.” ICE agents, he said, need to be able to do “the same things that the NYPD” and other bodies, including the FBI, can do.
Pointing to a recent incident in which ICE units were able to arrest a man accused of sexually abusing a minor, Albence said that the responsibility “if even one child suffers at the hands of a pedophile…and we could have stopped that child’s suffering and lifelong trauma, should he or she survive, rests squarely on the shoulders of those politicians who voted for this law.”
For law enforcement, the DMV database is a key tool for accessing vehicle registration information. The data it contains can be used to help determine whether a registered driver has a criminal history, or is on a sex-offender registry.
