Massachusetts is still seeing strong demand for driver’s licenses, a trend some policy analysts are linking to undocumented immigrants choosing a path to legal driving that could protect them amid a heightened federal immigration crackdown.
Demand for adults’ standard licenses and permits surged two summers ago when a new state law went into effect: Anyone, regardless of immigration status, can get the documents to legally drive in Massachusetts.
New permits and driver’s licenses doubled in the first year after the law was enacted, state data shows. The number of people who are getting licenses and permits every month has fallen since but is still significantly up — by about 50% — from demand two years ago.
The sustained demand for licenses, even in the last months, comes amid intense federal immigration enforcement. Widespread anxiety has cast driver’s licenses in a new light, both as a benefit and possible risk.
Jackie Vimo, an immigration policy expert at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said it makes sense that immigrants are worried. The Trump administration sued New York state earlier this year in an attempt to get information about undocumented immigrants with driver’s licenses in that state.
“The Trump administration is trying to bypass those legal protections in order to get access to that data to enforce immigration laws,” she said. “It’s really a terrible double bind that immigrants are in right now. On one hand, they don’t want to drive unlicensed and uninsured. On the other hand, they don’t want to have to give their families information and their home address to a government that might use that to deport them.”
Vimo said states like Massachusetts — and 18 others, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico — stepped up with driver’s license laws “so that people can live their lives and be contributing members of communities without living in terror.”
One undocumented immigrant, who requested anonymity out of fear for his safety, told GBH News recently that he hopes to soon be among the influx of legal drivers. He said he hasn’t had the time to go through the process with his 12-hour shifts at a barber shop outside Boston.
“I’ve never had an accident in Brazil or here. I have a record of good driving,” he said through a Portuguese interpreter. “I just ask God that nothing happens from now until I get my license.”
What this means for safety
It’s impossible to calculate the exact number of undocumented immigrants that have obtained a license because residents are not required to disclose their immigration status when they apply. Over the last 21 months, Massachusetts has issued more than 244,000 standard driver’s licenses to adults — about 100,000 more licenses than the RMV issued in the same period before the new law was enacted. A 2021 study predicted that 45,000 to 85,000 drivers would get licensed within the first three years of the law’s implementation.
Jennifer Klein, director of immigration impact at the state’s Committee for Public Counsel Services, said that steady numbers are a sign that undocumented immigrants are hoping legal driving will keep them out of trouble under the new Trump administration.
“You roll through a stop sign, that would just be a fine — that’s not going to trigger any sort of immigration enforcement,’’ Klein said. “But you get pulled over and you don’t have a license, you’ve committed a criminal offense as opposed to a civil moving violation.”
Massachusetts lawmakers touted the change as a way to improve road safety: more drivers are trained and tested to know and follow safe driving practices.
Criminal cases of unlicensed driving fell 16% statewide since last July compared to the same stretch before the new law went into effect two years ago, according to data from the Massachusetts Trial Court. Neighboring states of Connecticut and New York also saw steady declines of unlicensed driving after they enacted similar laws.
Ruben Quesada spent decades working in Arizona law enforcement and is now the police chief in Swampscott. He serves as co-chairperson of the national Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force that tries to build trust between local police and immigrant communities.
He says communication and trust are essential to protecting everyone in the community. If immigrant victims of crime are afraid to talk to police, he said, then their aggressors aren’t getting caught.
“When our immigrants feel safer in their communities, we are all safer,” he said. “The Work and Family Mobility Act shows Massachusetts as being a leader in creating pathways for undocumented individuals to just live their daily lives — driving the kids to school, driving to work, going into the grocery store, attending church on Sundays.”
But advocates now worry that the intensity of immigration enforcement in the last several weeks has triggered fear in immigrant communities that could undercut trust in any government agency.
Gladys Vega, who leads the Chelsea nonprofit La Colaborativa, said the surge of licenses shows a strong desire among this group of immigrants to be lawful residents and to push back against a negative stereotype that they are criminals. But under Trump, she said, the enforcement is targeting everyone.
“Right now, they’re detaining people with residency, people with work authorization,” she said. “The vast majority [in Chelsea] have been people on their way to work.”
Vega said many immigrants still worry about adding their names to a government database that could potentially make them a target for federal enforcement — even though state law specifically prohibits the registry from releasing driver’s license data to any agency that primarily enforces immigration law.
“There’s no way that that information can be ever released,” said Vega. “That’s what we have told our community from the get-go: that it was going to be protected by the state government. We’re sticking to that promise.”
The office of Attorney General Andrea Campbell affirmed that promise.
“We will continue to defend our state laws, including the Work and Family Mobility Act, which protects our residents, keeps our roads safe, and makes our economy stronger,” the attorney general’s office said in an emailed statement.
How Massachusetts got here
The law in Massachusetts was passed despite opposition from state Republicans.
Critics — including former Gov. Charlie Baker — had argued that foreign identity documents would be hard to verify. Baker vetoed the bill in 2022 but legislators quickly overrode his effort. Months later at the ballot box, voters affirmed the measure, defeating a Republican-led repeal effort that challenged the policy and raised concerns about possible voter fraud.
Immigrant advocates praised the state for what they say has been a relatively smooth process in helping people obtain driver’s licenses. The RMV bridged language barriers, hired and trained hundreds of new staff, and opened additional road test locations in a half dozen locations, including Revere, Brockton, Worcester and Holyoke.
“The RMV was fantastic,” said Javier Luengo-Garrido, an organizer in Springfield for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. “We were able to bring them issues that we were seeing with implementation. They were open to collaborate, to hear those comments and to improve.”
Monica Adwani, CEO of Breezy Seguros, an insurance company based in Framingham whose clients primarily speak Spanish and Portuguese, said she hears from many people hoping to legally drive.
“There is a big desire from the community to obtain the driver’s license,” she said. “But there is a lot of hesitation right now and a lot of fear.”
