The Healey administration is pushing back against pressure from the Department of Justice to allow federal immigration authorities to get confidential and undercover license plates and registrations.
“Massachusetts is not going to allow state resources to be used to help ICE operate in secret while they are violating people’s rights and making us all less safe,” said Jacqueline Manning, spokesperson for Governor Maura Healey.
A letter from Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate to Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell on Tuesday said that the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles is refusing to issue such registrations and licenses plates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and is only issuing them to Homeland Security investigations after they certify vehicles will only be used in criminal investigations.
“This discriminatory policy is not only deeply dangerous as a matter of public safety but also blatantly unlawful as a matter of constitutional law,” wrote Shumate. He said the policy must be immediately rescinded, or the federal government will “seek judicial relief.”
Shumate demanded written assurance that any such policy be rescinded and all federal law enforcement will be able to obtain undercover plates by May 22.
But Manning told GBH News that “any federal, state or local agency engaging in legitimate criminal law enforcement work can receive a confidential plate. We all know that’s not what ICE is doing.”
“This is an agency that can’t and won’t even tell us who they are arresting and why. We are not going to enable their tactics,” Manning said.
There were over 7,000 arrests of immigrants in Massachusetts from President Donald Trump’s inauguration to mid-March, according to data from the Deportation Data project.
Forty-six percent of those individuals had no pending criminal charges or convictions, and were arrested for being in the country without legal status — a civil offense, not a criminal one. Only 19% of the more than 7,000 people arrested had criminal convictions.
Some advocates have compiled lists of license plate numbers and makes and models of vehicles suspected of belonging to ICE agents, noting which vehicles might be outside of a courthouse, at the Burlington ICE processing center, or driving in a community.
The Healey administration said that under RMV policy, confidential registration is not authorized for agencies that primarily engage in civil enforcement functions, whether by federal, state, or local agencies.
A confidential registration conceals the identity of the RMV-registered owner or lessee of the vehicle, so that such information will not display when a registration number is searched using the Department of Criminal Justice Information System application, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunication System. or RMV systems, according to Healey’s office.
The use of confidential plates prevents state and local law enforcement seeking to enforce traffic and other laws from viewing the registered owners or lessees of the vehicles.
The RMV already provides confidential plates to federal, state, and local agencies that engage in criminal law enforcement efforts and have a legitimate need for confidential plates.
Non-confidential plates are available to ICE and any other federal, state, or local agency. The use of non-confidential plates will not risk “doxing” or disclose the identity of federal agents driving those vehicles, according to the state.
Non-confidential plates permit members of state and local law enforcement — not the public at large — to view the RMV-registered owner of a vehicle. In the case of ICE, they would list the agency as the vehicle owner, not an individual agent.
Shumate argued that the policy puts officers at risk, linking to a press release describing an incident in which a pair of twins from Absecon, New Jersey threatened to kill former Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin and called to “shoot ICE on sight” on social media.
In another press release from last year found in a link in the letter, DHS said cartels are offering bounties for doxxing agents, “including photos and family details,” of ICE agents.
Neither press release specifically mentioned license plates.
Campbell’s office declined to comment. The registry referred GBH News back to the Governor’s Office for comment on behalf of the RMV and the Governor’s office.
