A number of Democratic legislators have issued letters to governors in states such as Arizona, California, Colorado, and Wisconsin, cautioning that their states may be unintentionally providing drivers’ personal information to federal immigration agencies.
According to the letter, which was initially covered by Reuters, the governors were informed that their states are granting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal bodies “seamless, self-serve access to all residents’ personal information” through a nonprofit organization overseen by state law enforcement called the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, or Nlets.
Nlets enables the exchange of personal data belonging to state residents, specifically drivers’ license information, among state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies.
The lawmakers urged these governors to put an end to this practice and restrict ICE and “other federal agencies now operating as Trump’s enforcers” from accessing the data.
Neither ICE nor Nlets provided an immediate response to TechCrunch’s inquiry for comment.
For the past twenty years, most states have allowed federal and local law enforcement agencies—about 18,000 across the U.S. and Canada—to search and retrieve residents’ information, such as driver’s license details and other data from state DMV databases. The letter states that this arrangement lets agencies directly access state residents’ data without any state staff being aware or involved.
The letter also suggested that ICE may be utilizing drivers’ license photographs for its facial recognition tool, Mobile Fortify, which agents use to identify individuals in public and which draws on a database of 200 million images.
As detailed in the letter, Nlets processed “over 290 million DMV data queries,” including more than 290,000 requests from ICE and around 600,000 from Homeland Security Investigations in the year leading up to October 1, 2025.
“It is now abundantly clear that a major reason that so few states have locked down the data they share through Nlets is because of an information gap,” reads the letter. “Because of the technical complexity of Nlets’ system, few state government officials understand how their state is sharing their residents’ data with federal and out-of-state agencies,” read the letter.
The letter argued that restricting these agencies’ “unrestricted access” would not stop federal authorities from obtaining information needed for serious criminal investigations, but it would “improve oversight and minimize misuse” by requiring state employees to review data requests first.
The lawmakers pointed out that states like Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington have recently limited the data ICE can obtain through Nlets, and reminded governors that they have the authority to halt this practice whenever they choose.
