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Nearly 20 Democratic-led states have inadvertently allowed federal immigration agencies, including ICE, to access state driver’s license and vehicle registration data through a nonprofit law enforcement information-sharing network known as Nlets (also referred to as The International Justice and Public Safety Network). Congressional Democrats have raised concerns that state residents’ personal information is being shared without adequate oversight, potentially exposing them to federal immigration enforcement actions. Lawmakers have urged governors in these states to withdraw from such data-sharing agreements, following the example of states like New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington, which have already taken steps to limit federal access.
A joint letter from 40 Democratic members of Congress highlighted that between October 2024 and October 2025, Nlets processed over 290 million requests for state DMV data across thousands of agencies. Lawmakers argue that restricting federal access to this data would protect citizens from politicized enforcement and federal overreach, while still allowing necessary collaboration on serious crimes. The issue underscores ongoing debates about data governance, privacy, and the balance between public safety and civil liberties in the context of law enforcement information sharing.
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Members of Congress called on governors in nearly 20 Democratic-led states to stop federal immigration authorities from obtaining state driver and motor vehicle records through data-sharing arrangements. The letters said the access was occurring inadvertently and raised concerns about ICE use of state residents' personal information.
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Reporting indicates the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has significantly increased its use of **administrative subpoenas**—which do not require judicial approval—to obtain identifying information for anonymous social media accounts that criticize **ICE** or post information about ICE agent locations. According to the New York Times (as cited by TechCrunch), DHS sent **hundreds** of subpoenas to major platforms including **Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord**, and some companies reportedly complied in at least some cases; Google said it notifies users when possible and challenges subpoenas it views as **overbroad**. Separately, a court filing disclosed that the **IRS improperly overshared** immigrants’ personal data with DHS/ICE under an April 2025 IRS–DHS data-sharing arrangement intended to support certain non-tax criminal investigations under **IRC Section 6103** exceptions. After ICE requested **1.28 million** addresses, the IRS could verify **47,289** individuals, and for a subset (reported as **under 5%** of verified matches) the IRS mistakenly provided ICE with **additional address information** beyond what ICE had supplied, raising concerns that the interagency data-sharing deal increased exposure of sensitive taxpayer information.
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US lawmakers and civil-liberties advocates are escalating scrutiny of **ICE** and **CBP** use of facial recognition amid reports that immigration agents have used face-scanning tools on people observing or protesting enforcement activity. Proposed legislation dubbed the **“ICE Out of Our Faces Act”** would seek to bar ICE/CBP facial recognition use, alongside related demands to limit tracking of First Amendment activity and questions about whether ICE maintains a “domestic terrorists” database tied to immigration protests. Separately, records reviewed by *WIRED* indicate DHS’s *Mobile Fortify* facial-recognition app—rolled out in 2025 to “determine or verify” identities during operations—cannot reliably **verify** identity and is intended at best to generate investigative leads; the reporting also describes DHS approving the tool after weakening centralized privacy reviews and removing department-wide limits on facial recognition. In parallel, Congress is debating the renewal of **FISA Section 702**, with lawmakers raising concerns that domestic surveillance authorities could be applied more broadly, including in support of immigration-related enforcement framed as a national security issue. Nextgov reports that transparency data shows intelligence agencies increased 702 searches in 2024 using identifiers linked to known or suspected Americans while pursuing foreign cyber and terrorism threats, even as the FBI reduced its own direct U.S.-person queries after new safeguards. A separate Nextgov item on an AI moratorium and sector-specific AI regulation is policy-focused and not directly tied to the ICE/CBP facial recognition deployments or Section 702 reauthorization debate described in the other reporting.
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