Homeland Security subpoenas the records of 17 million commercial drivers
The Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed records on 17 million people with commercial driver's licenses, asking for the name, date of birth, state of record, license number and Social Security number of every driver in the database going back five years, and stating that the subpoena's purpose is civil immigration enforcement.
What happened
The records sought were those in AAMVA's commercial license database. The demand also asked the nonprofit group not to discuss the subpoena for an indefinite period of time, saying that to do so would impede the investigation and thereby interfere with the enforcement of federal law. The demands became public in August through a lawsuit in which 22 state attorneys general, including California, sued to block the federal government from carrying out a subpoena seeking driver records. A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia temporarily blocked AAMVA from complying with the data demand on August 21, calling it unlawful.
Why it matters
State motor vehicle records carry the identifying details states collect in order to license drivers — name, date of birth, license number, Social Security number — not to enforce immigration law. A subpoena moves that data across that line by compulsion rather than by purchase or agreement, and the request for indefinite silence means the people in the database learn of it, if at all, from litigation. The mechanism worth watching is not this one database but the route: a federal demand served on a clearinghouse reaches records from every state that feeds it, without any state having to agree.
Sources
calmatters.org, michigan.gov, news.delaware.gov, storage.courtlistener.com