A Marin County Sheriff is being sued for providing federal immigration officials with images of motorists’ license plates and vehicle information locations for several years.
Sheriff Robert Doyle is being accused of helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies track down and detain immigrants since 2014 by providing scans of license plates from cameras, according to the suit, filed Thursday in Marin County Superior Court by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of local immigration activists.
According to the complaint, "Automated License Plate Reader ("ALPR") cameras are a surveillance technology that automatically records the locations of cars and any visible drivers using cameras mounted on patrol cars, light posts, or other infrastructure."
These cameras record and track vehicles regardless of whether drivers have violated any law, and then, "Government agents use this location information to track people’s movements, habits, and associations over time, including where a person lives, worships, and receives medical care," the complaint continued.
The suit argues that Doyle’s actions violate state ordinance, including a 2015 law preventing law enforcement from giving federal agencies license plate scans and the 2017 "California Values Act" better known as the sanctuary law, which forbids state law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials.
"The information unveiled through this lawsuit shows that the freedoms that people think they possess in Marin County are a mirage: people cannot move about freely without being surveilled," said one of the plaintiffs, local activist Lisa Bennett, in a statement released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"This has especially alarming implications for immigrants and people of color: two communities that are traditionally the targets of excessive policing, surveillance, and separation from loved ones and community through incarceration or deportation," she continued in the statement.
Not only did Marin share this information with ICE, they also provided the data to Customs and Border Protection, more than a dozen other federal law enforcement agencies, and more than 400 law enforcement agencies out of state.
This lawsuit is the first of its kind, targeting the sharing of data collected by the ALPR surveillance.
"This lawsuit sends a message to other California law enforcement agencies that are unlawfully sharing ALPR data and helping ICE—and we know there are others," said EFF Staff Attorney Saira Hussain in the statement.
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