Data privacy experts warned Alameda County officials on Thursday that information shared as part of municipal ID programs could be used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct raids on immigrant communities.
Firewalls and contracts protecting benefits recipients’ private information could be inadequate to prevent federal agencies from targeting immigrants living in the county illegally and could pose future threats to transgender individuals and women who have utilized abortion or other reproductive health care, said Brian Hofer, executive director of Secure Justice.
“I haven’t found a single reference on any municipality’s website to the potential risk or threat from 8 USC Section 1373, AB 1644 demand, which requires you, upon the written request, to provide citizenship data if you have it in your possession,” Hofer said at an Alameda County Together for All Committee meeting on Thursday.
Oakland, Richmond and San Francisco offer municipal ID cards and debit cards that can be used to obtain a driver’s license, provide financial aid for education, open a bank account, receive food assistance or access homeless shelter services.
Hofer has already begun contacting localities about their insufficient data protections.
In Richmond, his warnings have spurred concern about a new city council initiative to provide free municipal IDs.
“When the three cities created these programs, it was years ago before Trump 1.0. You weren’t really looking at these things from a data privacy lens,” Hofer said Tuesday night in Richmond. “My primary concern is that you’re not properly warning people of the risk of participation.”
The council ultimately agreed to postpone any decision on whether the program should be made free to the public in perpetuity, giving staff time to review the data security aspect of the initiative and remove references to now defunct elements of the program.
When that work will take place is unclear. Staff priority is currently focused on moving forward a different program approved by the Richmond City Council that same night – the allocation of $1 million toward a relief fund to provide legal services and sponsor know your rights campaigns.
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Municipal IDs will be made temporarily free to the public under that initiative thanks to a $10,000 carve out meant to cover public cost for the IDs, $25 for adults and $15 for seniors or people ages 18 and under.
Councilmember Claudia Jimenez, who proposed the allocation toward IDs, recognized the program as important to the broader community, not just immigrants. A total of 211 Richmond municipal identification cards were issued last fiscal year, costing about $5,000.
“This is a program that’s helping people,” Jimenez said. “In the meantime, there is money we’re providing to make it free, so let’s do that and come back when there’s capacity to do this analysis and clean up the ordinance so we can have a better program.”
Hofer said the effort may cause greater harm than good given the Trump administration’s concerted effort to crack down on immigrants living in the country illegally. He said that well-meaning cities like Richmond, that did not intend to cooperate with ICE, may do so out of “negligence” to the data security concerns that exist in these programs anyway.
“Because no data privacy experts were at the table to remind the legislators that ICE had direct access to the DMV database, California put a bull’s eye on the back of these folks,” Hofer said. “I saw an awful lot of red-flag data trails that are ripe for ICE and others to use.”
