Trump’s DOJ says it’s suing New York over immigrant driver’s license law

The Trump administration said it plans to challenge a New York state law that allows immigrants without legal status to receive a driver’s license and prevents federal law enforcement officials from accessing the state’s extensive database of motor vehicle records.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that the Department of Justice will file suit against Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state officials over the state’s 2019 “Green Light” law, which relaxed the documentation needed to prove identity and age when applying for a driver’s license.

“ New York has chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens,” Bondi said during a news conference. “It stops today.”

The lawsuit was not yet publicly available in the federal court system’s database as of early Wednesday evening. But Bondi said it would make the case that New York’s law is unconstitutional and take issue with a measure that requires the state Department of Motor Vehicles to notify a person if a federal immigration agent asked the state for their records.

Bondi said her lawsuit will name Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James and state Motor Vehicles Commissioner Mark Schroeder as defendants.

A spokesperson for Hochul said the governor was waiting for the suit to be filed in court.

“Governor Hochul has been clear from day one: she supports deporting violent criminals who break our laws, believes that law-abiding families should not be targets, and will coordinate with federal authorities who have a judicial warrant,” Hochul press secretary Avi Small said in a statement.

James defended the law in a statement.

"Our state laws, including the Green Light law, protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” James said in a statement. “I am prepared to defend our laws, just as I always have."

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law in 2019 during Trump’s first term. It opened the door to thousands of people with and without legal status to obtain identification and driving privileges in New York by allowing them to use certain foreign documents, like a passport, to prove their identity.

At the time, supporters of the law — which was approved by the Democrat-led state Legislature — argued it would improve safety on the roadways by allowing otherwise undocumented immigrants the ability to legally drive, which would allow them to obtain insurance and avoid the threat of deportation if they’re pulled over.

Driver’s licenses obtained under the law are affixed with a stamp that doesn’t allow them to be used for federal purposes, like boarding a plane.

In a statement Wednesday, Molly Biklen, interim legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the apparent lawsuit an attempt to “shamelessly weaponize the Department of Justice.”

She said the law has “made our roads safer and our economy stronger.”

“Attorney General Bondi should know, but more likely doesn’t care, that the purported charges represent a gross intrusion into New York’s constitutional right to legislate in areas traditionally within its concern,” Biklen said.

Data-sharing and cooperating with federal immigration officials has been a hot topic at the state Capitol since Trump’s election in November. And the apparent federal lawsuit will not come as a surprise to New York officials, who battled Trump over the law when he was previously in office.

In 2020, the Trump administration temporarily blocked New York residents from applying for membership in four Trusted Traveler Programs — including Global Entry and NEXUS, which allow for quicker entry into the country from international destinations — in retaliation for passing the Green Light law.

But New York sued and the federal government reversed itself six months later, after the Department of Justice admitted it used misleading information about other states’ data-sharing provisions as part of its legal defense.

James, meanwhile, successfully defended the law against a prior federal lawsuit filed by the then-Erie County clerk, who opposed the measure, in 2020.

The law’s provisions that block U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from accessing state DMV data prevents them from running license plates or driver’s licenses through the state’s motor vehicle database. The provision is intended to prevent federal immigration agents from mining state data for people who may be in the country illegally.

Bondi said the lack of data-sharing is putting federal agents at risk.

The lawsuit will put Hochul, a Democrat, in the position of defending a law she once vehemently opposed when it was first proposed.

Hochul was Erie County clerk when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer pushed a similar bill in 2007. At the time, Hochul threatened to have immigrants arrested if they applied for a driver’s license in her county and were not in the country legally.

But Hochul ultimately supported the law’s passage in 2019, telling reporters it was a “whole different era.”