The Marin County Sheriff’s Office, located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in California, announced it will no longer help federal authorities track down migrants who are in the country illegally by refusing to provide information to identify individuals through vehicle registration.
The move comes after a court settlement between the sheriff’s office and local civil rights activists.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the settlement:
The settlement resolves a lawsuit that said Sheriff Robert Doyle’s office, since 2014, has shared automated license plate reader photographs and vehicle location data with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, other federal agencies and hundreds of state government offices outside California. The readers, attached to cameras stationed throughout the county, scan every vehicle within range and can record thousands of license plates each day.
The suit cited a 2016 California law, SB34, which prohibits law enforcement agencies in the state from sharing automated license plate information with federal officers or state agencies outside California. While not acknowledging any violations of the law, Doyle’s office agreed to provide the data only to authorized state or local agencies in California and to pay $49,000 to the plaintiffs for their attorneys’ fees and costs.
“This settlement is a victory for disfavored and marginalized people, including immigrants, who historically have been subjected to civil rights abuses through invasive surveillance by police,” said Vasudha Talla, immigrants’ rights program director for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California, which represented the plaintiffs along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Talla claimed this kind of settlement could make California “a refuge for marginalized groups” and compared it to the efforts to help women travel to the state to get an abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade.
Matt Cagle, an attorney with the ACLU, claimed the sheriff’s office’s dealing with other states on enforcing federal immigration law “are not transparent to the public.”
Brian Washington, spokesperson for the Marin County Counsel’s Office, expressed support for the court ruling in a statement included in the Chronicle article. The sheriff’s office going forward would limit use of “automated license readers” to meet “state law and best practices and to have avoided unnecessary litigation.”
The lawsuit was filed in October.
The case is Lagleva v. Doyle, Case No. 2104324 for the Supreme Court for the State of California
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