by Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard
October 27, 2026
SEATTLE — Chris Megargee volunteers at a Shoreline Home Depot to help day laborers frequently targeted by federal immigration authorities.
As part of the adopt-a-corner program, Megargee and other volunteers provide breakfast and share information so the workers, who are often noncitizens, know their rights if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents come.
Since January, ICE officials have detained half a dozen men there, including one this month, who drove their cars to the Home Depot, Megargee said.
Before arresting each, ICE agents entered the license plate numbers on those cars into a database, and received car registration information to identify the driver, Megargee alleged.
Advocates gathered in Seattle on Tuesday to continue their push for Washington state officials to do more to restrict the ability of the feds to get information from the license plate database.
“We need you to act and slow down this mass deportation and detention machine by continuing to cut off access to the Department of Licensing data that is being used for immigration enforcement,” said Lucía Vázquez Martínez, field director for Service Employees International Union 775.
Gov. Bob Ferguson noted his administration has acted to curb unfettered access to the state’s data.
“My team has worked to limit Customs and Border Protection access for immigration enforcement, while maintaining access necessary to protect public safety, such as human trafficking investigations that require real-time access to data to protect vulnerable Washingtonians,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
“Looking ahead to the next two years, this will be an ongoing process for us to adapt to what (the) federal government does next to work around what we do to protect our data,” Ferguson added.
These concerns date back years, but have intensified as President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has grown in Washington, with surges seen in recent months.
University of Washington researchers connected 356 arrests to federal queries for license data between August 2025 and Oct. 13 of this year. In the first five months of this year, agencies housed under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security searched state Department of Licensing driver and vehicle data over 1 million times, according to the university’s Center for Human Rights.
Washington is one of 19 states that offer driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status. Others require warrants or court orders for federal agencies to access state-held license and vehicle data for immigration purposes, according to the UW researchers. Washington does not.
Ferguson spokesperson Brionna Aho said Tuesday that “our team is reviewing what other states have done, and what is lawful, to require judicial warrants for civil immigration-related requests.”
What the state has already done
Last November, Washington officials cut off ICE’s ability to get this data. This was later expanded to Homeland Security Investigations, also known as HSI.
Between November 2025 and Oct. 12, the Washington State Patrol blocked over 174,000 search attempts from federal agencies, including 89,000 from Customs and Border Protection, 45,000 from HSI and nearly 40,000 from ICE, according to the governor’s office. However, researchers say millions more searches from the Department of Homeland Security have still gone through.
Aho said shutting off federal access to Department of Licensing data entirely isn’t an option due to “legitimate public safety reasons.”
The state has taken numerous steps, some of them unprecedented nationwide, to cut off immigration authorities, she said.
These reportedly include blocking searches of the Nlets platform, which police agencies use to share driver’s license data across states, by ICE. The state has also stopped Customs and Border Protection from seeing photos of people searched in Nlets in Washington. A terms-of-use notice in Nlets now also informs those seeking its data that it cannot be used for immigration enforcement.
Federal agents have repeatedly found workarounds to bypass the state’s restrictions.
“As the federal government has rapidly changed its tactics and the way it uses state data, Governor Ferguson has continually considered and reassessed state agencies’ data practices and taken quick action when necessary,” Aho said in an email.
Washington has also suspended nine searchers associated with CBP and three with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that were suspected to be connected to immigration enforcement operations.
In this case, the UW researchers say this work by the state to block individual accounts is “not providing meaningful protection for Washingtonians’ data.” They argued the continued federal access violates the Keep Washington Working Act, the 2019 state law that prevents state data from being shared with federal authorities for civil immigration purposes
The state also suspended the ability of ICE and CBP to renew tabs for license plates on undercover vehicles. The Trump administration is suing Washington, and other states, over this policy.
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