Cook County commissioners are pushing an amendment that would bar companies holding county contracts from selling or sharing residents' personal data with outside parties, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The proposal cleared a key committee and was headed to the full Cook County Board of Commissioners for a vote this week, with county vendors barred from sharing information such as license plate numbers with third parties.
The measure, sponsored by Cook County commissioners Alma Anaya, Jessica Vasquez and Tara Stamps, passed the Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee and was expected before the full board on Thursday, according to the Chicago Tribune. If approved, the amendment would take effect 60 days after passage. Anaya, who represents Cook County's 7th District, said data is continually shared with the county and that protecting it is the county's responsibility.
“Our duty is to protect it,” Anaya said, according to the Tribune, adding that commissioners have an obligation to shield residents from surveillance and evolving threats. She also said she believes Cook County's stance could inspire other jurisdictions to tighten protections around their own data.
Closing a Back Door to Jail, Court and DMV Records
The amendment would also block data from being sold for commercial purposes and would exclude cases involving a criminal warrant or court order, meaning ICE could still obtain personal information by showing legal justification for a warrant, per WBBM Newsradio. The station described the change as closing a digital back door that ICE and Border Patrol have used to locate immigrants by way of court, jail, health and Department of Motor Vehicles data funneled through county contractors. Notably, the proposed amendment includes no civil or criminal penalties for violations.
Anaya said earlier county contracts already included boilerplate language barring the sale or sharing of information, but that some vendors negotiated a risk-solution clause that let them sidestep it. Immigrant-rights groups are separately pressing Cook County to renegotiate its contract with Appriss, which the same WBBM report says gives the tech company and its parent, Equifax, access to county jail data.
Advocates Trace the Push Back to a 2022 Hearing
Tania Unzueta, policy director for the national Latino advocacy group Mijente, said the organizations Mijente and Just Futures Law, along with other immigrant advocacy groups, first raised the data-sharing issue with Cook County commissioners at a hearing in July 2022. Unzueta described the current amendment as one step in a broader grassroots campaign known as No Tech for ICE, and said Mijente plans to bring the approach and policy discussion to other jurisdictions so they can review their own contracts.
The concern over data brokers feeding immigration enforcement predates this amendment by years. FOIA records cited by Just Futures Law and reported by Borderless Magazine showed ICE ran more than 1.2 million searches of the LexisNexis database between March and September 2021, including over 13,000 by the Chicago ICE Field Office alone. The outlet also reported that the End the Contract Coalition gathered more than 750 petition signatures during a 2023 week of action targeting data-broker contracts with ICE.
Similar Fights in Other States
Cook County is not alone in confronting this issue. In Washington state, federal agents searched Department of Licensing data before traffic stops at least nine times between August and November, according to research from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, as reported by the Washington State Standard. State officials said they cut off ICE's access to that data in mid-November, though researchers said Customs and Border Protection still had access.
Other local governments have taken different approaches. Upper Darby Township Council passed an ordinance restricting cooperation and data sharing with federal agents for civil immigration enforcement, including restrictions on recording residents' immigration status, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported last month. Monterey County supervisors in California unanimously passed a ban on ICE using county properties or facilities for immigration enforcement alongside a moratorium on ICE detention facilities, according to KSBW.
New Jersey's Essex County Board of Commissioners voted in May to ban ICE from county-owned or leased property and bar the county from assisting with immigration enforcement, Montclair Local reported. But an immigrant-rights advocate quoted in that coverage criticized the Essex County resolution for leaving out protections found in stronger measures elsewhere, specifically faulting it for failing to bar the sharing of immigrant residents' data and records with ICE — a gap Cook County's pending amendment is specifically designed to address.
