Cuomo Makes Sharing Illegal Immigrant Driver Info a Class E Felony

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) expressed concern about New York’s controversial Green Light Law and its newest amendment. “Somehow the state of New York took a bad law, doubled down and made it worse by now criminalizing essential information sharing that is critical to effective law enforcement,” Acting ICE Director Matt Albence told Fox News.

The law, which took effect in January was amended and signed by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo in April as part of the state’s 2020 budget. In effect, the law allows illegal immigrants to receive driver’s licenses, but even the “original law went a step further than similar laws in other states by forbidding state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) agencies from sharing data with immigration authorities like ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)” reported Fox News.

Many were critical of the original Green Light Law, but the amendment “goes even further and makes it a class E felony for officials to share such information.” In accordance with the law, “anyone who receives or has access to DMV records must certify beforehand that they will not use such records for immigration purposes or disclose them to an agency that primarily enforces immigration law.”

Albence said in his interview, “in New York, we’ve been frozen out now and now you can’t even share from cop to cop, so it’s incredibly dangerous.”  The law also demands identification of “any immigration official or entity that received department records or information from any such certifying person or entity.” Failure to do so would also be deemed a class E felony. “It’s part of a continued move by the liberal state to limit ICE’s enforcement operations” according to Fox News.