Illinois state officials have given national rental car companies official notice that immigration enforcement agents using their vehicles are not allowed to swap the rental’s assigned license plates for other plates to disguise the vehicles, and if they do, the rental car companies could be held liable.
According to documents obtained by NBC News via the Freedom of Information Act, the Illinois secretary of state’s office sent letters to at least 19 national car rental headquarters stating that they had received public complaints of immigration agents switching license plates on rented vehicles when Operation Midway Blitz, an extensive government deportation operation, was active in the Chicago area.
The letters were sent to Alamo, Enterprise, Budget, Hertz, Ace and other vehicle rental companies. They did not respond to requests for comment.
“Official notice”
So it’s the rental car companies responsibility to enforce the law?
If they know it’s happening, maybe they need to step up enforcement, not pass the buck. But, I suppose that might actually be effective, and we can’t have that now, can we?
Kind of.
These are cars registered with the state, owned by the rental companies. Which makes them their cars, and their liability.
It isn’t so much that its their job to enforce the law, but their vehicles being used in violation of the law. If these were federally owned vehicles, they wouldn’t be required to register with the state, and it would be kind of irrelevant in that regard.
They aren’t though. These are rental company vehicles.
The goal, if I had my guess, is to make rental companies unwilling to rent their cars out due to the liability associated here. By publicly stating it like this, it gives a reason for the rental companies to say they can’t rent them out to DHS anymore. That part is just my guess though.
Yeah but it seems they are being rented by people in plain clothes, as apparently several companies are already trying to refuse.
In particular one truck rental place was named that they were complaining that their trucks are not for transporting people in the cargo space.
In any case, if I rent a car where I live, and run a red light, commit a speeding offence, park illegally and get it towed, what usually happens is that the car gets treated the same way as any other car, the owning rental company gets charged and fined, and then they put on massive fees and forward the problem to me.
Why can’t they just pull over the vehicle, impound it, and have everything happen like it would with anyone else?
I really wish I had that answer, to me it makes the most sense too.
Like you said though, the fines would go to the rental company, and thats the liability we are talking about here.