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.
I doubt there is any Federal law that authorizes Federal employees to fiddle with license plates for cars that are registered with a state.
If the Federal government wants to do that they have their own system to register cars, independent of any state. If they were substituting State plates with US Government plates, maybe they have a point. But they are simply ignoring local laws, because they are inconvenient. The Supremacy clause doesn’t allow that.
They may simply be authorized by federal law to do a broad range of things when doing their jobs, like changing license plates, in which case a state cannot stop them.
I’m not sure what specific laws they’re operating under but it’s very likely they can do this unfortunately
Well, the Feds need to cite those specific laws, then. Illinois is well within their rights to enforce this stuff unless there is a specific Federal law that says otherwise.
I’m not a lawyer but my research is showing me that federal agents can operate under the supremacy clause itself to do whatever is necessary and proper in carrying out their federal duties.
A court will have to decide if swapping plates was reasonably necessary to carry out their authorized duties. I’m highly skeptical a court would rule against the Feds because they’d just say swapping plates is important for protecting our agents or some bullshit