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.
Perhaps you do?
Ever seen a license plate on a mail truck? No, you haven’t, because they don’t use them. The Federal government does plate some of their vehicles, but it’s well established that they don’t have to obey state laws about it.
My father was a Federal pig, many years ago, and I once had a conversation with him about how they plated their cars. A few of the vehicles were owned by the government, but most were leased. Some were registered with the state, to the government, they were only supposed to look like ordinary cars at a glance. Some were registered to fictitious identities that were designed to hold up to a background check conducted by another government agency. They also had fake plates, including fake Mexican plates, as this office was near the Mexican border.
These vehicles are not owned by the Federal Government, though. They are owned by a rental agency, which is subject to State Law. Those law don’t dissolve into a puddle just because a Fed is renting them.
If ICE wants to flout State licensing laws, they can just buy all the cars they use. Lord knows they have enough money to do that.
Owned, leased, rented, commandeered at gunpoint, it’s completely irrelevant. The person operating the vehicle is exempt.
Your argument is analogous to claiming you can’t get a DUI in a rented car.
No, you are the one that is basically arguing that a Fed can just flash their badge and get out of a state DUI. It doesn’t work like that.
The Supremacy clause deals with state laws that specifically are in conflict with Federal Law (or a Federal court ruling or regulation): the Feds win those, as long as the Federal act is Constitutional to begin with.
I don’t think the Federal Government can win a case in court that says that it 1) needs to rent cars locally to do its business and 2) those cars need to not have any identifying info mandated by the state at all. Especially when legislation already exists that let’s Feds bypass local registration requirements entirely and buy their own shit.
Having license plates on vehicles is not in direct contradiction to any Federal act. The Feds are just being lazy.