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.
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.