Approximately 175,000 New Yorkers enrolled in federally run expedited-entry travel programs will be blocked from renewing their status this year as a result of the Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to accept and renew applications it says it can no longer judge due to a new state law that prevents it from conducting proper background checks.
Ken Cuccinelli, a senior DHS official performing the duties of acting deputy secretary, told reporters on Thursday that between 150,000 to 200,000 New Yorkers apply for membership in DHS Trusted Travel Programs every year. Membership must be renewed every five years, and in 2020, 175,000 New York residents will need to renew their status but will not be able to.
“It’s only reasonable from a safety standpoint to not qualify new applicants for renewal,” Cuccinelli said. “Here we have one of the other targets of 9/11, New York, walking backwards quite intentionally in the other direction to bar the sharing of law enforcement [data].”
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf sent a letter to New York State Department of Motor Vehicles officials Wednesday informing them that because of a December-enacted state law that prohibits federal officers from accessing New York license records, it cannot conduct background checks to approve New Yorkers who apply for its federal travel programs, which allow U.S. citizens returning from Canada, Mexico, and all other countries to bypass the long security customs lines because they have been precleared as low-risk.
“Although DHS would prefer to continue our longstanding cooperative relationship with New York on a variety of these critical homeland security initiatives, this Act and the corresponding lack of security cooperation from the New York DMV requires DHS to take immediate action to ensure DHS’s efforts to protect the homeland are not compromised,” Wolf wrote to New York DMV Acting Commissioner Mark Schroeder and Executive Deputy Commissioner Theresa Egan.
The Driver’s License Access and Privacy Act, known as the Green Light Law, went into effect in mid-December. DHS said it normally cross-checks the personal information of applicants to the reentry programs against state and federal databases to ensure the person seeking easier admission into the country is low-risk. Those approved get to go through expedited admission lanes at airports and land border crossings.
The Trump administration will no longer issue or renew all New York residents’ applications for Global Entry, its international program; NEXUS, which applies to Canada; SENTRI, which applies to Canada and Mexico; and FAST, for commercial truck drivers. Those programs are carried out by DHS agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection, whose officers inspect people and goods entering the country. Those already enrolled in the programs will not be affected.
DHS said the New York law also blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as a DHS agency, from being able to access state databases. In the letter sent Wednesday, Wolf said ICE’s federal agents and officers working in New York would no longer be able to check a license plate on the street against state records. Last year, ICE arrested 149 child predators and 230 gang members in New York. Wolf said in the “vast majority” of those cases, the agency relied on DMV records to gather intelligence.
Cuccinelli said a similar policy proposal in Washington state could see the same response from DHS. “They should know that their citizens are going to lose the convenience of entering the Trusted Traveler Programs as New York’s did,” Cuccinelli said.
