Greetings from NCLEJ at the beginning of a new year and new decade. As it has for nearly sixty years, NCLEJ continues to work with a range of individuals, groups and communities in a struggle for economic justice for those who have been routinely denied economic opportunity. January’s celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday is a reminder that for King, the struggles for racial and economic justice went hand in hand. King firmly believed that all people had the right to earn a fair and dignified living.

In a victory in the early days of 2020 for the kinds of rights supported by King, last week NCLEJ reached a settlement agreement on behalf of its client Migrant Justice in a federal lawsuit against the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles. The case stems from the DMV’s practice of information-sharing and collaboration with federal immigration agents, particularly targeting Latino applicants. In 2013, after a campaign spearheaded by Migrant Justice, Vermont passed legislation creating a new class of driver’s license available regardless of immigration status. Following the law’s implementation, DMV officials began routinely colluding with ICE in the immigration detention and deportation of many DMV customers.

Despite a 2016 settlement with the Vermont Human Rights Commission, the DMV continued to discriminate against applicants and share information with immigration agents. In 2017, the DMV sent to ICE the driver’s license application of community leader Enrique Balcazar, on which a DMV employee had written “Undocumented,” an act that resulted in Enrique’s subsequent detention and potential deportation. Enrique is one of many human rights leaders in Vermont who have been targeted by ICE due to their activism, a pattern detailed in the lawsuit.

On Wednesday, January 15, 2020, Migrant Justice farmworker leaders signed the settlement agreement to end the organization’s claims against the DMV. The lengthy and detailed settlement formalizes new regulations to restrict communication and information-sharing between the state department and federal immigration agencies, and other measures to protect the privacy of applicants for Driver’s Privilege Cards.

Across the country, states are increasingly recognizing it is necessary to vigilantly safeguard the information submitted to motor vehicle agencies to ensure the success of drivers’ license programs such as Vermont’s Driver Privilege Card, increase public and road safety, and make a state more welcoming for all who call it home.

The case continues against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for those agencies' efforts to surveil, harass, arrest, and detain Migrant Justice members and leaders in retaliation for plaintiffs’ First Amendment speech and assembly and in order to destabilize Migrant Justice and its successful organizing of Vermont’s immigrant farmworkers.

NCLEJ, with a legal team including Leah Lotto, Claudia Wilner, and Jen Rasey, brought this suit with our co-counsel, the ACLU Foundation of Vermont, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Immigration Law Center, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.