Union City is disputing a report by the ACLU that it is feeding information into a massive database being used by ICE to help with deportations.
Union City’s police department is included on a list of 80 departments nationwide whose data is being fed to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the ACLU said Wednesday. The database containing the information is a product of Livermore-based Vigilant Solutions, a company that makes automated license plate readers and other technology, whose ties with ICE were revealed last year. Motorola Solutions bought Vigilant earlier this year.
But Victor Derting, a captain with the Union City Police Department, said Wednesday that his department does not use license plate readers with cameras.
“The ACLU report took us by surprise,” Derting said. “We don’t provide information to ICE, nor would we.” He added that the department is “concerned about our community’s trust.”
Other Bay Area police departments were known to have been Vigilant clients as of last year, but some of those contracts appear to have expired or been rejected by council members in those cities. California is a sanctuary state, meaning its local law enforcement officers aren’t supposed to share information about the people they arrest, question and detain with federal agencies, including immigration officials. Many Bay Area cities have declared themselves sanctuary cities.
Union City is the only Bay Area jurisdiction that appeared to be sharing information with Vigilant, according to one of the more than 1,800 pages of documents released Wednesday by the ACLU, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Jaime Patiño, a Union City Councilman who was elected in November, slammed the ACLU.
“I think the ACLU kind of jumped the gun,” he said Wednesday. “ACLU should’ve done their damn homework before they go and do something stupid like that. We don’t even own any cameras.”
Vasudha Talla, the ACLU Northern California lawyer who obtained the documents, said Union City “should be asking itself how it ended up on the list.” She said the city should be asking questions of its police department, Vigilant and ICE.
“Somewhere along the way, something happened to get itself on the report,” Talla said.
When Union City’s police department first “got up and running” on Vigilant’s system, Derting thinks a box for sharing with ICE may have been checked automatically. But that box has since been unchecked, he said.
Vigilant Solutions has not returned requests for comment.
Along with releasing the documents, the ACLU said it is urging state lawmakers to order an audit into whether some local law enforcement departments are complying with California laws SB 34, which limits law enforcement use of data from license plate readers, and SB 54, which addresses local and state law enforcement’s sharing of information with immigration authorities.
“The Union City Police Department complies with SB 54 and the City’s Compassionate City values by not sharing information with ICE,” the city said in a statement.
ICE said Wednesday that license plate readers are just one tool it uses in its investigations. It also addressed the ACLU’s privacy concerns over ICE’s use of Vigilant’s database. The ACLU said more than 9,000 ICE officers have gained access to the Vigilant system since last year, when ICE’s contract with Vigilant was first made public.
“ICE limits the number of users who are able to access the LPR data service and ensures that only those who need LPR data for their mission-related purposes are able to access the database,” an ICE spokesman said Wednesday.Staff writer Joseph Geha contributed to this report.
