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Documents obtained by the ACLU show that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement used unofficial channels to access billions of license plate location data points—including some in sanctuary cities—to track people’s movements. Here’s what we know: 1/ wired.trib.al/lVpgvFL 
License plate readers have become an increasingly popular tool for law enforcement around the United States, and ICE has aggressively pursued that data, through a $6.1 million contract with a private firm called Vigilant Solutions. 2/ wired.trib.al/lVpgvFL
The internal documents show ICE has access to 5 billion records gathered by private businesses, as well as 1.5 billion data points contributed by over 80 local law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen states. 3/ wired.trib.al/lVpgvFL
ICE doesn't collect license plate data directly or maintain a database. It instead relies on its Vigilant contract. More than 9,200 ICE officers have database accounts and Vigilant claims to add hundreds of millions of new scans from private businesses every month. 4/
The documents show that Vigilant trained ICE on how to convince local law enforcement agencies to make their regional license plate data available. This informal access seems at odds with ICE's privacy guidance for license plate location data. 5/ wired.trib.al/lVpgvFL
