Brannigan Sanchez is behind the wheel of a 2010 Dodge Charger that has 332,000 miles on it. In the car with her are an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant and his son, who are being driven from the southeastern Michigan town of Sturgis, where they met with immigration officials, back to their home in Grand Rapids.

Ms. Sanchez, who’s 34, earns her living transporting immigrants unable to obtain a Michigan driver’s license to appointments with government agencies and, in some cases, to and from work. Knowing the financial stress faced by the roughly 15 people she counts as regular clients, she strives to keep costs as lost as possible. For the five to six-hour round trip drive from Grand Rapids to Detroit and back, she charges $200.  That includes gas.

It’s a job she hopes will be rendered obsolete. For that to happen, the state of Michigan must again make it legal for undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver’s license here.

There’s some reason to hope that day could come. In June, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a measure Ms. Sanchez and other supporters of immigrant rights, including the ACLU of Michigan, would like to see duplicated in Michigan. With the addition of New York, there are now 13 states, along with Washington D.C., that allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

Ms. Sanchez knows firsthand how terribly damaging the current system can be. Her former husband, a native of Mexico, is currently facing deportation proceedings.

“The only thing on his record is one violation for driving without a license,” says Ms. Sanchez. “For him and other undocumented immigrants, getting caught driving without a license can create a domino effect that ends with the person being forced to leave the country.  There’s no good reason for things being that way.”

In fact, until 2008, there was no specific immigration or citizenship status required to obtain a Michigan driver’s license or state ID, according to the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC).

The change was prompted by an opinion issued in 2007 by then-Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who contended that, under Michigan law, only people in the country legally could be issued a driver’s license.  Clearly, as other states have proved, that does not have to be the case.

Denying access to a driver’s license creates all sorts of hardship and trauma, says Ruby Robinson, co-managing attorney for MIRC. As Mr. Robinson points out, Michigan lags far behind most other states when it comes to providing adequate public transportation. That means undocumented immigrants who want to work – or shop for groceries, take their kids to soccer practice, visit a doctor, or perform any number of other functions that require a car -- must often rely on someone like Ms. Sanchez to ferry them back and forth, creating an unnecessary expense for people working for low wages. It is either that, or risk getting caught driving without a license.

The situation is no different for those who must travel long distances.

“Bus and train travelers across the northern U.S. report being stopped, questioned and detained with increasing frequency since the first year of the Trump administration,” according to a recent report from NBC News. “That year, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, reversed an Obama-era decision to restrict approval for those operations.

“In November 2017, according to emails obtained exclusively by the ACLU of Maine through a public records lawsuit and provided to NBC News, a Border Patrol official in Maine told agents they were ready to begin boarding buses and wished them ‘Happy hunting!’”

Instead of making undocumented immigrants feel like prey, allowing them access to driver’s licenses provides a host of benefits, both to them and to society. As outlined by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, some of those benefits are:

• Extending driving privileges to undocumented immigrants requires individuals to take driver’s tests and properly register with the state’s motor vehicle agency, ensuring that they know the rules of the road and have a proper understanding of traffic regulations.
• Licensed drivers are more likely to obtain auto insurance, reducing the cost of accidents involving uninsured motorists and potentially lowering insurance rates for everyone.
• Individuals with driver’s licenses are less likely to flee the scene of an accident.
• Unlicensed drivers are five times more likely to be in a fatal car accident.
• First responders and health care providers will be better able to determine the identity of victims and patients.
• State resources can be directed to more crucial priorities if courts and jails are less congested by issues arising from driving without a license or insurance.
• Driver’s license application fees will generate revenue for states.

As much sense as changing the law makes, Mr. Robinson of MIRC is doubtful the current legislature, which remains under the control of conservatives, will pursue a course of action that is both practical and humane.

“I think getting the legislature to allow undocumented immigrants in Michigan to obtain driver’s licenses at this point is a steep climb,” he says.

But that isn’t stopping advocates from pressing forward on the issue. Led by a local chapter of the group Cosecha (which means “harvest” in Spanish), activists were recently able to convince the Kalamazoo City Commission to unanimously pass a resolution urging the Michigan Legislature to change the law and allow undocumented immigrant residents to receive driver’s licenses.

“Passing that resolution was a beautiful thing,” says Nelly Fuentes, a community organizer and Cosecha volunteer in Kalamazoo. “We’re only just starting to get this ball rolling.”

Plans are in the works, she says, to urge local units of government in other parts of the state to pass similar resolutions. Doing so is a way to demonstrate widespread support for the issue and put pressure on state legislators to change the law in a way that benefits all of Michigan.

If that eventually happens,  Ms. Sanchez will have to find a new line of work. That’s a day she welcomes gladly.

“We’re all human,” she says. “We all have families. And we all have dreams. This is supposed to be the land of opportunity. But the way the law is now, a lot of people are needlessly being denied access to that opportunity.”

Photo credit: Movimiento Cosecha Kzoo; Brannigan Sanchez.

Today a diverse coalition of twelve local civil rights organizations urged the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners to reject the Detroit Police Department’s (DPD) proposed use of facial recognition technology in a joint letter.

“Facial recognition technology is racially biased and poses a grave threat to privacy,” said Rodd Monts, Campaign Outreach Coordinator for the ACLU of Michigan. “It will disproportionately harm immigrants and communities of color, who already bear the brunt of over-policing. A city like ours should be taking the lead in resisting the use of dangerous and racially biased surveillance technology — not advocating for it.”

The coalition’s letter opposes the facial recognition policy proposed by the DPD on July 25. While the DPD claims it will not use its full surveillance capabilities, the coalition opposes DPD’s use of this surveillance technology in any form.  The coalition urges the board to follow the lead of San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville, Massachusetts, which have also banned police use of facial recognition technology.

“The expansion of facial recognition in Detroit supercharges the capability of live Green Light video feeds, creating terrifying real-time surveillance capabilities,” said Eric Williams, senior staff attorney for the Detroit Justice Center’s Economic Equity Practice. “This tool is dangerous mass profiling that has no place in Detroit.”

The coalition letter highlights the disproportionate impact the use of facial recognition technology will have on communities of color and immigrants. Recent peer-reviewed studies show this technology inaccurately identifies people of color and women. In a majority Black city, facial recognition technology would lead to false identifications and heighten racially discriminatory policing in Detroit. Immigrant communities are also particularly at risk in response to federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol, which have used facial recognition tools for enforcement actions.

“The proposed facial recognition policy would break the trust between immigrant communities and the Detroit Police Department,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI). “Rather than investing millions of dollars in facial recognition technology that instills fear and targets our communities, we should be investing in the services and resources they need to prosper.”

The letter also documents the disturbing threat to privacy posed by DPD’s use of facial recognition technology. The software the DPD purchased is capable of running real-time facial recognition scans on hundreds of live Green Light video feeds, which means the police could keep track of who comes and goes from medical clinics, churches, schools, hotels, political rallies, AA meetings, and countless other sensitive locations throughout the city.  And to use its facial recognition technology, the DPD has access to the Michigan State Police’s (MSP) vast database known as the Statewide Network of Agency Photos (SNAP). SNAP began in 1998 and contains mugshots, more than 40 million driver’s license and ID photos from the Michigan Department of State, and even photos the MSP culled from Facebook and other social media sites. Last year alone SNAP expanded by 2.7 million photos.

“Every Michigander is at risk of losing their rights to privacy and due process,” said Tawana Petty, data justice director for the Detroit Community Technology Project. “By having your photo taken for a state ID, you are opening the door to being included in a Michigan State Police database that is now being used for facial recognition—a database that the Detroit Police Department has also leveraged for its use. This is not what anyone signed up for.”

The coalition includes: the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL), Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), ACLU of Michigan, CAIR Michigan, Color Of Change, Detroit Community Technology Project, Detroit Hispanic Development Center, Detroit Justice Center, Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, Michigan United, Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES), and We The People – Michigan.