This year, California lawmakers voted to let the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) share driver's license records with a national nonprofit called AAMVA, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. Lawmakers were told the move was needed to keep California IDs valid at airports and federal buildings. What they weren't told: the Trump administration was already demanding millions of driver records from that same organization for immigration enforcement.

This summer, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed AAMVA for the names, birthdates, license numbers, and Social Security numbers of 17 million commercial drivers, stating the purpose was "civil immigration enforcement," according to the subpoena cited by CalMatters. AAMVA initially considered handing the data over before a federal judge stepped in and temporarily blocked the release. Now California plans to upload records for nearly all of its 30 million license holders to that same organization next year, including more than a million immigrants licensed under a 2013 state law.

"AAMVA's behavior with respect to these commercial driver's licenses gives California compelling reasons not to trust AAMVA to safeguard the much larger number of non-commercial driver's license records that the DMV plans to upload to AAMVA next year," said Ed Hasbrouck of the civil liberties group The Identity Project, according to CalMatters.

California should not hand its drivers' most sensitive information to an organization that has already shown it will consider turning that data over to immigration agents. Governor Gavin Newsom and the California DMV must pause the data-sharing plan until courts decide whether this information can be subpoenaed for immigration enforcement, and give Californians a say before their DMV records become part of a federal deportation case.

Sign the petition to stop California from handing driver data to an organization that can't guarantee it won't end up in ICE's hands.