Kilmar Abrego Garcia was ordered to be released — but he’s not yet coming home (Judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from jail before trial, but ICE plans to detain him, June 22, 2025).

Abrego Garcia’s Maryland roots made his story of special interest within our state, but he’s just one of hundreds of Marylanders caught up in ongoing mass deportations. As his case shows, the Trump administration is not prioritizing individual rights, so it is more important than ever that Maryland protect them.

Protecting state data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is essential.

ICE relies on massive amounts of personal information to identify, locate and deport immigrants. Its data comes from many sources — including through partnerships with state agencies and local police. It then bundles it into an app so ICE agents can “track” immigrants.

This system has no transparency, oversight or other protections. If ICE misuses or misinterprets data, there is no way to know, even when there are devastating consequences for immigrant families.

We’ve already seen ICE’s misuse firsthand.

A 2021 investigation revealed that, for over two years, ICE ran hundreds of facial recognition searches on roughly seven million Maryland driver’s licenses — yes, possibly yours, too — without state or court approval. In response, lawmakers passed the Maryland Driver Privacy Act, outlawing ICE’s access to MVA data without a valid judicial warrant.

Maryland collects personal information for everything from fishing licenses and tax incentive programs to property records. Current protections of that data may not be enough.

The Maryland Data Privacy Act would extend the protections in the Driver Privacy Act to all state databases, but it failed to pass last session.

The Abrego Garcia case shows the administration’s disregard for the law and individuals’ rights. While ICE has jurisdiction to enforce immigration in Maryland, if we want to protect our residents from ICE’s dragnet, we could at least stop adding new data to their apps.

The Maryland Data Privacy Act could do that. Not passing the bill this legislative session was a missed opportunity, and it should be at the top of the next session’s legislative agenda.

Nat Meysenburg is a technologist at New America’s Open Technology Institute. He lives in Baltimore.

The Baltimore Banner publishes letters to the editor, exclusive to our publication, of no more than 350 words. Letters can be submitted for consideration to letters@thebaltimorebanner.com.