DOJ sues four states for blocking ICE undercover license plates

The Justice Department filed four separate lawsuits in federal district courts on May 28, 2026, targeting Oregon, Washington, Maine, and Massachusetts. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the suits, stating: "By denying undercover license plates to DHS components, including ICE, while issuing them to their own state agencies, these governors are pursuing discriminatory and obstructionist policies against federal law enforcement." Blanche, who holds the acting AG title after Trump fired Pam Bondi in April 2026, added that the policies "allow dangerous criminals to escape justice, and terrorize American communities."

The DOJ's constitutional theory centers on the 's doctrine, which bars states from discriminating against the federal government. The department cited the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in United States v. Washington, in which the Court struck down a Washington State workers' compensation law that treated federal contract workers less favorably than state employees. The lawsuits argue an analogous principle: states can't offer confidential plates to their own law enforcement while withholding them from a federal agency doing equivalent work.

Confidential license plates, sometimes called undercover or ghost plates, display a standard-looking registration that can't be traced to a government agency through public records requests. Every state runs its own program, with its own eligibility rules. The DOJ's complaint filed in the District of Oregon argues there is "no meaningful distinction between state and local officers engaged in routine criminal enforcement and federal officers engaged in civil for the purposes of confidential plates."

The states disagree sharply. Oregon law, codified at ORS 805.060, permits the state's Department of Transportation to issue undercover plates for vehicles used by law enforcement "in discharging its undercover criminal investigation duties." That statute makes no mention of , which is classified under civil law, not criminal law. Massachusetts, Oregon, and Maine all draw the same line: criminal investigations qualify, civil enforcement doesn't.

Maine was the first state to move. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows paused issuance of confidential plates to ICE and Customs and Border Protection in January 2026, citing ICE surges into the state and reports of abusive conduct. Bellows said: "When ICE asked for confidential license plates, I said no. We don't have secret police in a democracy, and covert civil immigration enforcement is not something Maine will facilitate."

Oregon's DMV followed on April 15, 2026, suspending undercover plate issuance to all federal agencies. DMV Administrator Amy Joyce explained in a letter to the DOJ that Oregon law "permits, but does not require, DMV to issue undercover plates," and that the pause was meant to ensure the program "fully complies with Oregon law." A separate lawsuit filed against Oregon State Police, alleging it was violating Oregon's sanctuary law by sharing DMV data with federal immigration databases, made the DMV wary of additional litigation.

Massachusetts had issued confidential plates to ICE, CBP, and Homeland Security Investigations as recently as 2025. The Healey administration reversed course in May 2026, reclassifying those agencies as primarily civil enforcement entities ineligible for the program. Gov. Maura Healey drew a sharp public line, saying: "I have a message for ICE: 'Not in Massachusetts.' We support law enforcement doing legitimate law enforcement work. That's not what we're seeing from ICE, so we're not going to help them operate in secret as they take people off our streets without cause."

The Healey administration offered statistical grounding for its position. ICE arrested more than 7,030 people in Massachusetts through March 10, 2026, nearly five times the 1,470 arrests in the final 415 days of the Biden administration. About 45% of those arrested had no criminal conviction or pending criminal case, according to data from the Deportation Data Project, a research effort led by academics and lawyers using ICE records obtained through public records requests.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson defended his state's position with a judicial record argument. Ferguson said: "Judges across the country have found that the Department of Homeland Security's tactics in conducting civil immigration enforcement routinely violate the Constitution. That is unacceptable. Our state will not facilitate that misconduct." Washington suspended issuance and renewal of undercover plates for all DHS-affiliated agencies.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey answered the DOJ's May 12 warning letter in writing, calling Maine's policy "a legitimate and constitutional policy choice" and disputing claims it had hampered enforcement. Frey wrote that the program reflects the Secretary of State's decision "not to allow its resources to be commandeered by the federal government for use in civil immigration enforcement activities that have, in Maine and elsewhere, resulted in multiple incidents of abusive and unconstitutional conduct by DHS officials."

The DOJ's safety argument centers on operational exposure. Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, who signed the May 12 warning letter, wrote that "If federal law enforcement vehicles are readily identifiable, officers, their families, and people under their protection will all be at risk." The department argues that ICE agents don't operate on immigration cases alone: they also investigate drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism, and fraud. All of those operations require covert surveillance; identifiable vehicles allow suspects to destroy evidence, take violent countermeasures, or evade arrest entirely.

The department contended in its complaints that forcing agents to use standard government plates, which are publicly traceable, creates the same danger as broadcasting their identities. The lawsuits ask federal judges to order the states to resume issuance immediately and to declare the state policies unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause.

The DOJ sent formal warning letters to all four states on May 12, 2026, signed by Shumate and giving each attorney general until May 22 to rescind the plate policies or face litigation. Maine AG Frey responded by defending the policy. Massachusetts Gov. Healey publicly refused to back down. Oregon's DMV administrator wrote back declining to reinstate the program. Washington also declined. All four lawsuits were filed the following week on May 28.

The states' legal counter-argument draws on the anti-commandeering doctrine, which holds that the federal government can't compel states to use their own resources to carry out federal programs. The Supreme Court built that doctrine in two foundational cases: New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997). The states argue they're not blocking federal enforcement; they're simply declining to provide a state-administered benefit. That distinction is likely to be the central dispute in the litigation.

The anti-commandeering doctrine traces back to Congress's 1985 Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act, which told states they had to either set up disposal facilities or "take title" to nuclear waste generated within their borders. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for a 6-3 majority in 1992, held that Congress can encourage states to act but can't compel them to adopt federal programs as their own. She wrote that "the Federal Government may not compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program."

Five years later, in Printz v. United States (1997), Justice Antonin Scalia extended that ruling to executive officers. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act had required local sheriffs to run background checks on gun buyers until a federal system was ready. Scalia, writing for a 5-4 majority, held that the federal government can't "draft into its service" the police officers of the 50 states. That 1997 ruling about gun background checks is directly relevant here: if Congress can't compel sheriffs to run background checks, the question for courts is whether it can compel state DMVs to issue license plates. The states say it can't. The DOJ says the situations differ because the Supremacy Clause, not commandeering, controls when states discriminate against the federal government.

ICE didn't exist until 23 years ago. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which had handled immigration enforcement since 1933, was abolished on March 1, 2003, when Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002 in response to the September 11 attacks. That law split the INS into three separate agencies: ICE took over interior enforcement, detention, and criminal investigations; CBP took over border inspection duties; and USCIS took over visa applications, naturalization, and asylum processing. Critically, ICE didn't just inherit the immigration enforcement work of the INS. It also absorbed the criminal investigative functions of the old U.S. Customs Service, which had handled drug smuggling, money laundering, and weapons trafficking under the Treasury Department. That merged mandate is precisely why ICE argues it needs confidential plates even for non-immigration operations: an ICE agent surveilling a fentanyl distribution network faces the same exposure risk as any DEA or FBI agent. The states counter that this argument proves too much, because ICE could route non-immigration investigations through DEA or FBI, which don't face the same plate restrictions.

The four states' refusal to issue undercover plates is rooted in a 40-year tradition of state and local governments limiting immigration cooperation. The first formal government came from Los Angeles in 1979, when then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, a conservative known for militarizing American policing, issued Special Order 40. The order prohibited LAPD officers from stopping people solely to check immigration status. Gates's rationale was practical: undocumented residents who feared deportation wouldn't report crimes or cooperate as witnesses, which made the whole city less safe.

The church-based sanctuary movement grew separately. In March 1982, five Bay Area churches and one Tucson congregation publicly announced they'd shelter Central American refugees fleeing Reagan administration-supported governments in El Salvador and Guatemala. By 1985, federal prosecutors launched a 10-month undercover investigation, Operation Sojourner, targeting sanctuary congregations. At its peak, the movement included more than 300 churches openly defying federal immigration enforcement. That history established the legal and moral vocabulary that states like Oregon, Massachusetts, Maine, and Washington are now using.

When the states say ICE operates outside constitutional norms, they have a growing judicial record to point to. Federal courts have issued dozens of rulings finding that ICE detainers, home entry practices, and detention conditions violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The Ninth Circuit found in Gonzalez v. ICE that ICE violates the Fourth Amendment when it issues detainers in states where no statute authorizes civil immigration arrests on detainers, requiring a neutral judicial officer to review detention. In January 2025, a Minnesota federal district court ruled that a home entry carried out under a new DHS administrative-warrant policy violated the Fourth Amendment. The Brennan Center documented that DHS's warrantless home entry memos lack the Fourth Amendment authorization required for residential searches. These rulings are what Oregon's Gov. Tina Kotek and Washington's Gov. Bob Ferguson point to when they say states shouldn't provide tools, including undercover plates, that facilitate enforcement tactics courts have already called unconstitutional.

The civil versus criminal enforcement distinction the states are drawing isn't just legal jargon. It carries concrete consequences for the people arrested. Criminal arrests require a warrant supported by probable cause and signed by a judge; civil immigration arrests require only an administrative warrant signed by an ICE officer, with no judicial review beforehand. Criminal defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to a court-appointed attorney if they can't afford one; civil immigration detainees don't have that right, so most face removal proceedings without a lawyer. Criminal arrest records are public, which allows journalists, advocates, and oversight bodies to track patterns; civil immigration enforcement has historically operated with less public accountability. When Massachusetts Secretary of State Bellows says she won't help ICE "operate in secret," she's pointing to this accountability gap: covert civil enforcement, with administrative-only warrants and no right to counsel, is harder to scrutinize than criminal law enforcement. That's the constitutional architecture the states are defending.

Shenna Bellows issued a defiant statement after the lawsuits were filed, echoing the framing that Maine had successfully challenged the administration before. Bellows said: "If the DOJ wants to sue us, we'll see them in court. We've beaten them in court before, and I'm confident we'll win here again. Secret police have no place in Maine." Massachusetts named Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt and Registry of Motor Vehicles Registrar Colleen Ogilvie as defendants in addition to Healey.

The four lawsuits collectively frame a constitutional question courts haven't resolved in this specific context: does the intergovernmental immunity doctrine require states to extend a discretionary benefit program to federal agencies whose enforcement mission the states have determined doesn't qualify under state eligibility criteria?

The DOJ says yes, pointing to United States v. Washington (2022): a state can't design eligibility rules that functionally discriminate against the federal government. The states say no, invoking the anti-commandeering doctrine and the factual distinction between criminal and civil enforcement. Legal analysts note that the outcome could reshape the boundary between state regulatory discretion and federal operational authority, with implications well beyond license plates. The cases were filed in four separate federal districts, meaning they could produce conflicting rulings and eventually consolidate at the circuit court level or reach the Supreme Court.

The Deportation Data Project's analysis found that ICE arrests in Massachusetts between January 2025 and March 2026 surged nearly fivefold compared to the comparable period under Biden. Immigration advocacy groups argue that the surge in civil arrests without criminal nexus makes the states' civil/criminal distinction not just a legal technicality but a meaningful policy choice about what kinds of enforcement the state is willing to facilitate.