Strong criticism of the Government of Puerto Rico for providing immigrant data to the US

San Juan.- Several political parties and groups of lawyers in Puerto Rico expressed their rejection this Thursday of the island’s government’s delivery to United States authorities of immigrant data for their detention and deportation, a measure considered “a betrayal” of these communities.

The controversy erupted after the disclosure of information of 6,000 foreign residents in Puerto Rico with provisional driver’s licenses to the agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was confirmed yesterday.

The delegations of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) in the House of Representatives and the Senate presented today a legislative piece requiring an investigation into the process followed by the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTOP) to disclose said information.

The data provided by DTOP comes from the enforcement of Law 97-2013, approved with the purpose that residents of Puerto Rico, regardless of their immigration status, could obtain a provisional driver’s license, as a recognition of their contribution to the economic and community life of migrant communities.

The same statute protects the identity of those who obtain such a document, classifying it as confidential, which generated the expectation that the data obtained by the Government of Puerto Rico would not be handed over to U.S. immigration authorities.

“By all accounts, the Government acted illegitimately by divulging information when they were legally prohibited from doing so. But we should not be surprised by this unconditional support from Jenniffer González and her Government,” said PIP Senator Adrián González Costa in a statement.

For her part, Senator María de Lourdes Santiago denounced that “the Government of Puerto Rico, instead of confronting the abuses of Trump’s policies, has surrendered without the slightest resistance, perhaps thinking that with that show of blind loyalty, they gain the favor of the U.S.”

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Also, the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (MVC) expressed its rejection of what happened, which it described as “a flagrant violation of the privacy and human rights of these people and their families.”

Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, General Coordinator of the MVC, pointed out that using the information from driver’s licenses is “an unforgivable betrayal of the trust of thousands of people who acted in good faith.”

“It is even more concerning that this collaboration has resulted in the arrest of people without criminal records, which shows that it is a policy of persecution and not of security,” Rivera Lassén criticized.

For her part, Vivian Godineaux Villaronga, president of the Puerto Rico Bar Association, stated that the delivery of information is “an affront and a violation of the universal right to privacy”.

“There is no obligation for state agencies to collaborate with federal agencies regarding these orders promoted by the Donald Trump administration,” he indicated.

Yesterday, the deputy director of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Yariel Ramos, confirmed on a television program that the González government provided the federal agency with the list of migrants with driver’s licenses who do not have a defined immigration status.

Raids against the migrant community in Puerto Rico, mainly Dominican, began last January, which has led many immigrants to hide in their homes and not go out to work.