Federal immigration agents are still reaching Washington state driver data to make arrests, despite state limits meant to block that sharing, according to an updated report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR), reported by The Urbanist, Focal News and the Fremont Neighbor. Researchers say they confirmed 356 arrest incidents between August 1, 2025 and October 13, 2026 that resulted from federal agents receiving Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) driver data through Nlets, the interstate law-enforcement querying system.

"We know that 356 is likely only a small fraction of the total cases that are happening," UWCHR Director Angelina Godoy said at a press conference, according to The Urbanist. "Those are just the ones where we were able to confirm it with smoking gun evidence connecting a given plate search to a known immigration arrest." Focal News reported the researchers also found more than one million successful searches by immigration enforcement, while noting that figure does not establish how many searches led to arrests. The report describes the method plainly: an agent spots a vehicle, runs its plate through Nlets to pull DOL records, cross-checks the owner's name against federal databases, and can make an arrest within minutes or hours.

Washington's Keep Washington Working Act, passed in 2019, generally bars state agencies from sharing information for civil immigration enforcement, and the UWCHR report says officials have been aware of this data-access pathway since at least 2018. The report examines four routes to driver information — DOL records, law-enforcement networks such as Nlets, private data brokers, and cooperation from local or state agencies. Through the Static, summarising the report, said Washington blocked ICE from using Nlets beginning in November 2025 and Homeland Security Investigations in January 2026, but Customs and Border Protection agents remain permitted, and researchers found multiple cases in which queries under CBP identifiers preceded arrests carried out by ICE teams — suggesting, in the researchers' account, that ICE continued to access the data through CBP. That is the researchers' finding, not a court ruling.

The report landed as neighbours in Seattle's Fremont area reported recent ICE stops, including an October 13 arrest in the Emmanuel Church parking lot at Phinney Avenue North and North 49th Street, across from KapKa Cooperative Elementary School, where eyewitness video showed agents breaking a car window, the Fremont Neighbor reported, adding that the Seattle Times also reported the arrest and that it remains unclear why the man was detained. Researchers and immigrant advocates are urging stronger safeguards, including judicial warrants for access, Focal News reported. Federal officials have said they will not detail operational tactics for security reasons, according to reporting summarised by Particle News. For Washington's large immigrant and Punjabi communities, the finding matters directly: a state driver's licence — which Washington issues regardless of immigration status — can, on the researchers' evidence, become the starting point of an immigration arrest.

Sources: University of Washington Center for Human Rights report via The Urbanist, October 2026; Focal News, October 2026; Fremont Neighbor, October 2026; Through the Static summary of the UWCHR report, October 2026.