Oregon officials who recently blocked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from receiving undercover state license plates won’t extend the restrictions to all federal law enforcement, including other agencies that assist immigration enforcement operations.
Gov. Tina Kotek’s office announced last week that Oregon’s Driver and Motor Vehicles division would block ICE agents from receiving undercover plates, citing “repeated violations of state and federal law by ICE agents and the need to protect community trust and public safety.”
Though the U.S. Department of Justice sued Oregon over the decision in May, DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said the move would insulate the agency from litigation under state law.
“We cannot expend state resources to assist in federal immigration enforcement,” Joyce said in a statement. “We need to follow state law and protect taxpayers from legal risk.”
Joyce said the DMV would, however, continue to provide the FBI, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Marshals Service undercover plates “where there is not risk of breaking state law,” despite data and lawsuits showing the agencies are increasingly working on immigration enforcement actions. The Oregon DMV originally began reviewing its undercover license plate program on April 15, pausing the issuance of the plates to all federal agencies.
But the U.S. Marshals Service, for instance, has been at the center of two recent lawsuits against local Oregon law enforcement agencies over sanctuary law violations. In a settlement in one of those cases brought against the Columbia County Jail by immigrant rights advocates, the jail agreed to update its policy on cooperation with the Marshals Service to prevent the detention of Oregonians solely for immigration-related crimes such as illegal entry.
The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office is facing a similar lawsuit over detaining in county jails individuals apprehended by the U.S. Marshals Service. The Oregon State Police are also facing a state sanctuary lawsuit over their data sharing agreements with federal law enforcement and immigration authorities.
“While Oregon is right to not use state resources to enforce federal immigration law, they make a mistake when they still enable federal criminal law enforcement agencies to operate undercover in Oregon more effectively with undercover plates,” Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative, said in a statement.
The U.S. Marshals Service, tasked with apprehending fugitives and protecting federal court officials, has increasingly undertaken immigration enforcement actions under the Trump administration, according to data compiled by the Prison Policy Initiative.
It’s the result of a January 2025 U.S Department of Justice directive that authorized the Marshals Service, DEA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to perform the functions of an immigration officer under the powers of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Around one in five members of the Marshals Service have been tapped to conduct immigration enforcement arrests under the Trump administration, according to the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.
Kevin Glenn, a spokesperson for Kotek’s office, defended the governor’s decision to block undercover license plates solely for federal immigration agents in a statement.
“Federal law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Marshals, have legitimate needs that do not conflict with state sanctuary law,” he wrote in an email. “The governor does not want to impede efforts that ensure public safety and that is why she asked that DMV restrict access to undercover license plates only to those agencies that primarily conduct immigration enforcement.”
But some legal experts question whether targeting just one agency could hurt the state’s case when it goes to court over the federal lawsuit.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a professor of law at Ohio State University, said Oregon officials will need to explain how they are applying standards for offering the undercover plates “uniformly and objectively.”
Blocking only one agency from access to undercover plates could “seep right into the Trump administration’s position that it (the state) is violating non-discrimination principles by targeting DHS specifically,” García Hernández said.
Unmarked vehicles unaddressed
Advocates also question whether the decision to revoke covert plates from federal immigration agents will go far enough. Though they can continue to operate with their federal fleet plates on Oregon roads without violating any state vehicle laws, some federal immigration agents have operated with unmarked vehicles when detaining people throughout major American cities.
“Undercover license plates aren’t the end-all-be-all of keeping immigration enforcement out of communities,” Bertram said. “For example, in Chicago this last fall, ICE wasn’t even bothering to use license plates at all.”
The Trump administration has claimed its agents are subject to a dramatic rise in doxing and threats, though it has yet to provide transparent data substantiating that claim or explaining how its own federal plates are traceable to the individual identities of federal agents, who often wear masks or facial coverings.
It’s unclear how exactly the state could push back on unmarked vehicles. Chris Crabb, a DMV spokesperson, said that Oregon is a two-plate state requiring both front and back plates but that the DMV does not solicit reports about violations from the public as it is “not an enforcement agency.”
Attorney General Dan Rayfield has also launched a tip line for reporting violations of the law by federal agents. The information could be used during criminal inquiries into federal agents, state records show, though in March Rayfield declined to pursue an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court involving a federal DEA agent who ran a stop sign and killed a cyclist in Salem.
Crabb encouraged residents to report potential license plate law violations to a non-emergency phone line for local police, though many Oregon police officers have expressed hesitancy at directly impeding or challenging the actions of the federal government.
“We have no authority to enforce two plates on a vehicle, same with expired registrations and trip permits,” Crabb said in a statement. “That authority belongs with law enforcement.”
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