The second Donald Trump administration brought a civil action against New York over provisions in the state’s “Green Light” law, which allows New Yorkers to obtain a driver’s license regardless of immigration status, announced Trump’s new attorney general, Pam Bondi on Wednesday afternoon, Courthouse News reports. New York's 2019 Green Light law allows undocumented immigrants in the state to get driver’s licenses and prevents federal immigration authorities from accessing DMV data without a warrant. Bondi alleges that the state law is “unconstitutional." “They have a tip-off provision that requires New York’s DMV commissioner to promptly inform any illegal alien when a federal immigration agency has requested their information," she said. New York state Attorney General Letitia James disagrees. “Our state laws, including the Green Light law, protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe," she wrote in a statement. "I am prepared to defend our laws, just as I always have.” The DOJ complaint, which was not immediately made available on Wednesday afternoon, names James as a co-defendant along with New York Governor Kathy Hochul and DMV Commissioner Mark J.F. Schroeder, Bondi said.
Bondi, tapped by Trump in November to be the country’s top lawyer, framed the civil enforcement as a companion litigation to a similar case filed last week against the state of Illinois over Chicago's Welcoming City ordinance, which bars city agencies from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement actions. "We did it to Illinois. Strike one. Strike two is New York, and if you're a state not complying with federal law? You're next,” Bondi, who was confirmed last week, said at the D.C. press conference. Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, called the New York lawsuit “an affront to the 10th Amendment, which clearly allows states to make and follow their own laws.”