On February 25th, 2021, LexisNexis Risk Solutions signed a $22 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, agreeing to provide the Immigration Enforcement Agency with access to over 37 billion records of personal data belonging to immigrants. This contract grants access to personal information including social networking information, credit reports, and license plate numbers. This access to personal data allows ICE and other immigration authorities to locate and track more than a million consumers in the United States.
Immigration advocates filed a lawsuit against LexisNexis Risk Solutions for collecting and selling immigrants’ personal information to federal immigration authorities, thus violating Illinois law. The lawsuit was filed on August 16th in the Circuit Court of Cook County by four immigration advocacy groups. The Cook County Judge is being asked to prevent LexisNexis from selling personal information without consent as many are opposed to this violating strategy of collecting personal data. To elaborate, there is an online platform called Accurint through which LexisNexis sells consumers’ data including correctional bookings, vehicle collision records, and license plate reader databases. This information that has been sold is not publicly available and has been done without consent, therefore posing as a serious invasion of privacy.
