Back in February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) barred New York residents from federal Trusted Traveler and Global Entry program. At the time, the federal government said a New York state law that allowed immigrants who were in the U.S. without legal authorization to obtain state driver’s licenses limited federal access to state records.
New York changed their law in April and the federal government is now able to access the driving records of individuals who are applying for the trusted traveler program. That program is only available to legal residents, so the privacy of New Yorkers with a driver’s license who are not applying for the Trusted Traveler program remains protected.
With that, DHS has announced that New York residents will again be allowed access to all federal travel programs, including Global Entry.
“I am glad that this issue has finally been resolved for all New Yorkers,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Meanwhile, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf made sure to take one more shot at the state law in his statement:
“We appreciate the information sharing to CBP for the trusted travel program, which enables DHS to move forward and begin once again processing New York residents under the Trusted Travel Program. Nonetheless, local New York law continues to maintain provisions that undermine the security of the American people and purport to criminalize information sharing between law enforcement entities.”
Anyway, we wrote back in February, there were over 16 other states that had similar systems set up which would protect the privacy of those living in said states. At the time, DHS suggested that they too may be barred from the Global Entry program and possibly lose TSA PreCheck privileges. Although that hasn’t happened to date, there’s no word if that remains a threat.
Unfortunately for New Yorkers who were in the midst of applying for Global Entry when the program shut down to them, they will have to start the process from scratch. More unfortunately, the reopening of Trusted Traveler programs’ interview centers have been delayed several times due to the coronavirus pandemic and, even now, aren’t scheduled to reopen until at least September.
But at least they can actually apply now, right? 🙂
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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