Homeland Security officials made false statements in a bid to justify expelling New York residents from programs that let United States travelers speed through borders and airport lines, federal government lawyers admitted on Thursday.
The surprise admission, contained in a court filing, said the inaccuracies “undermine a central argument” in the Trump administration’s case for barring New Yorkers from the programs after the state passed a law enabling undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses.
Federal officials had insisted that New York was an outlier in placing restrictions on immigration authorities from gaining access to state Department of Motor Vehicles records. For that reason, they argued, New York was endangering national security and could not be trusted to participate in Global Entry and related travel programs.
But in their filing on Thursday, government lawyers acknowledged that several other states, Washington, D.C., and some U.S. territories also restricted access to motor vehicle information and had not been subject to such a ban.
Against that backdrop, the filing said, “The acting secretary of homeland security has decided to restore New York residents’ access to the Trusted Traveler Programs, effective immediately.”
The filing came in response to lawsuits filed by New York State and the New York Civil Liberties Union over the decision to bar New Yorkers from the program.
“Defendants deeply regret the foregoing inaccurate or misleading statements and apologize to the court and plaintiffs for the need to make these corrections at this late stage in the litigation,” said Audrey Strauss, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan.
The court filing offered an explanation for the Department of Homeland Security’s unexpected announcement on Thursday that it was allowing New Yorkers back into what is officially known as the Trusted Traveler Program.
The announcement came nearly six months after the department barred state residents from Global Entry and other programs because of the state’s passage of the so-called Green Light law.
Unlike its counterparts in other states, the New York law restricted immigration authorities from gaining access to state Department of Motor Vehicles records without a court order.
When the government moved to block state residents from the travel programs because of the driver’s license law, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo condemned the action as “a form of extortion.”
The dispute escalated over the course of a week, until Mr. Cuomo met with President Trump at the White House in February in hopes of working out a compromise.
The agreement that was reached, which was enshrined in a state budget bill in April, gives the federal authorities access to the motor vehicle records of those applying for trusted-traveler status.
Mr. Cuomo and federal officials said on Thursday that it was the compromise that had paved the way for the announcement that New Yorkers were being allowed to enroll in the travel programs again.
“I am glad that this issue has finally been resolved for all New Yorkers,” the governor said in a statement.
In his own statement, Chad F. Wolf, the acting Homeland Security secretary, said that “we appreciate the information sharing” that enabled the department “to move forward and begin once again processing New York residents” in Trusted Traveler Programs.
Neither man mentioned the court filing and the admissions it contained.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
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