A18 eZ re THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAy, MARCH 2 , 2020
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ARYLAND HAS been known for a century
and half as the Free State. That nickname
has taken on sinister connotations with
the disclosure that federal deportation
agents have run roughshod in recent years through
the state’s driver’s license database with no prior
approval, no notification and no intermediary: Free
to snoop. Free to disregard privacy. A nd free to track
undocumented immigrants even if they’ve lived
here for years without running afoul of the law.
An eye-opening report by The Post’s Drew
Harwell and Erin Cox revealed that Maryland,
apparently alone among states, has granted unfet-
tered access to its database of driver’s license
photos for agents from U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement to run searches using facial
recognition technology. That’s troubling on several
levels.
It’s useful to remember the reason Maryland
decided to grant driver’s licenses to unauthorized
immigrants in the first place: public safety.
The legislation enacted in 2013 reflected a
recognition that tens of thousands of unauthorized
immigrants, many of whom had led settled liv es inMaryland for years, needed to drive (and in many
cases were already driving, albeit without a valid
license). Given that need, lawmakers sensibly
decided it was better they be required to take a
driver safety test and be licensed and insured.
Allowing those migrants special licenses — some
275,000 have been issued in the past seven years —
ensured minimum safety standards, while simulta-
neously extending migrants the economic lifeline
that driving often confers.
Ye t by granting ICE agents round-the-clock
access to run facial recognition searches in its
database of drivers’ photos, Maryland subverts the
legislation’s purpose; it ensures that many undocu-
mented immigrants will no longer seek licenses. If
Maryland wanted to force migrants back into the
shadows, this is an effective way to do just that.
Although ICE agents have accessed the database
dozens of times and were enabled to run searches
on millions of Marylanders’ driver’s license photos,
no state official seems to know the reasons for the
searches or who may have been identified. For its
part, ICE says the searches were mainly meant to
target child exploitation and cybercrime, not used“routinely” for civil immigration enforcement. But
who knows?
In o ther states, ICE has been required t o ask s tate
officials when it wanted to run searches in similar
databases of driver’s license photos. Maryland
alone has maintained an open-door policy, appar-
ently dating back nearly a decade, to an era when
facial recognition software was far less potent.
Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, is wary of
provoking the Trump administration by limiting
access to driving records, a s New York state recently
did. The administration retaliated by banning New
Yorkers from applying for Trusted Traveler pro-
grams, including Global Entry.
Maryland lawmakers must therefore proceed,
marrying principle with common sense. Lawmak-
ers in Annapolis are advancing bills to limit federal
access to state databases. Those measures will work
if they align Maryland’s procedures with those of
other states. States should cooperate with federal
law enforcement in investigating serious criminals;
it’s another matter to grant federal agencies carte
blanche access to records without regard to privacy
or policy priorities.An open door to snoop
By granting ICE agents access to drivers’ photos, Maryland forces immigrants into the shadows.
T
ERRORIST violence is escalating across a
broad swath of West Africa. In parts of Mali,
Niger and Burkina Faso, al-Qaeda and the
Islamic State have joined forces to mount
assaults on army bases and i mpose control over large
rural areas. A ccording to the United N ations, terrorist
attacks in the three countries were five times greater
in 2019 than in 2016, and caused more than 4,
deaths. The Pentagon’s Africa Command reported
last month that it had been pushed onto the defen-
sive, w hile France — t he leading Western power in the
region — has dispatched more troops and asked its
European a llies for help.
Amid all this, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper is
reportedly weighing a drastic change in U.S. deploy-
ments. No, not reinforcements, such as the t housands
of troops who have recently been dispatched to the
Middle East. Instead, Mr. Esper is reportedly consid-
ering a major reduction of the U.S. presence, includ-
ing the closing of a recently completed $110 million
drone base. It’s a senseless option t hat would damage
important U.S. alliances, open new opportunities in
Africa for China and allow the strengthening of
jihadist movements t hat still aspire to launch attacks
against t he United States.
Mr. Esper’s considerations are part of a broader
review of U.S. military deployments, including else-
where i n Africa. O ne aim is to realign U.S. r esources to
focus more on threats from big powers, especially
Russia and China, in keeping with the national
security strategy formulated by the Trump adminis-
tration. That is reasonable. But West Africa, where
some 1,400 U. S. personnel are deployed at the puny
annual cost of $45 million — .005 percent of the
Pentagon b udget — i s the wrong place to start.
It’s not only that the United States would be pulling
out just at the moment when jihadists are surging. By
doing so, it would disable the French and other inter-
national forces that are carrying most of the burden.
France has had about 4,500 troops in Mali since 2013and now is sending 600 more. B ut they depend heavily
on U.S.-supplied intelligence, aeriel refueling and oth-
er logistical support. The French say they are working
to fill the gaps in their own capabilities b ut are unlikely
to do so soon; French President Emmanuel Macron
has called the U.S. support “irreplaceable.”
As a result, a U.S. drawdown could leave West
African countries w ithout e ffective international sup-
port against the terrorists. Five countries — Mali,
Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Mauritania — are
working to build a counterterrorism force of 5,troops, with U.S. aid. But they are not yet able to
contain a l-Qaeda a nd the Islamic State on their own.
Mr. Esper’s mooted African pullout has drawn
bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill, and we under-
stand that some senior officials elsewhere in the
Trump administration are questioning it. But the
Pentagon chief reports to a president who is evidently
eager to boast about bringing A merican soldiers home
from “endless wars” d uring his reelection campaign. If
such short-term political calculations win out, it will
be at t he expense of long-term U. S. security i nterests.A bad U.S. option
in Africa
The Pentagon is considering a troop
pullout at the wrong moment.ABCDE
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the Washington Post
1301 K st. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 (202) 334-Regarding the Feb. 28 editorial “Mixed messages
on coronavirus”:
The Trump administration has exposed Ameri-
cans to the coronavirus through carelessness and
negligence. Against the protests of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, in January, the
administration ordered Americans with coronavi-
rus to fly on the same plane with uninfected people.
These Americans were flown to March Air Reserve
Base in California, where Health and Human
Services had ordered more than a dozen of its
federal employees to meet and interact with these
coronavirus patients. These federal employees —
who were given no appropriate protective equip-
ment or special health training — raised concern
that this was dangerous to do. And, while in
California, these unprotected feds moved freely
about the military base where the quarantined
coronavirus patients were k ept. T hese feds s tayed in
local hotels, and then they boarded planes to fly
back to the cities from where they came to return to
work. None of these feds was tested for the
coronavirus, and they were told to keep quiet. And
now we see t he coronavirus has infected s omeone in
California not far from March Air Base.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute
of Allergy a nd Infectious D iseases, was told he is not
allowed to appear on weekend television shows to
answer questions. The White House intends to
control all information releases about the coronavi-
rus.
These actions taken by the White House and
HHS have put Americans at risk. Is past perfor-
mance an indicator of future performance? I hope
not.
Tom Bickerton, ViennaActing White House chief of staff Mick
Mulvaney accused the media of exaggerating the
seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak, arguing
“it’s n ot t he same as the Ebola c risis.” Unfortunately,
he’s right. In any serious U.S. public-health risk
assessment, coronavirus is not the same as Ebola.
It’s much, much worse.
Ebola devastated West Africa in 2014 and 2015,
but it never spread to the rest of the world. During
the entire epidemic, a total of three people became
infected with Ebola outside of West Africa. All three
were health-care workers caring for critically ill
Ebola patients. Of the 7 billion people who were not
Ebola intensive-care unit nurses and did not go to
West Africa, not one contracted Ebola. Contrast
that with today. Covid-19 has already spread to
40 countries. It has killed thousands. The numbers
rise every day.
Though we don’t yet know how much it will
impact the United States, coronavirus is clearly a
much greater threat to this country than Ebola was
five years ago. This should be easy to understand for
anyone with some basic science knowledge and an
interest in facts. Unfortunately, President Trump
and his chief of staff appear to have neither.
I an Warrington, WashingtonI recently returned to the United States after
spending five weeks in Asia (China, Cambodia,
Thailand and Korea) and, a couple of days later,
presented with the coronavirus symptoms. I sched-
uled an appointment with my doctor and was
diagnosed with a sinus infection. When I did not get
better after a week, I requested testing for coronavi-
rus (my colleagues insisted) and was told by my
doctor and the infectious disease specialist that the
facility does not have the test and that they don’t
have a protocol for patients with the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
administers the testing but, at that point, would
only test people who were in direct contact with
someone with confirmed coronavirus. How would I
know t hat with any certainty? I was in busy airports
with thousands of people and on airplanes for
30 hours.
I was told to wait and call again if I still don’t feel
well. I can’t help but wonder how misreported and
misrepresented the coronavirus cases are in this
country. The president noted how “tremendously”
prepared we were, which is a lie. If 100 people with
symptoms called the same facility in Northern
Virginia last week, they would have been told to stay
home, wait and use a nasal spray and a cough syrup
twice a day.
Boryana Boncheva, South Riding, Va.Mr. Trump’s coronavirus response
Regarding the Feb. 27 front-page article “ICE
given free rein on Md. driver’s license data”:
Do I have this right? In 2013, defying federal
guidelines, Maryland became the first state on the
East Coast to issue driver’s licenses to undocument-
ed immigrants. Now, a few years later, Maryland is
the only state that permits Immigration and
Customs Enforcement to conduct warrantless scans
of the license database and hunt down undocu-
mented immigrants. And ICE conducts its hunt
with photo-matching technology that can’t be
trusted to distinguish a dog from a cat.
Did ICE exploit some loophole left by well-mean-
ing but careless Maryland legislators? Or did the
Hogan administration quietly green-light ICE’s
photo-matching subterfuge?
Lynn Marble, RockvilleMaryland is helping ICE
T
HE SUPREME Court hears one of its most
important oral arguments of the current term
on Wednesday, and much more is at stake
than policy o n the p erennially d ivisive issue —
abortion rights — at the heart of the litigation. The
court’s integrity itself will be on trial. All Americans,
and certainly all nine justices, should favor a ruling
consistent with precedent — and the vital principle
that constitutional rights do not vary according to
which p arty g ets to nominate members of the c ourt.
In 2 016, the Supreme Court struck d own a Te xas law
that required doctors who perform abortions at out-
patient clinics to have “active admitting privileges” at
a hospital no more than 30 miles away. The unstated
but clearly intended effect of the statute was to impose
a condition clinics could not meet, thereby shutting
them down. By a vote of 5 to 3, the justices ruled that
the law’s ostensible medical rationale was hollow and
that it created an “undue burden” o n women’s r ight to
choose an abortion, contrary to precedent.
Nevertheless, in January 2019 the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit,
dominated by Republican appointees, finalized a
ruling upholding a Louisiana law nearly identical to
the recently rejected Te xas one. The 5th Circuit
justified its defiance of the Supreme Court by noting
operational differences b etween the two states’ medi-
cal systems; but the main difference between 2016
and 2018 was the election of Donald Trump as
president and his empowerment to appoint justices
who oppose Roe v. Wade.
Now you can see why the technical legal issues in
the case, complex and weighty as they are, pale in
comparison to the real question: whether the Su-
preme Court will reverse a freshly minted pro-choice
precedent after the justice who cast a fifth and
deciding vote for it in 2016, Anthony M. Kennedy,
retired in 2018 — and Brett M. Kavanaugh replaced
him. The good news, so far, is that the chief justice,
John G. Roberts Jr., has acted as if w hat matters most
is the rule of law. In February 2019, he joined the
court’s more liberal justices to block implementationof the 5th Circuit decision pending the d ecision of the
cases t hat will be a rgued March 4.
There is some question as to how Chief Justice
Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, who dissented from
the chief justice’s stay order a year ago, may rule now
— w hen f aced with the temptation to deal a body blow
to Roe v. Wade, as the party that elevated them to the
bench so fervently wishes. The correct response is
clear, however, as the chief justice implied by voting
for the stay and as two of his colleagues would also
agree if the words of their dissenting opinions from
the court’s 2016 ruling against Te xas mean anything.
“Unless the Court abides by one set of rules to
adjudicate constitutional rights, it will continue re-
ducing constitutional l aw t o policy-driven v alue judg-
ments until the last shreds of its legitimacy disap-
pear,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote. To which Jus-
tice Samuel A. Alito Jr. added: A “patent refusal to
apply well-established law i n a neutral way is indefen-
sible and will undermine public confidence in the
Court a s a fair and neutral arbiter.”The court’s integrity on trial
Precedent should win in the upcoming abortion case.
ABCDE
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are under consideration for publication will be contacted.I was sorry to read about the Jan. 30 death of
Joshua Brooks, the e ngaging DJ on WHFS radio [“DJ
gave D.C. respite from To p 40 with Spiritus Cheese
trio,” o bituaries, Feb. 27]. My f riends and I enjoyed his
inspiring playlists for the many years he was on the
station. Brooks, along with the many other DJs on
WHFS, opened our ears to rock, jazz, folk and alt
country, keeping us up to date on the exciting music
scene.
After I read the obituary for Brooks, I reread the
2009 obituary of Don Dillard of WDON radio in
Wheaton. He was the soundtrack of my years in Belt
Junior High School, playing great rock-and-roll such as
Del Shannon, James Brown, the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones and the Drifters. It b rought to mind the “Bama”
of WPFW, who, along with the many volunteers at t hatstation, turned me on to
many blues artists.
They still keep me up to
date with the jazz
world. Now we also
have WOWD in Ta koma
Park playing the tunes.
And there’s the great
soul AM station WOL
and the alternative
WHMC.
Anyway, thanks to
the Brooks obituary, I
was reminded of how I
received my m usic education.
Paul Lojewski, Berlin, Md.A DJ who opened ears to all kinds of music
al seVIlla/
C ourtesy of feast your ears fIlms
Joshua BrooksSome additional points to the Feb. 25 National
Digest item “Grand Te ton suspends aerial hunting of
goats”: The only reason the National Park Service is
killing the mountain goats from helicopters in
Grand Te ton National Park is to please trophy
hunters. American trophy hunters prefer the larger
horns of bighorn sheep over mountain goats, and
when animals step outside our small national parks,
they can be shot by trophy hunters. Mountain goats
are not an introduced species to the Wyoming
mountains. People saw them back in the 1800s.
There is no evidence of any disease transmission
between mountain goats and bighorn sheep.
Fred Domer, AnnandaleStop killing mountain goats