Free Republic

New York City can destroy personal documents associated with its municipal identification program, a judge ruled Friday in a victory for city officials who have sought to protect cardholders from possible deportation. Republican state Assembly members Ronald Castorina Jr. and Nicole Malliotakis filed a lawsuit in December seeking to prevent the destruction of documents, such as copies of foreign passports, used to verify a person’s identity to obtain the IDNYC card. Justice Philip G. Minardo of State Supreme Court on Staten Island ruled against the lawmakers but issued a stay Friday until April 17, pending an appeal. …

The city won’t keep personal records from future applicants for its immigrant-friendly municipal ID cards, even as it has been temporarily blocked from destroying more than 900,000 current cardholders’ records. Mayoral spokeswoman Rosemary Boeglin said Wednesday the city would continue verifying but no longer retain copies of passports, birth certificates, educational records and other documents submitted by new applicants for IDNYC cards. The cards are available to any New York City resident but were aimed particularly at those without other forms of ID, including the estimated 500,000 immigrants living illegally in the city. The fate of cardholders’ documents has become...

When New York City launched the nation’s biggest municipal ID card program last year, advocates said it would help people living in the U.S. illegally to venture out of the shadows. But since Donald Trump was elected president, city officials are instead fielding questions about whether the cards could put those same people at greater risk of being deported. The city has vowed to protect cardholders’ personal records and might even delete them using a kind of self-destruct provision that allows for the information to be destroyed at the end of the year. At least one state lawmaker has criticized...