Government Database May Be Aiding Trump Administration's Deportation Efforts

Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, January 13, 2026

• A little-known database controlled by the San Diego Association of Governments has long concerned local privacy advocates. Now, as we enter the second year of President Trump’s deportation campaign, advocates are more worried than ever about how federal immigration agents use that data. 
• Under state law, California residents can demand that data brokers stop selling their personal information. But there hasn’t been a way to submit these requests en masse – so consumers would have to complete each opt-out form individually. Now, the state has launched a website that offers one stop shopping for opting out.

How A SANDAG Database Might Be Aiding Trump’s Deportation Campaign

Local privacy advocates are raising concerns about an obscure database managed by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) that might be allowing President Donald Trump’s deportation forces to circumvent state and local immigrant sanctuary laws.

For an annual fee of roughly $200,000 SANDAG grants immigration enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), access to the database, which is known as ARJIS. The database contains information from every law enforcement agency in San Diego County — which includes traffic citations, arrest records, field interviews, a local jail census and some driver license records.

Local police agencies have shared data with their federal counterparts through ARJIS for decades. But now, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics are raising new questions about what exactly is being shared with the federal government. “It is not always great to share data because sometimes you don’t know what the motivations of those people might be,” said Seth Hall, a privacy advocate with the TRUST SD Coalition.

Advocates are particularly worried that ARJIS does not have enough independent oversight protections in place to prevent agencies like CBP from using it to go after San Diego’s immigrant population. “We are at a time where the Trump administration is attacking all immigrants — people with status, people without status, with no criminal record,” said Homayra Yusufi, a senior policy strategist for the Partnership of the Advancement of New Americans (PANA). “CBP and HSI are literally just out there to find as many individuals to detain and deport as possible.”

SANDAG has several restrictions in place aimed at preventing federal agents from using the database for immigration enforcement. The database requires users to enter a valid reason for each search, like a case number. And ARJIS added a disclaimer on the login screen telling users not to use it for immigration enforcement purposes. But it’s unclear whether federal agencies are following those rules because SANDAG does not have the authority to run independent audits. SANDAG declined to make Anthony Rey, the director of ARJIS, available for an interview. A spokesperson told KPBS that ARJIS’s user agreement prevents SANDAG from conducting independent audits. Instead, audits only happen when agencies voluntarily audit themselves or when the California Department of Justice requests one.

How Californians Can Use A New State Website To Block Hundreds Of Data Brokers

The California Privacy Protection Agency kicked off 2026 by launching a tool that state residents can use to make data brokers delete and stop selling their personal information.

The system, known as the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP, has been in the works for years, mandated by a 2023 law known as the Delete Act. Under it and previous laws, data brokers must register with the state and enable consumers to tell brokers to stop tracking them and selling their information.

Until now, those instructions had to be delivered to each data broker individually — not an easy feat, given that more than 500 brokers were registered in the state as of the end of last year. Making things even more difficult, some brokers obscured their opt-out forms from search results, as The Markup and CalMatters revealed in August. The new system delivers privacy instructions to every registered broker at once. Launched on January 1, it is open to all California residents. By law, the hundreds of data brokers registered with the state must begin processing those requests in August.