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Axios

Illinois officials say Texas breached abortion protection law

Illinois officials say a Texas sheriff has violated a law meant to protect people seeking abortions in the state, but all parties involved say the breach was a mistake rather than ill intent. Why it matters: In 2023, Illinois became the first state to make it illegal for law enforcement to use automated license plate readers, or ALPR, to track or penalize individuals seeking abortions or to criminalize a person's immigration status. Catch up quick: Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced this month that a Texas sheriff's office searched more than 80,000 ALPR cameras in search of a woman whose family said had a self-administered abortion. Suburban Mount Prospect was one of the Illinois police departments searched. Between the lines: The Mount Prospect Police Department said in a statement it didn't know the department had opted into a feature that allowed other law enforcement agencies, including the one in Texas, to search its ALPR data. What they're saying: "I am tremendously upset that some law enforcement agencies who agreed to follow Illinois law, in order to gain access to our ALPR data, conducted illegal searches violating the trust of our community," Mount Prospect chief of police Michael Eterno said in a statement. "As disappointed as I am with these other agencies, I want to emphasize that no member of the Mount Prospect Police Department shared ALPR data in violation of the law." The other side: The license plate readers' operator, Flock Safety, says since learning of this incident in May, it has blocked 47 law enforcement agencies from accessing Illinois ALRP data if it "conducted multiple searches using reasons impermissible under Illinois law." The company also launched a tool that requires a law enforcement agency to list a reason why it's searching the database, and if it's for reasons permissible by law, such as abortion, the searcher is blocked. Zoom in: Johnson County, Texas, Sheriff Adam King told 404 Media, who first reported the story, that they were searching for the woman for her safety. "We weren't trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion," King told the outlet. Axios left a voicemail for the sheriff but hasn't heard back.