Supreme Court Again Denies DTOP’s Attempt to Keep Subpoena on Immigrants Hidden

San Juan, P.R. – The Puerto Rico Supreme Court again denied the petition filed by the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTOP, in Spanish) seeking review of lower court determinations that concluded that the subpoena that led to the voluntary disclosure of data belonging to thousands of immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a public document. The determination keeps in effect the order requiring the document to be turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Puerto Rico.

“This resolution from the Supreme Court confirms, once again, that the Secretary of DTOP has an obligation to make public the alleged subpoena and any document tied to the voluntary disclosure of the personal data of thousands of immigrants in Puerto Rico, to whom the government itself had promised confidentiality under Act 97 of 2013,” said Annette Martínez Orabona, Executive Director of the ACLU of Puerto Rico.

The ACLU of Puerto Rico filed a lawsuit on October 1, 2025, after DTOP Secretary Edwin González Montalvo refused to comply with a public information request submitted by the organization to learn how the agency handled and responded to the request made by ICE to the state agency. After an argumentative hearing, the Court of First Instance ordered DTOP to turn over the subpoena — a request issued by an agency or administrative authority — holding that the document was not confidential, as DTOP had claimed. The agency failed to comply with the order and, instead, went to the Court of Appeals, which in January affirmed the determination of the Court of First Instance. DTOP then turned to the highest judicial forum.

The Supreme Court had already issued a denial on April 27 in response to the petition for certiorari filed by DTOP. The DTOP Secretary, who is represented by the Department of Justice, then filed a motion for reconsideration, which was addressed by a three-justice panel composed of Chief Justice Maite Oronoz Rodríguez and Associate Justices Erick Kolthoff Caraballo and Ángel Colón Pérez. The resolution with the new denial was issued on June 5 but was notified last Friday, June 12. The agency may still file a second motion for reconsideration.

“Our call to the DTOP Secretary remains the same: comply with the order to turn over the document, in recognition of the unequivocal conclusion that the information he is trying to keep hidden is public, and that the country has the right to know how and why decisions are made, in this case related to immigrant communities in Puerto Rico,” said Fermín Arraiza Navas, Legal Director of the ACLU of Puerto Rico.

By turning over the information to ICE, the DTOP Secretary endangered the safety of the thousands of immigrants who trusted the Government of Puerto Rico when, in 2013, a legal process was created so they could obtain a driver’s license and were promised that their information regarding immigration status would not be used for immigration purposes. Twelve years later, the administration of Governor Jenniffer González Colón failed to comply with what the state law itself established by turning the information over to ICE, the ACLU of Puerto Rico stated.

“In Puerto Rico, the right of access to information is recognized as a human and constitutional right of fundamental rank,” the Court of Appeals emphasized in its decision issued in January. “We determine that the subpoena that is the object of the information request submitted to DTOP by the ACLU is a public document subject to disclosure,” the Court of Appeals held.

That conclusion also confirmed that DTOP and the Department of Justice attempted to hide behind generalities about “ongoing investigations” and “public safety” to conceal a document that should never have been secret. In that sense, the ACLU of Puerto Rico reiterated that both ICE’s request for information and DTOP’s voluntary disclosure respond to an operation of persecution against immigrants who trusted the State when applying for a driver’s license.

The Court was explicit in rejecting the idea that the local government was barred from disclosing the subpoena and stressed that the government could not identify “the existence of any statute or regulation, federal or local, that prohibits a person who receives a federal subpoena from disclosing it.”

Similarly, the Court of Appeals rejected the government’s narrative that disclosure of the document would affect an alleged ongoing investigation. “We are not dealing with a document whose disclosure could in any way affect the course of an investigation,” it noted.