A judge on Friday criticized the Nevada DMV’s response to public records requests for its communications with federal immigration officials, ordering the agency to provide all documents unredacted for her review and sworn declarations about its record-searching process.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada filed a lawsuit in August alleging that the DMV failed to disclose public records related to interactions with immigration officers. The agency took months to respond to the ACLU’s request, and the group says it eventually turned over heavily redacted or incomplete documents with no specific explanations of why certain information was blacked out.

The incomplete information raises additional questions about what information the DMV might share with immigration officials. The agency is prohibited from sharing personal information for the purpose of federal immigration enforcement under a 2023 law (AB407).

Nevada is one of 19 states that allow undocumented people to get driver authorization cards, which give driving privileges to people who cannot meet identity requirements for a standard license. It was unclear whether the communications dealt with driver authorization cards because of the redactions, Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, previously told The Indy.

Carson City Judge Kristin Luis also ordered declarations about the agency’s use of the encrypted messaging app Signal — which auto-deletes messages in a practice that could run afoul of state law requiring that public records be maintained — that was mentioned in one of the records. She said all of these documents must be provided by next Friday.

The DMV has argued that it provided all the information it found in its search for records, and that any confidential information was redacted.

But Luis said on Friday that “in my review of the redactions, I don’t understand it.”

Previously, the DMV said it did not communicate with immigration officials, but records show correspondence with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. The attorney general’s office, which is representing the DMV, said it did not know how the agency made the determination that it does not interact with immigration officials.

“Somebody needs to go on record swearing or affirming that this is what they've done, these are the steps they've taken,” Luis said. “I’m concerned about how we’ve gotten to where we are after the initial statement of, ‘We don’t communicate with immigration,’ and then we have documents that say differently."

The ACLU also asked for civil penalties against the agency, which Luis said she was leaning toward.

The case is one of several lawsuits filed by the ACLU regarding federal immigration practices in Nevada. It is challenging Las Vegas police’s partnership with ICE, as well as a Trump administration policy regarding detention practices of people facing deportation.

“The public deserves to know the level to which the DMV is communicating with ICE,” ACLU lawyer Sadmira Ramic said at Friday’s hearing.

The ACLU filed its initial request for all DMV communications with ICE last February. Months went by without receiving any records, and the ACLU later narrowed its request and sent a demand letter to the attorney general’s office.

The records provided indicate that certain communication with ICE occurred via fax and Signal. One email shows an ICE official asking a DMV employee to add someone to a Signal chat.

Abigail Pace, a lawyer with the attorney general’s office, argued on Friday that official agency business is not conducted on Signal, and that the DMV does not have access to Signal chats, while the ACLU said existing court decisions indicate that public records go beyond what is included on government servers.

Luis said the email mentioning Signal is “hard to dispute.”

“It doesn’t feel like it’s a mystery document,” Luis said. “It feels like it’s a mystery practice.”