DEPORTM.
It’s a message one Maryland driver wanted to share with everybody on the road using a vanity license plate. But sometime after the plate was spotted in Bowley’s Quarters in Baltimore County, the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) yanked it.
A photo of the DEPORTM plate, taken June 7, was shared with WYPR. MDOT declined a request for an interview about it but it confirmed that the plate is no longer on the vehicle.
“This plate and several variations have been added to the ‘objectionable’ vanity license plate list,” according to a statement from MDOT.
When someone requests a vanity plate, according to MDOT, the “objectionable list” is checked before it’s issued. Several thousand banned license plate messages are on that list.
DEPORTM is now on the list and is categorized as “political hate.”
There are a number of reasons why a vanity plate can be placed on the “objectionable list” so it can’t be used, including if it communicates a message of any kind about race or ethnic or national origin.
A DEPORTM plate stirred controversy in Utah in 2020, during the first Trump administration.
Jason Gardner with the Utah Tax Commission said once it was brought to their attention they immediately revoked it. Gardner said a plate can’t disparage any group based on their national origin.
“We definitely take it pretty seriously,” Gardner said. “We don’t want to create any road rage with anybody based on something that might be on the license plate.”
MDOT officials would not say when the Maryland DEPORTM plate was first issued or if they were aware of what happened in Utah.
Gardner said Utah has its own “black list” but occasionally an objectionable plate gets issued.
“And then we rely on the public to inform us of a plate that might have slipped through the cracks,” Gardner said.
Del. Ashanti Martinez, a Prince George’s County Democrat and chair of Maryland’s Legislative Latino Caucus, said MDOT made the right decision to yank the plate because it was dehumanizing to immigrants.
“License plates that are issued by government mean that they carry the weight of the state’s approval,” Martinez said. “When plates say things like ‘deport them,’ I believe they send the wrong message.”
Martinez said the state needs to look at how it was possible for the plate to be approved in the first place.
“Ultimately if changes do need to be made, I’m hopeful that this next legislative session or maybe the administration will take the initiative to make those improvements,” Martinez said.
