Colorado DMV sets up check on phony papers
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More than 1,700 illegal immigrants have been caught attempting to pass fake documents at Colorado driver's licenses offices in the first month after a tough immigration law went into effect, according to a state official.
"We're seeing evidence of individuals trying to slip through the cracks," said Michael Cooke, executive director of the Colorado Department of Revenue.
Colorado's new anti-illegal immigration laws passed by the legislature this summer set up a strict identification check meant to deny most public services to undocumented adult immigrants.
The Department of Motor Vehicles is on the front line of those checks.
As residents come into DMV offices to get state ID cards or driver's licenses, they're asked to present birth certificates and immigration papers such as passports and green cards to prove they are in the United States legally.
Those documents are then run through the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlements) system to verify the applicant's legal immigration status.
In the past month, about 2,100 applicants at DMV were told their documents needed further investigation. Of those, 177 met with investigators and were cleared as legal residents of Colorado. But more than 1,700 cases are pending.
Cooke says DMV will never see those applicants again because they know their documents are phony.
"We're asking them to go to our investigative unit so we can look into the matter, and we're not hearing back from them," Cooke said.
The 1,700-plus names have been sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, she said.
So far, DMV offices have also caught about 150 people attempting to use fraudulent birth certificates, and that number is climbing. Most of the certificates were authentic, but the person presenting the document was not the individual named on the certificate, Cooke said.
New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division officials discovered a hole in the state's security system recently when a division contract office in Tijeras was found to have issued 100 or more licenses to people thought to be illegal immigrants.
Since February, vanloads of immigrants found an empathetic 23-year-old clerk who took documents obtained elsewhere - many from Kansas - and issued new licenses to the applicants.
Officials learned of the problem only after an electrician working nearby got suspicious of the heavy traffic into the MVD office.
An audit by Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department detectives and the MVD says the clerk issued drivers licenses to at least 100 undocumented immigrants.
Sheriff's detectives arrested four men, all from Guatemala, who told Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that they needed the licenses to get work in Kansas, according to federal court documents.
They spent between $10 and $700 to buy Social Security cards and birth certificates from unknown people in Liberal, Kan., according to the court documents.
Bernalillo County sheriff's Detective Bill Webb said last week those vendors directed the men to travel to Tijeras and find the clerk.
The Tijeras clerk was put on administrative leave, and could be fired pending the outcome of an investigation by the MVD and the Sheriff's Department, said Tijeras Mayor Gloria Chavez.
She said the clerk had been a good employee, and was particularly valuable because she spoke Spanish.
"We never saw it coming at all," Chavez said.
Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Erin Kinnard Thompson said the investigation is not yet complete.
But already, state officials are talking about making it more difficult for immigrants to get state driver's licenses.
MVD Director Ken Ortiz said last week that he and state Taxation and Revenue Secretary Jan Goodwin discussed reviewing the requirements for the 39 contract offices, including stricter oversight of employees.
The Taxation and Revenue Department had already started auditing licenses issued to about 30,000 immigrants to see whether they had proper documentation.
Immigrants can get a driver's license using a single piece of identification. The Richardson administration is considering adopting new regulations that would require two pieces of identification.
