Thread: FL: A license to catch illegal immigrants

Brent Batten: A license to catch illegal immigrants
By Daily News staff

Saturday, March 24, 2007

The big knock against local resolutions against illegal immigration, like the one Collier County commissioners passed two weeks ago, is that they are ineffective.

Immigration enforcement is a federal matter. A local proclamation calling on Washington to do more carries about as much weight as the paper it’s written on.

But away from the cameras of the County Commission chamber, Collier County government is doing something about illegal immigration. It’s fairly simple, available to all counties in Florida and could make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to blend into society.

Yet only a handful of counties are making the effort.

The Florida driver license is a virtual passport for immigrants in Florida. Possession of one bestows instant credibility on bearers, allowing them not only to drive a car but also to cash checks with a minimum of hassle. With both visible and invisible security features, it is difficult to forge. The documents required to obtain a driver license, on the other hand, are easier to simulate. So a common practice is to obtain false documents, use those to get a driver license, then rely on that license to function.

Collier County Tax Collector Guy Carlton and Sheriff Don Hunter have teamed up to challenge that practice at the choke point — the driver license bureau. Since 2000, Carlton has been a licensing agent for the state Division of Driver Licenses, taking over the job from state employees.

Hunter has stationed a deputy at the main driver license office on Airport-Pulling Road. Part of his job is to act when license examiners spot questionable documents.

While all license examiners in Florida — those working for county tax collectors and those working for the state — are trained to look for suspicious papers, the presence of a deputy gives Collier examiners a chance to do something more than turn the applicant away. In the most egregious cases, the offender can be arrested and taken to jail.

Carlton reports that 594 arrests were made at Collier driver license offices last year. Most of those cases involved individuals who showed up without a license, were unable to get one, and drove off, leading to a charge of driving with a suspended license. But Steve Wagner, manager of Carlton’s driver license operation, estimates that about 50 arrests were for presenting forged documents to obtain a license, a felony.

Additionally, deputies working at the license bureau made 2,875 inquiries to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or I.C.E. Not all immigrants applying for a driver license are subject to an I.C.E. inquiry, only those who show up with incorrect or incomplete documentation. The I.C.E. inquiry lets the officer know if there is a problem with the applicant’s immigration status while the applicant is still there.

While positioning a deputy where illegal immigrants are likely to show up looking for an unimpeachable I.D. card might seem like common sense, Carlton says he knows of only one other county — St. Johns — that does so.

“It takes a tax collector and a sheriff that are concerned and interested to make the effort,” Wagner said.

Local governments intent on doing something about illegal immigration can do better than weightless resolutions.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/mar ... ts/?latest

I am thoroughly convinced that Lee County, specifically Fort Myers, Cape Coral and Bonita Springs are unpublicized sanctuary cities. At least Collier County and Sheriff Don Hunter are trying.