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Penalty for driver license fraud depends on luck and location
Sunday, October 23, 2005
BY JOE MALINCONICO
Star-Ledger Staff
Get caught with bogus documents trying to get a driver's license at the motor vehicle office in the Cardiff section of Egg Harbor Township and the immigration authorities are called.

Do the same thing in Eatontown and you're likely to walk away with a slap on the wrists.

That disparity reflects the lack of a statewide law enforcement policy on what to do with illegal immigrants caught during New Jersey's two-year campaign against fraudulent driver's licenses, an effort that officials say has produced more than 1,500 arrests.

For immigrants, variations in how local authorities treat violators could mean the difference between deportation and a slap.

The randomness frustrates immigrant advocates and groups that want the United States to take a stricter stand on people who are in the country illegally.

"You have different standards applied in different parts of the state -- that's not good for anybody," said Partha Banerjee, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network. "Local police are not supposed to be acting as immigration enforcement. It puts an extra burden on them."

Meanwhile, the main responsibility for enforcing immigration law falls on federal agencies, officials said. State and local police are allowed to assist those efforts.

In New Jersey, the U.S. Attorney's Office, FBI and the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement have conducted several investigations in recent years targeting large fraud rings that produce bogus driver's licenses.

But the Motor Vehicle Commission's efforts have focused on street-level document fraud -- the people who show up at agencies with bogus papers to try to get licenses.

"Obviously, any time an illegal alien presents fraudulent documents to get a driver's license or a commercial driver's license or a hazmat license, it's a serious thing," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for ICE, the federal immigration agency. "That's not just an immigration problem, that's a homeland security problem."

"If we're not notified by the police or the DMV of the arrests, that makes it very difficult for us to track these cases," Boyd said.

Most experts say federal immigration authorities couldn't handle all the New Jersey motor vehicle cases even if local authorities reported them all.

Federal officials, however, say there's a simple a way for local police to check on someone nabbed with bogus papers at a motor vehicle office. ICE's Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont performs 24-hour, seven-day-a-week computer checks on suspects' residency status, including whether someone is wanted by the immigration authorities.

"We don't tell local police what they should do," said Michael Gilhooly, spokesman for the Vermont ICE office. "What we do say is that we have this tremendous resource available that can provide them with a wealth of information."

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, New Jersey law enforcement agencies made 7,396 inquiries with the ICE database, a 24 percent increase over the previous year, Gilhooly said. But there's no way of telling how many of those inquiries involved people arrested at the motor vehicle agencies, officials said.

Immigration advocates says they have heard of a handful of recent cases in which people arrested at motor vehicle offices have faced deportation proceedings. Sharon Harrington, the chief administrator for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, said her department does not track what happens after the arrests are made, nor does it advise local police on what to do.

"That's not our role," Harrington said. "Until there's a policy in place for reporting that to the authorities, it's a bit premature for us to do anything. I'm not saying I'm adverse to it, but it's premature."

Most arrests at motor vehicle offices have stemmed from the new six-point identification requirements that took effect in September 2003, along with the extra training that was given to front-line workers, officials said. The state also has assigned local police officers and undercover investigators in the 45 motor vehicle offices, along with closed-circuit cameras.

Advovates say immigrants end up driving whether they have licenses or not, especially to get to jobs. Therefore, the public would be better off -- and safer -- if illegal residents had to go through a regular driver testing process and were able to get auto insurance. They also say there are flaws in the nation's immigration records systems that make it more difficult to check someone's status.

"We have serious concerns about whether or not some of these documents are really fraudulent and how the laws are being applied," said Amy Gottlieb, of the Newark-based American Friends Service Committee.

New Jersey is one of 39 states that ban illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses. That puts people here illegally in a difficult position, say immigrant advocates. They have to chose between taking the chance of trying to get driver's license with fake documents or risking driving without a license and getting pulled over.

"There's a question of whether states should be enforcing immigration laws with restrictive requirements that force people to resort to fraud just to drive," said Robert Frank, a former president of the New Jersey chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "In a sense, they're trying to do the right thing by trying to get a license, but they're doing it the wrong way."