Colorado DMV swamped with phony papers from illegal aliens

September 5, 2006

In August, more than 1,700 illegal immigrants tried to submit fake documents at Colorado state driver's licenses offices. That was the first month after a tough immigration law went into effect.

Individuals are continuing to try to slip through the cracks, said Michael Cooke, executive director of the state’s Department of Revenue.  Colorado's new anti-illegal immigration laws, enacted this summer, set up a strict identification check meant to deny most public services to undocumented adult immigrants.

At Colorado DMV offices, applicants for state ID cards or driver's licenses, must present birth certificates and immigration papers such as passports and 'green cards' to prove they are in the United States legally. The documents are then run through the federal government’s SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlements) system to verify the applicant's legal immigration status.

Through August, about 2,100 applicants at the Colorado DMV were told their documents needed further investigation. Of those, 177 met with investigators and were cleared as legal residents of Colorado. More than 1,700 cases are still pending.

Cooke believes 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,' he said.

The 1,700-plus names have been sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, she said.

So far through the process, the DMV offices 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.

'We always get a few fraudulent documents here and there, but to see that many since August 1 was of great concern,' she said. 'It appears that there is a market for birth certificates since our new law went into effect.'

Because of the prevalence of fraudulent birth certificates, Cooke last week issued a ruling that local and state agencies no longer will accept birth certificates as proof of citizenship when a person comes in seeking benefits. (DMV, however, still accepts birth certificates.)

It was the third time in a month the ID requirements were changed.

When the new law was enacted, it said anyone who wanted to get public benefits had to have either a Colorado driver's license or state ID, a Merchant Mariner card or an American Indian tribal document.

Soon after, those requirements were relaxed, and new temporary requirements were issued that were supposed to be effective until March. Under them, people could get benefits by showing any number of documents, including a birth certificate, a valid naturalization certificate or citizenship certificate, a court-issued adoption order, or a valid driver's license or ID with the applicant's photo issued by one of 34 states.

In the first week of September, birth certificates were excluded.

At the Denver Department of Human Services Call Center, the volume increased from 32,000 calls in June to 38,000 in August, with many people with green cards and expired passports asking for information about the new laws.