Oregon workers report license applicants for suspicious documents

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon driver’s license workers have begun reporting applicants with suspicious documents to the police, rather than just turning them away.

The intent is to deter people looking for fake identification papers from shopping among driver’s license offices in search of a lax employee.

The new policy has resulted in some arrests, convictions and dropped charges.

From June through August, 140 people were turned in — about 94 percent of them with Latino names, according to Driver and Motor Vehicle Services records obtained by The Oregonian newspaper.

The paper reported that in one case, a Clackamas County woman in the country legally on a visa was arrested, but later her birth certificate was found to be legitimate. And in another, it said, a woman in the country illegally presented her Mexican birth certificate and was arrested on forgery charges. Prosecutors later dropped both cases.

Reporting applicants with suspicious documents was one of the few alternatives for a division charged with providing valid identification but with few tools to curb fraud, said Lorna Youngs, administrator of the agency.

Oregon State Police and police in Portland, Beaverton and Albany, who have gotten many of the referrals, report 13 people have been convicted of crimes, and a dozen others await prosecution.

Suspects have confessed to buying Social Security cards in Montana, Los Angeles and Hillsboro and have admitted traveling from places such as Nevada and California, where illegal immigrants are prohibited from getting state identification, police said.

Dubious documents include Social Security cards, bank statements, consulate cards and out-of-state driver’s licenses, as well as identification from Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Costa Rica and other countries.

“Perhaps a large portion of people that are offending with bogus documents happen to be Latinos,” said Angel Lopez, attorney for the woman with valid papers in Clackamas County. “But it’s equally plausible that Latinos are being ferreted out in the first place because clerks do not understand the validity of documents that seem strange and foreign.”

David Simon, acting consul of the Mexican Consulate in Portland, said the consulate wants the state agency to rely on it to validate certain forms of identification before calling police.

“Before they take steps that affect people’s lives, they should look at other solutions and have other methods to verify documents,” he said.

Youngs said she does not know why so many of those suspected of fraudulent activity by DMV employees appear to be Latino. “If that is an accusation people could level, we would want to address it because that was the last thing that was intended,” she said.

She said the agency will evaluate the procedure after six months and investigate further if Latinos make up the bulk of suspects.