08/04/2007

News / DPS responds to foreign nationals obtaining fake licenses

AUSTIN – It was the ultimate Dallas vacation package, at an unbeatable – and criminal – price.

For $500, the all-inclusive, immigrants-only tour included an airport pickup, two nights at an area motel and a crucial souvenir: a fraudulent Texas driver's license.

The trips were a hot sell.

Nearly 400 foreign nationals – most of them Middle Eastern, and half of them living illegally in the United States – took advantage of a gaping hole in Texas' driver's license requirements between 2003 and 2005, before federal authorities caught up with Isaac Banai, the Israeli-born taxi driver accused of orchestrating the scheme.

But despite warnings from federal immigration officials and the U.S. attorney's office, the Texas Department of Public Safety waited more than a year to cancel the licenses – the result of an e-mail miscommunication, the agency says, and questions over whether the department had the right to invalidate them.

While DPS has changed its driver's license requirements since the abuse, officials close to the investigation say the agency's perceived indifference in getting the ID cards back or checking for similar fraud in the system has riled federal authorities and Gov. Rick Perry's office.

DPS officials say it's not indifference. They have no jurisdiction to go traipsing across the country retrieving canceled licenses, though they've been more than willing to work with other states. But with 21 million driver's license or identification card records in the state system, they say, it's not realistic to search for patterns indicative of other fraud rings.

"The governor hopes no state agency charged with the security of our citizens takes a cavalier approach as if 9/11 never happened," said Perry spokesman Eric Bearse. While there's no indication the applicants had any interest other than overstaying their visas, he said, some of them "come from countries with ties to terrorist activities."

"Four of the 9/11 hijackers had valid driver's licenses," he said. "A driver's license in the wrong hands can get the wrong people on an airplane, or another place where security is paramount."

Federal investigators say that Mr. Banai, a U.S. citizen by marriage, knew that for many foreign nationals in the country on six-month tourist visas, a valid driver's license is key to staying past the expiration date.

He also knew Texas issued licenses to people with a passport and a visa, officials say. Unlike many other states, Texas didn't require I-94s – immigration papers that ensure a visa is current.

For two years, the 44-year-old hawked his driver's license vacations, including posting advertisements in an Israeli newspaper in New York, according to a 32-count indictment. Most of his clients were Israeli, but he also had customers from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and several countries in Europe and Central America.

They flew to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, paying Mr. Banai $500 to pick them up, take them to a Motel 6 and spend two days training them to pass the written and driving portions of the state license test. When he escorted them to apply for their licenses, the clients listed the Motel 6 address and phone number as their current residence.

After passing the test, the clients returned to their homes in New York or New Jersey.

Mr. Banai is accused of negotiating with Motel 6 employees to hold the clients' mail and sending the IDs to the clients when they arrived – a cycle he allegedly repeated 398 times between 2003 and 2005. He was caught after federal immigration officials saw the newspaper advertisements and tracked him back to Dallas, where he was indicted on charges of inducing illegal immigrants to reside in the United States, money laundering and mail fraud, among others.

Mr. Banai pleaded not guilty and is out on bail until his October trial. If convicted, he could face a sentence of 470 years in prison and up to $8 million in fines. Mr. Banai did not return phone calls to his residence and to Kelly Cab, the taxi business to which he is linked. His attorney declined to comment on the case.


Losing patience

Federal authorities never blamed DPS for issuing the fraudulent driver's licenses, even though they believe the agency was violating its own policies.

But they've grown increasingly impatient with the agency over the last 18 months, a high ranking official close to the case said, for not doing more to resolve a mess that it facilitated.

All parties agree that DPS should have canceled the licenses in early 2006.

Six months later, while DPS was still trying to decide what to do, U.S. Attorney Richard Roper contacted Mr. Perry's office, citing the "significant problem" he was having getting DPS to cooperate, according to a letter written by Steve McCraw, Texas homeland security director .

Still, DPS officials didn't move until January 2007, when they got a letter from federal immigration authorities asking them to take action. Rather than canceling the licenses, they asked the U.S. attorney's office for a letter directing them to invalidate the ID cards.

The U.S. attorney's office sent an e-mail order – instead of the postmarked letter DPS was anticipating – that got lost in the shuffle, said Judy Brown, chief of the DPS Driver's License Division. By the time the agency figured it out and canceled the licenses, it was May 2007.

"It was absolutely unintended, and as soon as it was detected, we began working with the pace this type of situation required," Ms. Brown said. "We dropped the ball internally. We absolutely had a miscommunication."

Federal authorities also are frustrated that DPS has yet to retrieve the fraudulent licenses, despite an order this spring from Mr. Perry's office to work with New Jersey and New York to make that happen, a spokesman for the governor said. Nor has it checked records for patterns that might reveal foreign nationals getting driver's licenses sent to similar addresses, he said.

"That's the most disconcerting thing," Mr. Bearse said. "Who else knew about this flaw in the system, and who else has exploited it?"


A difficult task

Ms. Brown said, there's no way to physically get the ID cards back, unless the holders show up at driver's license offices in their home states. DPS has given officials in New York and New Jersey a list of those with fraudulent licenses so that they'll be apprehended if they try to use the Texas ID to reapply, she said.

DPS officials say they don't have the means to cross-reference the current database for similar cases, but Ms. Brown said the agency has searched the criminal history of those who fraudulently obtained a Texas driver's license.

The action is too little too late, officials in the governor's office say.

At no point has the agency used the Texas Data Exchange, a controversial law enforcement database with information on more than a million Texans, to track down the individuals with fraudulent licenses, DPS officials said. The database, which came under fire during the last legislative session, has become a political tug-of-war between DPS and the governor's homeland security office.

Despite criticism of their response time, DPS officials said they moved quickly to close the driver's license application loophole in February 2006. The action came about a month after the agency learned of the Banai case – and less than a year after Congress passed the Real ID Act. The act goes into effect in December 2009 and sets national standards for state-issued driver's licenses, including requiring proof that applicants are in the U.S. legally.

An internal dispute remains at the agency over whether employees were even following state policy when they issued the licenses.

Ms. Brown of the Driver's License Division said in an interview this week that at the time Mr. Banai was allegedly operating, a passport and a visa without an I-94 form were sufficient to get a license. Today, an I-94 is mandatory with a visa in all but a few circumstances.

"We believe we were following policy as it was laid out at the time," she said.

An e-mail from DPS general counsel Mary Ann Courter to the U.S. attorney's office in Dallas appears to contradict this assertion.

DPS' issuance of the licenses using merely passports and visas "was not even in compliance with the version of [the administrative code] in effect at the time," the e-mail says. It also indicates that no type of foreign passport was supposed to be used as a primary document for obtaining a driver's license.
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com
Source: http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/080407dnmetdps.35b0c90.html

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