Illegal immigrants registered vehicles in Ohio, report says

COLUMBUS (AP) — Ohio policy allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to register cars and get license plates, and the outgoing director of the state Department of Public Safety delayed a proposed crackdown for more than a year, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Director Henry Guzman, whose last day is Friday, delayed the proposed crackdown after meeting with Latino business owners and those who profited by charging fees to falsify power-of-attorney forms to obtain registrations for illegal immigrants, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Guzman announced his resignation last Aug. 27 because of a feud with State Highway Patrol Superintendent Richard Collins, who also resigned.

Guzman did not know that so-called “runners” — Latinos with legal U.S. residency who collected fees of more than $100 each to get the registrations — were present at a July 31, 2008, meeting to discuss a crackdown on the policy scheduled to begin the next day, officials said. Car dealers, financing and insurance company officials were worried about their bottom lines and undocumented workers’ ability to drive and support their families.

New restrictions didn’t take effect until Aug. 24 of this year. The new policy requires a valid driver’s license number or state ID number for the person receiving the registration when power-of-attorney forms are used.

Guzman did not respond to a request for comment from the Dispatch. Public safety department spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc told The Associated Press Sunday Guzman declined to comment.

Komlanc said the original fix to the policy would have required the individual acting in power of attorney to get copies of the recipient’s driver’s license or state ID, if original information did not match in the state’s database. The policy eventually implemented requires the recipient’s Social Security card, or a different document verifying the number, to be shown to officials if information first submitted doesn’t match in the state’s database.

Komlanc said it was at Guzman’s direction that the department began looking into the policy.

After the new policy’s delay, which was originally intended to last a couple of weeks, dozens of runners obtained an increasing number of license plates for undocumented workers, records show. Bureau of Motor Vehicles investigators found that 47 “runners” used power-of-attorney forms to register more than 600 vehicles in Franklin County in the two weeks after Guzman put the hold on the stricter policy.

U.S. postal inspectors and police in Hammonton, N.J., reported this year that packages of Ohio license plates were frequently mailed to that city and showed up on cars there.

Records reviewed by the newspaper showed that then BMV Director Mike Rankin pushed Guzman and his employees to implement the stricter policy.

“The director has not lifted his moratorium; however, it’s time to move forward as our review does not indicate any significant or compelling business impacts that would justify any delay,” Rankin wrote Jan. 6.

Rankin wrote again June 26: “Henry [Guzman] needs to move on this issue ASAP — no more delays. We have other out-of-state PDs [police departments] reporting in as well on this issue.”

Public safety officials said Rankin and his staff members did not address concerns raised by Guzman and didn’t provide final forms and procedures until June. Rankin resigned as BMV registrar in June after accusing Guzman of interfering with his work. He then became assistant secretary of state.

Rankin declined to comment to the Dispatch, and Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, told the AP Sunday that Rankin declined to comment on the matter.

Komlanc told the Dispatch that the delay in implementing the new policy was driven by “legitimate concerns.”

Officials worried that the new process would be unwieldy and could keep auto dealers and others from easily obtaining vehicle registrations, she said.