Americans can't help feeling duped by the Real ID emergency! The deadline for all states to adopt Real ID hits its deadline this week, and it was a 20-year-long slog. Among the reasons it took so long is that intransigent sanctuary states refused to treat illegal aliens like anything other than citizens. That meant the identifications of all of their citizens became immediately suspect. Deals had to be made. Sanctuaries had to be honored.
I wrote an explainer about this in my story called These Are the People You Can 'Thank' for Real ID.
Joe Biden allowed illegal alien "asylees" to enter the country on Air Biden by using criminal arrest warrants for ID, among other things. On the ground, cartels supplied the different types of fake IDs that Biden's NGOs pretended were real identification. It's one reason passports were piling up on the Mexico side of the border. Cartel operators told these people paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to have Kilmar Abrego Garcia pick them up and drive them to their new "home."
In Biden’s world of using arrest warrants as ID, which he allowed his Air Biden passengers to use, lack of documentation was obviously not an impediment to getting inside the U.S. No one had any idea who these people — terrorists? — were.
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If you’ve followed the illegal alien issue for more than a week, you understand that “illegal alien” is or was a term of art in the law. Furthermore, the left calling these people “undocumented” is a laugh riot. Illegal aliens are among the most documented people around.
I didn’t say these documents were legal or real. In Portland, Ore., back when ICE was allowed to work before precious Pdx became a sanctuary for criminals, they found a document factory in the Su Casa parking lot. Have you ever had your Social Security number hacked? Or discovered a dead relative's SSN is being used? Illegal aliens are among the biggest purveyors of identity theft this side of Nigerian princes getting COVID unemployment benefits from Gavin Newsom. That's a lot.
PJ Media VIP members may, though not likely, remember the busted driver’s license factory in Oregon back in the day. This seems like a good time to remind Americans of how the state looks the other way to get driver's licenses into the hands of people who broke into our country.
Enter the Robleto case from 2005 in Oregon.
Immigration activists were responsible for getting any media traction for this scandalous case, and I thank them.
Though The Oregonian was way late to this racketeering, immigration fraud, and tax case, I’ll use its quickie tick-tock of the case in its story about Miguel Robleto being found not guilty of racketeering in his family’s driver's license business:
"Clearly, crimes were being committed," [the judge] said in announcing his verdicts. "People were being brought up here from California, up here from Nevada, and out here from New York for the sole purpose of getting an Oregon driver's license that they were not entitled to."
In November, Washington County Circuit Judge Steven L. Price found a third brother, Miguel F. Robleto, 47, not guilty of racketeering and 159 counts similar to those against his younger brothers. Miguel Robleto operated Drive Master Education in Hillsboro.
Eight people, including Miguel Robleto's daughter, pleaded guilty to racketeering and forgery charges involving the third-party testing companies run by the brothers under contract from Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicle Services.
Those who pleaded guilty admitted selling envelopes with fake Portland area addresses as proof of Oregon residency or falsifying driver's test applications for illegal immigrants they ferried to La Unica and Drive Master Education from other states.
Oregon is one of the few states that does not require someone to be a U.S. citizen to obtain a driver's license; applicants need only show proof of Oregon residency.
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Oregon driver's licenses can be used here or in another state or traded for a license elsewhere. Licenses allow their holders to open bank accounts, earn credit cards, board airplanes, and apply for jobs and government services.
"In today's society, there are some real red flags that have to emerge for everybody despite the fact that there were acquittals," said Kevin Neely, spokesman for the Oregon attorney general, after Tuesday's verdict.
This was 2005 Oregon: fake "driving schools" cranking out fake exams, fake IDs, and fake addresses. Where do you think the motor voter ballots went after some of these people were automatically registered to vote? Those concentrated addresses went to empty houses, motels, and the like.
Oregon kept up the automatic registration until our PJ Media colleague, J. Christian Adams, and his Public Interest Legal Foundation, found 1,200 illegal voters on the rolls in 2024.
Earlier this year, Oregon resumed automatic voter registration — which is rife with problems — when it fixed the "clerical errors" that allowed foreign documentation to be used to prove U.S. citizenship. Yes, really.
Oregon still allows illegal aliens to get driver's licenses, but Oregon swears it's not Real ID.
Do we have to take your word for it, Oregon? Does our entire Real ID superstructure rely on your clerks telling the country the truth? Leftists possibly lying? Naw, never happen.
As then-congressman Ron Paul put it during the debate over Real ID, "To me it's sort of like the gun issue. Conservatives always know that you don't register guns. That is just terrible because the criminals won't register their guns. But what are we doing with this bill? We're registering all the American people! And you want to register the criminals, and the thugs, and the terrorists!"
I just checked on Miguel Robleto's LinkedIn the other day.
He's still teaching drivers how to get a license.
