Wednesday Morning Rant

Another day, another story about ICE arresting an illegal alien who was given a CDL. Unlike the last flurry of stories about this where many of the drivers had a printed name of "NO NAME GIVEN" on their CDLs, this one does include the person's name: Akhror Bozorov. He's not only an illegal alien, he's an illegal alien who is wanted as a terrorist in his native country of Uzbekistan but was released into the country by the Biden Administration.

Like last time, however, neither DHS nor the issuing state (the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in this case), nor the press outlets covering it bring up an uncomfortable fact about these CDLs. Last time around, most of the pictures of licenses issued to Messrs. Given were REAL ID compliant licenses. So, too, was the license given to Bozorov. His REAL ID was probably fraudulent. Non-citizens may be issued them legally, but only if they have official status - green card (permanent resident), valid visa, DACA (I know) or TPS (I know). It is unlikely that Bozorov had any of these.

As any real citizen - that is, a second-class citizen - knows, you have to provide gobs of paperwork to get a REAL ID. Multiple forms of identification and citizenship status must be provided, or you don't get one. The fair Commonwealth skirts around that with their boilerplate response to inquiries as published in the linked article:

"When non-citizen applicants appear at a Driver License Center in Pennsylvania, PennDOT reviews immigration and naturalization documents, which are confirmed in real-time against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) website before issuing any driver's license. PennDOT is prohibited from publicly disclosing information about an individual's driver record due to state and federal privacy laws."

Pennsylvania is attempting to frame this as "we gave a license to an alien after following our internal procedures for doing so and it was legal from our standpoint" and passed the buck to DHS. So one of two things must be true:
1. The Commonwealth is telling the truth. It did its due diligence and DHS told them "all good here. He's an alien with one of the qualifying legal statuses (permanent resident, visa holder, etc.) and you're all good to issue him a REAL ID from the federal standpoint."
2. The Commonwealth is lying and they either didn't vet him through DHS, or they did vet him and issued him a REAL ID illegally.

Who is lying here? Did Pennsylvania fraudulently issue Bozorov a REAL ID while knowing that he was an illegal alien, or did DHS give them them the go-ahead to do so? Why do DHS and the press never comment on the distressingly common problem of the complete failure of the REAL ID system? That system is in place explicitly to avoid this. The cumbersome (and potentially unconstitutional) mess that is the entire REAL ID program is there to ensure that those without long-term legal status are not given official documents that allow them to impersonate having official status.

Someone is lying here, but either way, it invites an uncomfortable conclusion: REAL ID doesn't work. Whether its requirements are being ignored by the states or whether its requirements are being ignored by the feds, the fact remains that the requirements are being ignored. The press can be forgiven for missing this, because press men are all retarded. DHS cannot. They know the score and their extraordinarily loud silence on the issue requires explanation.

If the problem is with the states, why are they not revoking REAL ID certifications from states that do this and invalidating their existing REAL IDs? If the problem is with the feds, why are they not just scrapping the REAL ID program altogether because it is clearly unfit for purpose as well as burdensome? If it's both (and that would be my guess), then the program is clearly pointless.

To ask, in all likelihood, is to answer. That may well be why nobody is asking.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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