N.M. Licenses Advertised In N.Y. Paper

This one took out an ad in El Diaro, a Spanish-language daily in New York City, to attract clients for his services facilitating driver’s license acquisition in New Mexico, according to court papers.

The cost of the service: $2,500 to $2,700, plus expenses incurred getting to New Mexico.

The U.S. Border Patrol arrested and charged Jose Luis Aguirre last month with harboring illegal immigrants Elsa Puente-Vasquez of Ecuador and her husband, Luis Sancho-Pachar, along with Edwin Zorrilla-Ordonez of Colombia.

Aguirre’s is the latest case in an international market that has drawn foreign nationals from India, Poland, Brazil, Korea and elsewhere to fraudulently obtain New Mexico licenses.

New Mexico is one of two states that grants driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, the other being Washington. Utah also grants a more-limited driving permit to foreign nationals.

The governor has called on state lawmakers to repeal the law and wants licenses already issued to illegal immigrants to be revoked.

In the Aguirre case, an unnamed “concerned citizen” called authorities about a possible immigrant smuggler having rented two rooms at the Motel 6 near Coors and Interstate 40 on May 11.

The immigrants told agents they had flown in from New York and New Jersey between May 3 and 9 in order to obtain New Mexico driver’s licenses, court documents say.

Aguirre, who had obtained half the payment in New York, met the three at the airport and provided them with Wells Fargo bank statements and DIRECTV statements with New Mexico addresses after they paid the other half.

Then he took them to take written and driving exams at the Motor Vehicle Division office on 98th Street NW.

Documents don’t say whether they actually obtained licenses.

But Border Patrol agents seized Aguirre’s laptop computer and thumb drive at the time of his arrest.

They subsequently obtained a search warrant, filed last week, permitting them to look for business records, client records, foreign and domestic bank accounts, securities, cashiers checks, brokerage houses, letters of credit and business fronts that might be recorded there in connection with the alleged illegal immigrant smuggling and harboring.

Aguirre was released to third party custody after posting a $20,000 unsecured property bond.

— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal