To support illegal immigrants in a lawsuit against the government, a police chief in a major U.S. city has signed a sworn declaration endorsing an easily forged Mexican identification card known as “Matricula Consular” as a valid form of ID.
As incredulous as this may seem it’s a real case coming out of Austin, the capital of Texas and the nation’s 13th most populous city. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo has actually provided a federal court with a signed affidavit declaring that the Mexican ID cards, which are not accepted by the government because they’re not secure and are extremely susceptible to fraud, are indeed a valid form of identification in the United States. Some might ask what the good chief, an officer who has sworn to uphold the law, smoked before submitting such an outlandish statement to a U.S. court.
Chief Acevedo filed the legal document to help out a group of illegal immigrants who delivered anchor babies in Texas and earlier this year sued the state for denying them birth certificates because they failed to provide proper identification. The women claim in their federal court lawsuit that the Texas Department of State Health Services illegally interfered with the federal government’s authority over immigration and committed constitutional discrimination when it refused to issue birth certificates for their babies. “By denying the Plaintiff children their birth certificates, Defendants have created a category of second-class citizens, disadvantaged from childhood on with respect to health and educational opportunities,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants are acting beyond the scope of their authority in denying birth certificates on the basis of the parents’ immigration status.”
The state agency was simply abiding by the law in not accepting a Mexican ID because it does not meet government standards in this country. In congressional testimony a few years after 9/11 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that, after extensive research, the U.S. government determined the Matricula Consular is not a reliable form of identification “due to the non-existence of any means of verifying the true identity of the card holder.” This allows criminals to fraudulently obtain the cards, the FBI told Congress, because Mexico only requires “documents of very low reliability.” As a result the cards pose criminal and terrorist threats in the U.S., including opportunities for terrorists to move freely within the country without triggering name-based watch lists that are disseminated to local police.
None of this seems to matter to Chief Acevedo, who insists the Mexican cards are a valid form of identification in the United States. A local newspaper quotes him saying “I have yet to know of any occasion where this card has been compromised or this card has been a problem for our police department,” the chief said. “We’ve accepted it for many years now, and it’s a great way of identification.” He indicated that he filed the court document supporting the illegal immigrant mothers to build trust. “What people forget in this country is that the eyes and ears of law enforcement are the community,” Acevedo said. “When my immigrant community trusts this police department, when they trust the police chief, the officers, they come forward to stand for their neighbor.” Then the police chief of the nation’s 13th most populous city proceeded to say something incredibly alarming: “What I love about this card is that it is a guarantee from the Mexican government that the bearer of the card is the person who is identified.”
Judicial Watch has reported extensively on the controversy surrounding the Matricula Consular, including attempts by liberal lawmakers to pass legislation that would put the cards in the same class as a U.S. government-issued identification. JW has also reported that, despite their serious security flaws, the Mexican IDs are a widely accepted form of identification to open accounts at banks across the nation, including major financial institutions.
