On District's Streets, IDs Peddled to Immigrants

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday , November 14, 2000 ; Page B01

The hustlers, with their hand signals and darting eyes, are a common sight along Columbia Road NW. Their brazen sidewalk operation is part of an expanding industry that supplies much of the market in the Northeast. They keep detailed ledgers describing sales in Boston and Detroit and a business plan to expand to Philadelphia.

Their contraband is not heroin, cocaine or even marijuana. The hawkers instead sell the American dream to immigrants, charging $50 to $250 for forged documents, trafficking identities from street curbs in a language all understand: "You need a green card?" "Psst . . . want a Social Security card?" "Driver's license?"

For years, Los Angeles has been the hub for counterfeit documents. But with the number of illegal immigrants in the Washington area increasing every year--the District alone has the third-highest per-capita concentration of undocumented immigrants in the country--identity hustlers have been trying to break off from the West Coast and establish a regional headquarters in the nation's capital.

"It's about supply and demand," said Warren Lewis, director of the INS regional office that covers Washington and part of Virginia. "There is a large demand out there for workers. The workers have a large need for Social Security cards, green cards and driver's licenses. It's a very lucrative market."

INS agents have launched elaborate undercover operations to crack the stubborn trade. Despite arrests and constant monitoring, investigators believe the same organization keeps springing up, supplying new soldiers after each bust, working the same turf and in the process underscoring how great the demand is for fake identities.

The investigations on Columbia Road have produced reams of court records. Undercover buys by agents and informants are tape-recorded, offering a look into the way the street hustlers work. Federal agents have raided three apartments in Adams-Morgan over the last two years--most recently in March and September of this year--and each time they encounter the same sophisticated operation.

The document mills exist because the market for fake identities is vibrant and growing. In 1997, the last year for which statistics are available, there were about 5 million illegal immigrants in the country, the INS said. As that number grows by about 275,000 annually, more immigrants flock to document mills that churn out high-quality fakes. There are now more than 10,000 document fraud cases nationwide, according to the INS, which began tabulating court cases for the first time this year.

California, Texas and the District rank as the three jurisdictions with the highest percentage of undocumented immigrants, according to the INS. In the agency's 1997 count, there were about 30,000 illegal immigrants in the nation's capital, the 18th-largest population among the 50 states plus the District. The document hawkers also draw customers from the entire region. Virginia has the ninth-largest population of illegal immigrants in the country; Maryland's is the 12th largest.

But unlike customers in Texas and California, the bulk of the buyers in the Washington region have not crossed the border illegally. They are often in trouble because their visas have expired, said INS spokesman Russ Bergeron.

"Washington is a demographically broader city," Bergeron said. "And with all the universities that draw foreign students and travelers from all over the world who come to the nation's capital, there will be a population of people who are here illegally for all kinds of reasons."

And if they are in the market for a fake identity, police said, they can get what they want in Adams-Morgan in the open-air document market at Columbia Road and 16th Street NW. The intersection is widely known in the trade.

"This is sort of a hot spot in the city and the country for illegal documents," said Lt. Keith Hoffman, of the D.C. police department's 3rd District. "People find out where to go by word of mouth; it's all underground. And the way it's organized and worked out is all very similar to the drug trade."

The sellers work Columbia Road, flashing hand signals--a letter L made with a thumb and forefinger or a hand cupped as though holding a card--and mumble their sing-song sales slogan: "Mica. Miiica. Mica." Local residents call the hawkers micas, after a slang word in Mexico meaning any kind of laminated card, investigators said. The buyers are immigrants of various nationalities, particularly Slavs, Asians and Central and South Americans, officials said. Undercover buyers bought fake cards made out in names such as Edgar Mendez and Deng Shao Peng.

There appear to be three levels in the operation: the organizers who are orchestrating the operation from outside the United States, the experienced forgers who have often learned their skills in Los Angeles and the street-level pushers, who are usually young toughs recruited into the operation, Hoffman said.

INS investigators said most of the street dealers who come to the nation's capital are recruited in Mexico City. The trip across the border is organized by a veteran of the document trade who has been deported and now runs the U.S. operation from outside the country. He hires a smuggler called a coyote to help with the set-up.

"The organization works a package deal with these guys," one undercover INS agent said. "They'll smuggle them up here, pay the coyote for the trip. Then every paycheck is split--half goes to the vendor, half goes to his boss who got him here."

Older, skilled forgers work out of apartments. One recently raided workshop had $3 million worth of false documents, sophisticated machines, silk screening tools and bottles, tubes and cans of paint to create an independent factory. Each time the D.C. police and INS conduct a joint raid--in 1998, they seized about 50,000 cards, one of the major hauls nationwide--the counterfeiters are almost immediately replaced by a new crew, Hoffman said.

"It's not a small-scale, localized problem," said William Blier, chief of the transnational/major crimes section of the U.S. attorney's office. "It's a large-scale effort. They are recycling people, moving them in and out of the country. They are very well-orchestrated organizations."

It usually takes about two hours to turn out a document to the buyer's specifications and then to get it through a network of runners, who drop it under a trash can, behind a street sign or at a bus stop. No violent incidents have been linked directly to the trade, but INS agents have found weapons and narcotics during some of their searches.

Unlike drug dealers, who are often in competition even when working for the same organization, document traffickers try to work in concert. "They work cooperatively, not competitively," one INS agent said. They have formal schedules so that everyone shares equally. A seller typically gets a $30 cut from a $70 to $80 sale. The groups keep detailed payroll and schedule books.

The District's most elaborate document gang, which introduced local agents to most of the trade's techniques, was the South Side group. Its members came from the same area of Mexico, and agents followed the operation closely, arresting most of them in 1998.

Juan Penaloza-Perez, known as "Gordo," used to work in a print shop in Mexico City. Most of his document work took place in a one-room apartment on 16th Street that was packed with $125,000 worth of high-tech equipment.

Arturo Flores-Flores was the 18-year-old street-savvy seller singled out by agents for his "aggressive salesmanship." In nine days of surveillance, he sold 42 green cards and 42 Social Security cards. His take: about $2,500, tax-free.

Both men pleaded guilty to fraud charges and are serving sentences. When INS agents shut down the South Side gang's operation, they found ledgers that recorded document sales in Boston and Detroit. Two of the members were arrested in Pennsylvania, where they were planning to expand.

"It's like a franchise," said Marcos Salazar, assistant district director for the INS Washington district, who oversaw the document investigations.

A year later, the operation was back at full strength, with one of the suspected South Side members who eluded police during the first bust working the street again. The INS launched Operation Mica Maker and, after months of surveillance, arrested three men in March. All pleaded guilty.

But the busts did not deter the group. On Sept. 30, during Operation Identity Crisis, five Mexican nationals were arrested at an apartment on 16th Street. The investigations are continuing, and more arrests are expected.

"It's extremely frustrating for these investigators," said Bergeron, who believes the only way to stop the fraud is by creating technologically advanced legal documents that can be verified immediately, like credit cards.

Lewis, the regional INS director, warns immigrants that document fraud is an offense punishable by deportation. But perils are not always known in the immigrant community, said Darryl Price, an attorney at the Spanish Catholic Center, which assists low-income immigrants who have limited English proficiency.

"You don't run across innocent people who really think they're getting legitimate documents on the street," Price said. "Most of them know what they're doing, but . . . don't understand the gravity of what they're doing."

The open-air document market affects a community in the same way the drug trade does, lowering the standard of living, disrupting traffic patterns and shattering a sense of residential community. D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) has often complained to police about the hustlers, who again are working the neighborhood.

"They are back and open for business," Graham said. "You might get a day or two of quiet after the police come, but they're always back, waving, whistling and working their regular hours."