The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles insists it can effectively spot fraud even though federal prosecutors say a leading immigrant rights activist was able to illegally procure driver’s licenses for years without detection.
Commissioner Andrew Collier declined an interview about the criminal fraud charges made public last month against José Ignacio De La Cruz, a Vermont resident who has helped lead the prominent advocacy group Migrant Justice. In written responses to questions, Collier said he is “confident” in the department’s investigative capabilities.
The department has opened 500 fraud investigations of all types since 2020, but Collier could not say how many of those cases were substantiated nor could he provide any other information about them, such as how many involved the driver’s privilege card program that De La Cruz is accused of exploiting. None of the department’s investigations was prosecuted in criminal court, Collier acknowledged.
De La Cruz’s alleged scheme came to light only after federal agents detained him last summer during a traffic stop in Richford. Border Patrol obtained a warrant to search his phone for evidence of cross-border smuggling. While doing so, agents uncovered evidence that he was charging people in other states $500 to renew their Vermont driver’s privilege cards or take their learner’s permit test, according to court records.
A grand jury in February indicted De La Cruz, who goes by "Nacho," on nine criminal counts, including conspiracies to smuggle migrants across the northern border and produce fraudulent Vermont ID cards. He has pleaded not guilty and was released from prison on bond while the case proceeds.
The driver’s license scheme took place from 2022 to 2025, the indictment alleges. De La Cruz is specifically charged with helping five people deceive the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles. However, court records note that investigators found 83 transactions between De La Cruz and the DMV, including seven in a single day last May. He mailed the ID cards to customers in states as far away as Georgia, prosecutors say.
Migrant Justice championed legislation to create the driver’s privilege card program in 2013 and later sued the Department of Motor Vehicles to stop its staff from coordinating their fraud investigations with federal immigration agents.
Now a member of Migrant Justice’s coordinating committee is accused of taking advantage of the program.
In an interview, Migrant Justice spokesperson Will Lambek said the group’s other leaders were not aware of any efforts to illegally obtain driver’s privilege cards.
“That's not something the organization does, and it's not something we would ever do,” he said.
The program
Vermont was one of the first states to create a type of driver’s license that does not require applicants to prove they are in the country legally. Migrant Justice led a lobbying effort to pass the bill. The 1,500 or so migrant dairy workers in the state couldn’t access basic services without the ability to legally drive, supporters said.
The proposal overcame racist tropes about migrant workers’ ability to drive and concerns that it could be a magnet for fraud.
The program proved popular, both with immigrant workers and U.S. citizens in Vermont who wanted a license but did not want to submit all of the documentation required for a REAL ID. The state issued more than 50,000 driver’s privilege cards in the first few years.
The Department of Motor Vehicles also spotted hundreds of falsified applications.
Privilege card applicants do not need to prove their immigration status, but they do need to demonstrate that they reside in Vermont. The DMV’s investigative unit identified more than 350 fraudulent applications during the first two and a half years, VTDigger reported at the time. Most involved people who lived in other states but claimed Vermont residency — in some cases paying middlemen thousands of dollars to help.
The DMV commissioner at the time, Rob Ide, recalled instances in which the department was asked to mail numerous driver’s privilege cards to the same address.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out something doesn’t smell good,” he said of those early cases.
Ide said he and his staff were worried that a hypothetical bad actor could use a fraudulently obtained driver’s privilege card from Vermont to illegally obtain other documents or privileges in other states.
Even in the program’s early days, the department did not typically pursue criminal charges. It issued a civil ticket with a small fine or simply invalidated the privilege card, then-lead investigator Drew Bloom told VTDigger in 2016.
While scrutinizing applications, however, DMV staff often contacted federal immigration authorities. Some DMV employees helped arrange for federal agents to detain applicants at their DMV office appointments, according to internal emails that were later made public. In one instance, an ICE agent joked to an employee that the official should be named an “honorary ICE officer!”
The state’s Human Rights Commission sued the department after finding that it had discriminated against a Vermont resident from Jordan who applied for a card in 2014. The man’s application was legitimate, but the department opened a fraud investigation and appeared to work with ICE to have him detained.
The state settled the case and pledged reforms, but the department’s collaboration with ICE did not entirely cease.
Migrant Justice, represented by the ACLU of Vermont, filed a second lawsuit alleging that DMV officials had unfairly targeted Latinos and other people of color for greater scrutiny. The lawsuit referenced emails in which DMV employees referred to “South of the Border” names or people who “appeared Mexican.”
The settlement
The sides settled the case in 2020. The legal agreement created new limits on when DMV employees could communicate with federal immigration authorities and required department employees to undergo implicit bias training.
It also spelled out how the DMV would handle driver’s privilege card applications.
The agreement specifically barred the department from making copies of most documents submitted as part of an application — including when the documents used to prove residency were not “appropriate.”
In such cases, the settlement states, “the applicant will be advised that the documents provided do not meet DMV standards and the documents will be returned to the individual.”
The process for handling residency documents differs notably from that of false identity documents.
“If an employee suspects an identity document (not residency document) is fraudulent, the document will be copied, and an investigation will commence,” the settlement states.
Collier said the settlement provision does not hinder his department’s ability to investigate residency fraud in the driver’s privilege card program. Asked how the department investigates those cases if it returns the fraudulent documents and does not make copies of them, Collier declined to elaborate.
“DMV is unable to provide information relating to its investigative procedures,” he wrote.
None of the parties involved in the settlement would discuss the clause in detail. In a brief written statement, ACLU of Vermont Legal Director Lia Ernst said the settlement was designed to protect Vermonters’ privacy by “ensuring the state is only collecting or storing essential information about residents” and limiting “collusion” with immigration authorities.
Lambek, meanwhile, said Migrant Justice did not see the provision as “a key piece of the settlement.” He noted that the clause does not prevent department employees from rejecting an application they believe is suspicious.
“The Vermont DMV should take appropriate measures, as they do, to ensure that the documents being presented by people are valid and true,” Lambek said. “That scrutiny should apply equally to everybody, regardless of national origin or immigration status.”
A decade ago, when the department faced public scrutiny for its collaboration with ICE, the then-investigator Bloom told VTDigger that he worried his colleagues would become reluctant to follow up on fraudulent applications.
“It would be a real shame to let something get through because of being afraid to do our normal investigative process,” he said at the time.
Asked if department officials investigate residency fraud in the driver’s privilege card program with the same vigor as other cases, Collier replied with one word: “Yes.”
