The signs are popping up at Latino markets throughout Columbus.
“Necesitas ride?” one asks in a mix of English and Spanish. “I’ll take you wherever you want.”
For a fee, the impromptu taxi services offer transportation to undocumented immigrants who were forced to park their cars because they could not prove legal U.S. residency.
Some are transferring “ownership” of their cars to family members or friends who are legal U.S. residents so that they can remain on the road in legally registered vehicles.
Those without friends or family members here are turning to strangers, paying them $300 to $500 to title vehicles in their names so immigrants’ cars carry valid license plates.
Some businesses that employ undocumented immigrants are shuttling their employees between homes and workplaces in vans.
Other immigrants simply have given up, packing up and moving to states where it’s easier to register vehicles.
The fallout from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles’ cancellation of 42,503 vehicle registrations on Dec. 9 has been life-changing for illegal immigrants, many of whom are Latino.
BMV figures suggest that more registrations were revoked in Franklin County than any other county in the state. (Nearly 21,000 vehicles registered in the county were threatened with cancellation. The actual number canceled is unavailable.)
It’s no longer easy for some families to get to work, school, the doctor or the grocery. The canceled license plates on their cars now serve as a beacon to police and as a potential one-way ticket out of the United States.
As part of a crackdown on improper vehicle registrations by immigrants, the BMV scoured its computers and came up with 47,457 questionable registrations.
It then told those vehicle owners to show up at a BMV office with an Ohio driver’s license or ID card or proof of a Social Security number to verify their identities and update their registrations. Nearly 5,000 people did so.
The remainder, largely undocumented immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, now drive at their own risk. If stopped for driving an unregistered vehicle, they face arrest and potential deportation.
A bid by a Latino organization to obtain a court order to prevent the BMV from canceling registrations failed on Dec. 7, sparking a fear-induced scramble.
“They think this is the end of the world,” said Dennis Muchnicki, a Dub- lin immigration attorney who is continuing to press the lawsuit challenging the BMV’s action. “People are fleeing like crazy.”
Muchnicki might amend his action in Franklin County Common Pleas Court to seek class-action status and demand that the BMV return millions of dollars in fees to Latinos whose registrations initially were accepted.
Joseph Mas, a Columbus lawyer and leader in the Latino community, estimates that up to 10 percent of the city’s immigrants have departed. “They don’t feel welcome and feel as a community under siege,” he said.
Mas described the BMV’s move as the first by a state agency to result in the “institutionalism of racism.”
State officials reject the notion of discrimination or an illegal foray into immigration status, saying Latinos were not asked to do anything that is not required of all Ohioans seeking to register vehicles.
On Spanish-language radio and at a legal clinic last week, Mas and other lawyers counseled immigrants to transfer vehicle titles to legal friends and family members who then can obtain valid license plates.
But there are risks in the strategy, both for those doing a friendly favor and those demanding hundreds of dollars from Latinos who have nowhere else to turn.
The new “owners” of such vehicles are financially responsible for damage or injuries caused in any crashes. And they could be sent to jail for up to six months if they knowingly allow an unlicensed driver to drive “their” cars.
An undocumented immigrant from Nuevo Leon, Mexico, is among those who have paid to stay on the road. “We put our plates in the name of another lady we know,” she said. “We paid her $500.” The woman, who requested anonymity because of fear of deportation, also pays insurance premiums on the car to protect the new “owner.”
“People are paying whatever for their cars because they’re indispensable,” she said in Spanish. “But we’re still exposed, because if they stop you and ask for a driver’s license, they can deport you.”
State officials do not know how many immigrants have been caught driving cars with recently canceled license plates.
State law requires sheriff’s offices and local police agencies to seize revoked license plates, but it does not allow the State Highway Patrol to repossess plates.
Thousands of cars were registered by “runners,” legal U.S. residents who demanded fees of $100 or more to use falsified power-of-attorney forms to register vehicles on behalf of immigrants.
A young father and undocumented immigrant from Durango, Mexico, blames the runners for prompting the BMV crackdown.
The man, who declined to give his name for fear of deportation, said that runners made their living processing plates for immigrants, regardless of their clients’ ability to identify themselves.
“You’d pay $200 or $300 for plates and they didn’t take any ID, and people are driving around with plates in God-knows-whose names,” he said in Spanish.
rludlow@dispatch.com
sczekalinski@dispatch.com
