Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to replace her as the vice presidential candidate for the Party of Jackson. So where does Walz stand on immigration? Let’s first look at the governor’s championing of a recently enacted law, which enables illegal aliens to obtain valid Minnesota driver’s licenses — notwithstanding concerns that such insecure documents assist aliens posing national-security risks to evade scrutiny and apprehension, concerns that federal law has attempted to address, but that Walz’s signature will exacerbate.
Driver’s Licenses for Unauthorized Aliens. Conservatives were hot out of the gate after Harris’ announcement to highlight Walz’ gubernatorial efforts to provide benefits to the estimated 81,000 unauthorized aliens living in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
Most recently, in March 2023, the governor signed a bill “expanding eligibility for a standard Minnesota driver’s license by allowing Minnesotans, regardless of immigration status, to obtain a license”.
As he explained his decision in a press release at the time:
Ensuring drivers in our state are licensed and carry insurance makes the roads safer for all Minnesotans ... . As a longtime supporter of this bill, I am proud to finally sign it into law, making our roads safer and moving us toward our goal of making Minnesota the best state to raise a family for everyone. [Emphasis in the original.]
Oxymoronic “Law-Abiding Illegal Aliens”. That’s a common argument politicians offer when they weaken state laws in order to allow illegal aliens to receive driver’s licenses, but it’s internally illogical and inconsistent.
The main — if not only — beneficiaries of that Minnesota law are aliens unlawfully in the United States, which by definition means they’ve ignored at least one law, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and usually a raft of others. “Law-abiding illegal alien” is a contradiction in terms.
Logically, up to the point they could apply for a driver’s license, one of the laws they were violating was the one requiring they have a proper driver’s license and insurance to operate a motor vehicle.
Thus, if they fail their newly allowed driver’s license exams, they’re likely to keep driving without a license because that’s what they have been doing to this point. Given that you usually have to possess a driver’s license to get auto insurance, they’ll likely skip that requirement, too.
The Insurance Argument. Speaking of that insurance requirement, nothing stops newly authorized illegal alien drivers from simply allowing their coverages to lapse once or after they obtain their licenses, because they have fewer incentives to comply with that law than lawful aliens and citizens in Minnesota do. Let me explain.
My home state requires licensed drivers to have and maintain auto insurance, and like most residents I comply with that requirement for two reasons: (1) I’ll be prosecuted, fined, and possibly incarcerated if I’m caught without coverage; and (2) I’ll face significant financial liability if I cause an accident and don’t have coverage.
If I’m prosecuted or convicted, I’ll have to appear because otherwise the sheriff will come to my house and arrest me, and I’ll have to pay any fines because otherwise the state will seize my property and garnish my wages.
Illegal aliens, again by definition, can’t work legally, which will make it difficult if not impossible for the state to attach their wages (especially if they’re working under the table), and they’re less likely to have the sort of tangible property (like real estate) the state could attach.
Plus, if they’re illegally present in Minnesota, they could just disappear and live illegally someplace else where the sheriff is less likely to find them.
Both of those points are relevant to the personal tort liability issue, as well.
If I cause an accident, am sued, and lose, I’ll have to pay because otherwise the successful aggrieved plaintiff will — like the state in the example above — seize my property and attach my wages.
Illegal aliens, however, are usually what tort lawyers refer to as “empty pockets”, individuals who either don’t have any assets or whose assets are difficult to seize. That’s why in many cases, motorists harmed by unauthorized drivers often simply make claims on their own insurance.
The only incentive illegal aliens have to comply with the driving laws either after they receive their new licenses or if they simply decide to keep driving without them is the threat that the state will hand them over to ICE for removal if they get caught breaking the law.
But nothing in that bill requires state or local law-enforcement to assist federal immigration authorities, meaning that it’s pure benefit for illegal drivers — it won’t make anyone “safer”, except possibly the aliens themselves, and even then only from federal apprehension.
The 9/11 Commission and the REAL ID Act of 2005. Actually, the opposite is true; this bill and similar ones make the homeland less safe. Which brings me to the REAL ID Act of 2005 (which, in the interests of full disclosure, I helped draft).
Under that law, individuals must offer proof of legal residence before they can receive a “REAL ID”, that is a secure license or identification card that, in May 2025, they can present to board airliners and enter federal buildings and other secure installations.
That law implements a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, which in its final report found that as people move through society, they pass through “defined channels, or portals”, like TSA checkpoints.
Those portals, the commission explained, offer government officials “a chance to establish that people are who they say they are and are seeking access for their stated purpose, to intercept identifiable suspects, and to take effective action”.
You’ll note that act was passed in 2005, but its full implementation has been slowed by the inability of state officials to bring their issuance systems into compliance — and by pushback from both civil libertarians (who complain it mandates a “national ID card”) and immigrants’ advocates.
The latter may assert that REAL ID “could undermine the ability of states to maintain confidentiality of driver’s license information”, but they usually really oppose it because it makes it more difficult for aliens to live here unlawfully (keeping them on “society’s margins”).
The reason states like Minnesota create such “two-tier” licensing systems — one for citizens and legal immigrants who can comply with REAL ID and a second for aliens who cannot — is to make it easier for those aliens to keep living illegally in the United States.
State officials can try to explain away their two-tier systems by claiming they enhance highway safety all they want, but as the foregoing reveals, that’s a canard — and not a very convincing one.
Worse, however, are the adverse impacts laws like Minnesota’s impose on national security.
Under state DMV rules, license applicants must present either two “primary” documents or one such document and a “secondary” document to obtain a Minnesota driver’s license.
As that bill amends Minnesota law, a variety of foreign IDs satisfy the primary document requirement. At least one of those foreign documents, “an unexpired foreign passport”, is reasonably secure. Others, however, are not.
For example, an applicant can submit “a certified birth certificate issued by a foreign jurisdiction”. I’m not sure about you, but my certified birth certificate doesn’t include a photograph, and even if it did, the newborn me looks nothing like the current and more wizened version.
Similarly, “a certified adoption certificate issued by a foreign jurisdiction that includes the applicant's name and date of birth” is an acceptable primary document.
While it’s unlikely a DMV clerk in Duluth or Minnetonka can tell a valid Bolivian or Gambian birth certificate from a fake one, there’s no way they’ve likely ever seen an adoption certificate from those or any other foreign country.
Likely the most problematic primary document aliens can submit to receive a valid Minnesota driver’s license, however, is a “foreign consular identification document that bears a photograph of the applicant”.
Consular IDs may sound reasonably secure, but guess again. Ironically, the most popular such card, the Mexican matricula consular, gained a lot of attention during Congress’ deliberations over the REAL ID Act in early 2005, and not necessarily in a good way.
As the Congressional Research Service explained at the time:
According to June 2003 congressional testimony by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “the ability of foreign nationals to use the Matricula Consular to create a well-documented, but fictitious, identity in the United States provides an opportunity for terrorists to move freely in the United States without triggering name-based watch lists.” The FBI also expressed concern about the possible use of false identities to transfer funds to support terrorist acts.
Such cards are known as “breeder documents” because they can be “used for access to other forms of legitimate identification”, like in this instance a real Minnesota driver’s license.
Thus, those breeder documents make it easier for malefactors (terrorist or otherwise) to move easily through “defined channels” of the sort the commission described, and thereby avoid “interception”, while impeding authorities’ ability to “take effective action”.
The acceptable foreign-issued secondary documents aren’t much better. They include a foreign school transcript “that includes the applicant’s date of birth and a photograph of the applicant at the age the record was issued”.
Such a document itself should be a red flag, because I’ve handled foreign documents for decades and have never seen any that had photographs on them.
That said, we all likely have plenty of official-looking pictures of our school-aged selves, and I can assure you it’s not tough to find a document vendor who will crank out a transcript from the “Universidad de Erehwon” if you are interested (for entertainment purposes only).
Minnesota — a Curious Terrorist Hotspot. When you think of Minnesota, many different images come to mind — pristine landscapes, scenic lakes, massive shopping malls. Terrorist threats, however, likely aren’t top of that list — but maybe they should be.
As DHS itself has explained:
Beginning in 2007, more than 20 Somali-Americans left Minnesota in order to train and fight for al Shabaab in Somalia. This included 26-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali-born American citizen, who on October 29, 2008, became the first documented American suicide bomber. More than 20 young Somalis have been convicted in U.S. District Court in Minnesota on terrorism-related charges.
According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCC), Al Shabaab:
is a Sunni Islamic terrorist group that publicly pledged loyalty to al-Qa‘ida in 2012. The group works to overthrow the Somali Federal Government, expel foreign forces from Somalia, and establish a fundamentalist Islamic state. Since 2014 al-Shabaab has killed more US citizens than any other al-Qa‘ida affiliate, and as of 2022, was its wealthiest component.
Just this January, an illegal migrant first encountered by CBP in March 2023 and thereafter released into the United States was arrested in Minnesota after U.S. authorities determined that he was “a confirmed member of” the terrorist organization.
And in June, a Moroccan native and naturalized U.S. citizen living in Minnesota, Abdelhamid Al-Madioum, received a 10-year sentence for providing material support to designated foreign terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).
Walz likely knows about this cases, and given he was in the Minnesota National Guard on September 11th, should be familiar with the 9/11 Commission, too. Despite that, he opted to ignore one of its key recommendations by championing a bill making it easier for only illegal aliens, but also potential terrorists, to obtain valid identity documents.