While much of the country reels from the federal government being torn apart — jobs slashed, agencies gutted, funding withdrawn — Alexi Giannoulias is facing the opposite problem: a mass of new federal requirements crushing his agency.
“I haven’t been this frustrated, professionally, maybe ever,” the Illinois secretary of state said Monday. “Because we’ve done so much work to to create efficiencies, and they’re all being unraveled by this unprecedented demand.”
Real ID is a ticking time bomb of security theater, signed into law by President George W. Bush on May 11, 2005. A law designed, basically, to keep the Sept. 11 hijackers off those planes, ex post facto, by ensuring that people given special driver’s licenses really, truly are who they say they are, making them jump through documentation hoops.
“We have zero control,” said Giannoulias. “We’re required to scan and send this information, this crazy paperwork and documentation requirements. It’s not something we put in. We have to take it. We have to put it in a scanner. It’s brutal.”
Years of prepping the public, begging them not to wait until the last minute, proved insufficient, and now collective lifetimes evaporate in blocklong lines as frustrated Illinoisans battle to DMV windows only to find their paperwork not in order.
“I had carefully reviewed the Real ID checklist on the website and believed I had the required documentation,” wrote my neighbor, an insurance executive who often travels by air. Normally the most placid person, I bumped into her, irate, coming back from another failed attempt to get her Real ID, thwarted because she changed her name when she got married.
“The need for a marriage certificate to verify a name change should be called out more explicitly — especially as it often applies to women,” she wrote in a complaint I nudged in Giannoulias’ direction, prompting our conversation. “It’s an easy detail to miss, and not something people carry daily. Yet it can derail the entire process.”
Nor is this a local problem. From coast to coast, DMV offices are swamped.
“This is national. It’s literally chaos and mayhem around the country,” said Giannoulias. “In Florida, they’re sleeping in their cars, in tents, in front of the DMV. Other states are shutting down their systems.”
And for what? To create reams of data that former staffers who are no longer at decimated federal bureaus won’t ever look at.
“I’m not a national security expert,” said Giannoulias. “But to me, it seems an enormous waste of time and resources for this little star on your license.”
For the last 20 years the government has been kicking the can down the road, pushing the deadline back. They must have once thought it important: “Emergency” is right there in the title. “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief.”
Yet without Real ID, no American plane has been hijacked since 9/11. The only terror being inflicted is by Real ID, stressing already traumatized communities.
“It is overwhelmingly immigrants,” said Giannoulias. “It’s tough for us to get data on it, but I will tell you, 1000% accurate, because I go to these facilities. I go to Chinatown, go to the supercenter, take a gander at a line going around the block. These are almost all immigrants, Spanish-speaking folks, people who are scared [witless] that without a Real ID they will not have proper identification, that they’re going to be deported or cannot drive a vehicle. They’re coming in with their kids. They’re scared.”
The reason this all matters is that unless you have that star, or a valid passport — and half of Americans don’t — you won’t be able to get on a plane after May 7. Unless you still can. Nothing is certain. Homeland Security speaks vaguely of a “phased enforcement approach” running through May 7, 2027.
“We don’t know,” Giannoulias said. “The TSA and Homeland Security have been throwing out mixed messages. Now potentially there is a two-year enforcement period. Maybe they send you to the back of the line. Maybe a warning. They have no idea what they’re doing. It’s crazy.”
Giannoulias said that his 4,000 employees are doing their best.
“They’re burned out,” he said. “They’re working Saturdays. They’re working overtime. They’re killing themselves.”
He said that while employees are stressed, they’re coping.
“People in our office have stepped up,” he said. “I could not be more proud of our team and the work they’re doing.”
So what should Illinoisans do?
“People need to take their time, relax,” said Giannoulias.
If you can wait until after May 7, get your Real IDs then.
“If you’re not traveling now, wait,” Giannoulias said. “Don’t get stuck in lines if you don’t have to.”