Authorities shut down seven ID manufacturers Thursday in the first major bust of the Arizona Fraudulent Identification Task Force. Police and sheriff's deputies arrested 30 people early Thursday while serving 15 search warrants during Operation X Fake ID. More than half of those arrests were connected to ID manufacturing; other arrests involved various felonies, including drug violations.Created last summer, the task force is an offshoot of Operation Strong Border, Secure Arizona, a project of Gov. Janet Napolitano to quash crime connected to illegal immigration.
The majority of the manufacturers were based in the Valley. They created fake Social Security cards, Arizona driver's licenses, birth certificates and permanent resident identification while guised as legitimate businesses, authorities said. One was a computer repair shop. It was not known how people were given new identities or whether the operation extended beyond undocumented immigrants.