DENVER—State lawmakers were notified in January that the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment shut down computers designed to prevent payment of benefits to illegal immigrants, the state labor chief said Thursday amid calls for an audit.
Don Mares, the department’s executive director, said the state verified citizenship using documents and sworn statements to prevent abuse, but he can’t guarantee that no money went to undocumented aliens. He said the shutdown was ordered because a backlog of claims was delaying benefits for legal workers.
Republicans are calling for a state audit to determine if the department broke laws requiring verification of citizenship before benefits are paid.
In its annual report to lawmakers, the department warned it had shut down the computers.
“Because of excessive workload and a lack of staff, in February 2009, the Unemployment Insurance Program director elected to disable temporarily the programming that denied unemployment insurance benefit payments when the Verification of Personal Information was not received,” the report noted.
Deputy executive director Gary Estenson said the data-checking software is still turned off, but state officials have been checking identification of applicants to ensure they are entitled before benefits are authorized.
Rep. B.J. Nikkel, a Republican from Loveland who sits on the House State Affairs Committee that received the report, said lawmakers receive a lot of reports and there was no discussion about the issue.
“There should have been a discussion about that. This isn’t something you slip into a report and don’t say anything about it,” she said.
The department was required to check immigration status to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining certain forms of government aid under a law passed during a special session on immigration in 2006.
State employees objected when they were ordered to turn off the software and warned supervisors they might be breaking the law, according to the Independence Institute, a conservative think tank that got copies of their e-mails.
Mares said his office did nothing wrong. He said his office flagged close to 900 illegal immigrants during the first nine months of 2009, despite the shutdown.
