On his May 29 show, 630 KHOW-AM host Peter Boyles falsely suggested that in a May 29 Denver Post article about Democratic U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar's role in the formulation of compromise federal immigration reform legislation, “the operative word 'illegal' is not here.” Later in the broadcast, Boyles repeated the false claim that Colorado House Bill 1313 constitutes “a gift of a driver's license to almost anyone legally or illegally in the state of Colorado.”

From the May 29 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

BOYLES: And then there's a piece this morning about Salazar being lauded for his central role in the compromise. Let me read you this nonsense. This is in the Post this morning. A phone call -- “A key breakthrough on immigration reform came in an early-morning phone call from Ken Salazar to South Carolina Republican Senators.” Who's he call? Lindsey Graham. That's like calling yourself. “People with trade school degrees should also get a small boost.” As though all these millions of people come in here, “Yeah, I got a trade school degree.” I mean, they, they must think -- and listen to this lineup of stars here. Our “state's junior senator, in the third year of his first term, spent several hours last week managing” -- and again the operative word “illegal” is not here -- “immigration debate on the Senate floor.”

Although the sentence from the article that Boyles read did not contain the word “illegal,” the Post report repeatedly indicated that the proposal's provisions targeted “illegal immigrants.”

From the article “Salazar lauded for central role in compromise” in the May 29 edition of The Denver Post:

Washington -- A key breakthrough on immigration reform came in an early-morning phone call from Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar to a South Carolina Republican.

Senators rewriting immigration laws had deadlocked hours earlier, in part over how much to favor college graduates over others seeking to come to the United States.

Salazar offered a compromise to Sen. Lindsey Graham: People with trade-school degrees should also get a small boost, Salazar suggested, so that a new point system for green cards won't tilt too far toward the most educated.

The suggestion helped pull a foundering deal together. Within hours, after a flurry of other calls and meetings, senators had ironed out other differences and announced their sweeping plan to reshape immigration.

[...]

Salazar's involvement thrust him into the spotlight. The state's junior senator, in the third year of his first term, spent several hours last week managing the immigration debate on the Senate floor. He appeared prominently at news conferences with powerful longtime Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

[...]

Opposite political camps have attacked the compromise bill. Some conservatives decry it as “amnesty” because it allows an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to stay in the country legally. They would have to pay fines and meet other requirements.

[...]

[U.S. Sen. Wayne] Allard [R-CO] offered language that was added to the legislation. It would allow the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security to share information, which could reveal cases where a Social Security number is used at multiple job sites simultaneously.

Some of the illegal immigrants arrested in a raid at the Swift meatpacking plant in Greeley in December were using stolen Social Security numbers.

Salazar's work this year on the effort to craft new immigration laws began in February. He and Kennedy went to the White House to talk with Bush about immigration legislation.

“It has to do with the heart of our national security,” he said of his push to change immigration laws.

[...]

Then, during a hunting trip with Vice President Dick Cheney, Graham said, he suggested that Republicans could help pass immigration reform. Cabinet secretaries soon started meeting with Republicans.

Starting in March, Kennedy, Salazar and other Democrats began talking with Graham and the Republican group. The senators and their aides gathered in a room behind the Senate chamber. Sitting in overstuffed burgundy leather chairs, they began pulling together the legislation.

Salazar spoke passionately about the need to treat the nation's illegal immigrants humanely, several senators said. He told stories about illegal immigrants approaching him in Colorado and asking, “What can you do to help my family?” a Kennedy aide said.

Later in the broadcast, Boyles discussed state immigration legislation with Stan Weekes, director of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, an organization that promotes “population stabilization through immigration reduction”:

WEEKES: One of the critical parts of this whole thing comes right back to Colorado and right back to 1313. This is our final week. As you know, the governor has to sign all his bills by the end of business next Monday, Monday afternoon, the, the -- I believe it's the 4th. And it's critical that this week we, we really let the governor know, because there was, interestingly enough, late Friday afternoon at 5:30 an alert that went out from the ACLU, of all people, requesting that, of course, their members start calling the governor to, to veto 1313 --

BOYLES: Yes.

WEEKES: -- I mean veto 1040 --

BOYLES: Right.

WEEKES: -- and sign 1313.

BOYLES: Yeah, now it's important. Now, take a second here, Stanley, because I know it's going back over a road we've already traveled. But 1313 is a gift of a driver's license to almost anyone legally or illegally in the state of Colorado. And the operative word is “illegal” or people who do not deserve a Colorado license.

House Bill 1040 "[p]rohibits a court from dismissing criminal charges, at any stage of criminal proceedings, against a person who is illegally present in the country" and requires that “a no-bond warrant be issued in a criminal case when the defendant is determined to be illegally present in the country and the defendant is either removed from the country or is subject to removal.”

As Colorado Media Matters has noted, Boyles previously has understated the identification requirements of HB 1313, passed by the Colorado General Assembly to expand the list of acceptable forms of personal identification for those seeking a Colorado driver's license. Colorado Media Matters pointed out that the language of HB 1313 specifies that the Department of Revenue, which oversees the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV), must adopt rules consistent with those established by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for verifying an applicant's lawful residence in the United States:

The department shall promulgate rules establishing the requirements to prove that a license applicant is lawfully present in the United States. Such rules shall conform to standards established by the United States Department of Homeland Security for proving lawful presence.

Furthermore, according to the bill, in order to obtain a driver's license, an applicant who presents a “foreign passport bearing a photograph” must also provide an “appropriate visa or other immigration documents as established by the department by rule indicating the applicant's identity, age, and lawful presence in the United States.”

The bill further states that the DMV only could accept as a stand-alone document a “driver's license or identification document, other than a military identification document, issued by the United States or any state that requires proof of lawful presence in the United States to obtain such driver's license or an identification document that is not expired.” [emphasis added] Additionally, the bill states that any driver's license issued by a state “that does not require proof of lawful presence in the United States to obtain such document” must be accompanied by one of several acceptable “secondary” forms of identification, such as a signed Social Security card or military ID card.

Contrary to a suggestion made on Boyles' May 3 broadcast that an easily forged “tax form” downloaded from the Internet would be considered an acceptable identification document under HB 1313, the bill explicitly states that an applicant may submit as a secondary document an “individual Colorado or federal tax return with an employee copy of a federal Internal Revenue Service form W-2 or 1099.” However, the bill prohibits submission of a tax return in conjunction with certain primary documents, namely, an expired driver's license from another state or a driver's license from another state that does not verify citizenship status. Therefore, a tax return can be submitted only in conjunction with one of two primary documents: an ID “issued by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs or a federally-recognized tribe” or a birth certificate issued in the United States.