Utah apparently has become a leader in the hidden, illegal business of producing false documents that among other purposes, can be used to facilitate human trafficking.

So reports Salt Lake City’s Deseret News, which quotes law enforcement officials as describing Utah as the home for “widespread and sophisticated” document mills.

Virtually in any city of size in Utah, you can obtain a fake Social Security card, a driver’s license and a permanent resident alien card in a day — and often a Mexican voter registration card that helps with border crossings — with quality so good it can fool almost anyone, said Ken Wallentine, chief of law enforcement for the Utah Attorney General’s Office.

While Wallentine notes that most of the false papers are used to facilitate the movement of illegal immigrants into the U.S., other criminal activities, including drug and human trafficking, also rely upon high quality fake documents.  In one case, illegal aliens were coerced into producing false papers and held against their will in a house.

A new Utah state task force, was created last year to target serious crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Wallenstine says once it started pursuing criminal illegal aliens, the task force soon discovered how widespread document mills are.

“The FBI had done a couple of those cases in the past few years,” he said. “But we’ve done a couple dozen cases in just the past year.”