Border crossers in El Paso and elsewhere in Texas won't have enhanced drivers' licenses in the near future, Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday. "Secure the border first, and then we'll work on the issues of how to identify the people who are in this state and immigration policies and what have you," he said. 

Lawmakers last year approved a pilot program to create driver's licenses that would store citizenship information inside so that Texans could cross back into the United States from Mexico with a simple swipe of their license.

Despite months of urging from federal Homeland Security officials, an opinion from the Texas attorney general who OK'd enhanced licenses and pressure from border leaders from El Paso to Browns ville to implement new technology to speed crossings, a spokesman for Perry's said Texas was backing away from the program.

The license program was meant to help border crossers meet more-stringent federal identification requirements while not slowing traffic and trade.

Washington state has begun issuing enhanced licenses, and Arizona, New York and Vermont have signed agreements with the federal government to start offering the licenses.

Initially when asked, Perry said Texas would have the enhanced licenses, and added that the entire U.S.-Mexico border would have to be secured first.

"Having a identification card in Texas - yet the border is not secure for (the remaining) 600 miles, doesn't meet the parameters of securing the border," he said.

Perry spokesman Robert Black said that creating the enhanced license program would cost the state about $500,000 and that the licenses wouldn't be available until 2009. Passport cards, which citizens can begin applying for today, accomplish the same goal at no cost to the state, Black said.

"The passport card is ready tomorrow, and it's a lot less expensive for Texans to buy," he said.

But the passport card wouldn't be less expensive than the proposed enhanced licenses for already licensed drivers who don't have passports.

Under the enhanced license program, drivers would have paid about $40 to renew their license and add the enhanced security measures.

For a passport card, drivers will pay $45 in addition to the $24 fee they will still have to pay to renew their licenses, a total of $69.

Passport cards will also require border crossers to remember another piece of documentation instead of just their license, said El Paso Mayor John Cook. He is a member of the Texas Border Coalition, a group of border elected officials and business leaders that has advocated for enhanced licenses.

"If the border was around Austin and people were trying to move in and out of Austin at 10 million a year, I'm sure the governor would have a different perspective," he said.

Cook said Perry was mixing two different issues: securing the border from crime and illegal immigration, and facilitating faster travel among legitimate border crossers at the ports.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, wrote the legislation that created the enhanced license program. It was modeled after the program that started last week in Washington state.

It's a program that federal officials in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have been urging border states, including Texas, to adopt.

And last week, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion that said enhanced licenses would be consistent with federal law.

If Perry is after security on the border, Shapleigh said, enhanced driver's licenses would only help.

"If we know who is coming in and going out, we can cross the safe ones and arrest the criminals," he said. "Good ID is the key to a secure border."

Hours-long waits at border ports cost time and money that affect trade and business in the entire state, Shapleigh said.

"We are researching options, including court options," Shapleigh said, "to force him to honor our promises to Texans."