Drivers on the byways of North Carolina will soon see a new slogan: “Don’t License Terrorists.”

Billboards portraying the image of a terrorist wrapped in a kaffiyah, grasping a grenade and a North Carolina state license, will be erected on prominent highways in coming weeks.

The New York group behind the $500,000 effort, the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License, was a force behind a law enacted this year creating new federal regulations for driver’s licenses. It will soon be up to the states to implement the policy, so the coalition says it has a new battle to fight: North Carolina’s billboards will kick off a 10-state public awareness campaign.

The publicity effort adds fire to an already fierce debate about whether the national security regulations, which include denying driver’s licenses to America’s 11 million illegal immigrants, will in fact protect the nation from future terrorist attacks.

Critics say such changes will do nothing to make the country safer, and only increase the black market in documents.

“Using scare tactics to change a law which doesn’t in the end do anything to prevent terrorism seems so misguided,” an immigration policy attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, Joan Friedland, said. “If you look at the 9/11 terrorists, they got driver’s licenses when they were lawfully in the country. But if they didn’t have driver’s licenses they could have used their passports.”

While the September 11, 2001, hijackers obtained 13 driver’s licenses, some of them illegally, all of the terrorists were legal residents when they received the documents. For this reason, the 9-11 Commission said it did not make recommendations about granting licenses to undocumented immigrants.

The commission did recommend federal standards for the issuance of driver’s licenses, which swiftly translated into the new federal regulations on the licenses.

“All this comes down to mitigating risks,” the president of the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License, Amanda Bowman, said. “What we can do is close some loopholes and take some steps that will make it less easy for terrorists.”

When the driver’s license regulations were enacted, the coalition considered disbanding. Then, after the National Governors Association met in August, the governors issued a statement pronouncing their dissatisfaction with the law, saying it “contains unreasonable burdens and unfunded mandates that are unworkable and counterproductive to its goals.”

The New York-based coalition sprang back into action with a new mission to work state by state. North Carolina was chosen as a starting point be cause illegal immigrants can receive licenses there, and, Ms. Bowman said, in the past it had been a site for terrorist trafficking in licenses.

The characterization of the state’s policy as being lax on terrorists, however, was fiercely disputed in North Carolina.

“These are flat wrong and totally inaccurate,” a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, Ernie Seneca, said. None of the September 11 terrorists held North Carolina driver’s licenses. “North Carolina has a strong driver’s license program and has taken major steps to protect safety on our highways and ensure the identity of license holders,” he said.

While the coalition, targeting New Mexico next, plans to continue to go after such states where undocumented immigrants are able to receive licenses or biometric data is not required, they have only praise for New York’s licensing policies. The state began to cull its records of duplicate Social Security numbers after the September 11 attacks, uncovering more than 200,000 driver’s licenses without valid numbers.

In fact, the coalition is so pleased with New York State’s motor vehicles commissioner, Raymond Martinez, and his stalwart defense of the policy, despite a lawsuit and a ruling by a state Supreme Court judge that he had overstepped his purview into immigration regulation, it will grant him an award next week.