ID theft ruling affects illegal immigrants

May 9, 2009

Perla Trevizo

Chattanooga Times Free Press

The U.S. Supreme Court has made it more difficult for the government to charge illegal immigrants with using fake identifications, including Social Security cards.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, to be charged with aggravated identity theft, the government must prove the illegal immigrant knew the identification or Social Security number used belonged to someone else.

Had it been made earlier, the ruling might have affected last year’s raid of the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Chattanooga.

After the raid in April 2008 in which 100 workers were arrested, five faced federal charges, four for fraudulently obtaining and using Social Security cards to gain employment and illegally re-entering the country and one just for the latter charge.

The others only were charged for being in the country illegally, an administrative violation.

Prosecutors have used the threat of a two-year mandatory sentence for aggravated identity theft so the illegal workers plead guilty to a lesser charge of document fraud. Robert Divine, the Chattanooga-based chairman of the immigration group for the Baker Donelson law firm, believes the government used this strategy when it raided the poultry plant in Chattanooga.

“I think the idea was to deter identity theft,” he said. “When they raided the Pilgrim’s Pride operation, they went in with a list of people ICE had identified as appearing to be engaged in identity theft.

“They focused on those folks because I think the administration had decided, one, people in America are upset about identity theft, and two, people who commit identity theft of real identities are able to beat the E-verify system,” he said.

E-verify is a voluntary, Internet-based program that allows employers to verify workers’ employment eligibility electronically with the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

Officials at ICE referred all questions to the Department of Justice, where officials said the government was making no comment at this point about the Supreme Court ruling.

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, based in Nashville, said it supports the court’s ruling but emphasized that immigration reform still is essential.

“In general, the Supreme Court should be applauded for upholding the true intents of the law and basic principal of fairness,” said Elias Feghali, the organization’s communications coordinator.

“(The ruling) prevents identity theft laws from being misapplied to immigrant workers,” he said. “There’s a difference between someone maliciously stealing your identity to harm you and immigrants working hard to feed their families.”

But he emphasized that the court’s ruling is not a substitute for federal immigration reform.

“Only immigration reform will allow immigrant workers to come out of the shadows ... putting an end to the black market for identification documents,” Mr. Feghali said.

America Gruner, founder of the Coalition of Latino Leaders in Dalton, Ga., said a lot of people were being punished who didn’t know they were hurting anyone.

“At least now the government is going to have to prove they knew their documents belonged to someone real,” she said. “The fact that there’s starting to be a little bit more justice to issues related to immigration brings hope.”