ACLU 'Immigrant Poster Boy' Turns Out to Be Huge ID Thief!
Immigrant’s Criminal Past Colors a Group’s Legal Challenge to Detetions
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: June 11, 2009
The news media campaign was all set to go. There was even a Web site ready with a sympathetic profile of Alexander Alli, 49, the man the American Civil Liberties Union had chosen as the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking custody hearings for more than 1,000 legal immigrants long locked up while they challenged the government’s efforts to deport them on the basis of criminal convictions.
But at the last minute someone at the civil liberties union checked the details of Mr. Alli’s criminal history. It turned out that Mr. Alli, a native of Ghana whose wife and three children, all United States citizens, live in the Bronx, had taken part in one of the biggest cases of identity theft in this country.
At least 30,000 people nationwide had been victimized in an intricate scheme by a loosely knit ring of 30 people, mostly Nigerian immigrants, according to law enforcement authorities and court documents. More than $50 million had been drained from credit cards and bank accounts.
Oops.
Not a perfect poster boy. The press release and the Web site were scuttled, and lawyers even considered dropping Mr. Alli in favor of a plaintiff whose offense was less serious. But last month, the lawsuit went forward in his name — without publicity.
The case shows the difficulties of making an important constitutional argument on behalf of a not-always-sympathetic group: people battling deportation based on past crimes. Maria Archuleta, a spokeswoman for the civil liberties organization, called the original plan to showcase Mr. Alli a mistake, saying, “We have learned a very hard lesson to more thoroughly check all of our clients.â€
