Illegals Using Fake Documents To Land Jobs
May 21, 2009 11:28 pm US/Eastern
Illegals Using Fake Documents To Land Jobs
Joe Shortsleeve
For immigrants living in this country illegally, often the only way to get a job or a driver's license is with phony documents.
It's an underground business thriving in several communities around Boston. Chief Correspondent Joe Shortsleeve says federal agents are working undercover to shut down these shady operations.
The video is blurred and grainy but the man in the driver's seat is an undercover federal agent posing as an illegal immigrant. The video shot by federal investigators in Lynn shows the agent buying phony documents needed to work or to get a driver's license.
Bruce Foucart is the top federal agent in Boston charged with tracking down criminals who are making big bucks selling bogus documents to people who are in this country illegally.
Foucart says "it is very big problem."
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency's Boston office is a busy place these days. Foucart says it matter of national security. "The people who are making and selling these documents do not run background checks. So they do not know if they have terrorist or a murderer from another country."
By most estimates, there are 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country and for every job they land with bogus documents, an unemployed American citizen stays that way. That is causing resentment.
Just ask this woman who works with the immigrant community in Somerville and asked that her name not be used. "Our economy could not survive without the immigrant population but unfortunately that tension is really mounting."
Recently on City Hall Plaza in downtown Boston, organizations pushing for new federal immigration laws say the current immigration system is broken. They say today's system often makes criminals out of honest people.
Patricia Montes also works with undocumented immigrants in Somerville. She says bogus paperwork is a real problem for everyone. "People become desperate and they are trying to come to this country without documents."
Federal agents say these document mills, as they are called, are operating right now in many communities including Framingham, Everett, Somerville and Boston.
Federal investigators have video of these illegal operations in motion. Video shot at the Medford MBTA stop shows the document criminals handing off the phony ID's to a runner who delivers them to paying customers.
Special agent Foucart says the newest challenge is real birth certificates purchased off the streets of Puerto Rico and then sold on the streets of New England.
Shortsleeve asked, "So if I walked into a registry of motor vehicles, how do they know I am not this person?"
Foucart's response: "That is the problem exactly….and that is why they are so valuable."
The feds say almost all of the 9/11 terrorists had four or five driver's licenses from different states probably made possible by criminal groups still operating today.
In March, Federal Agents here in Boston arrested a 48-year-old woman working for the registry of motor vehicles in Brockton and charged her with making license for undocumented aliens in exchange for cash.
http://wbztv.com/local/illegal.immigran ... 16386.html
