Thread: Miami: Illegal immigrants 'rent' citizens' identities

Posted on Thu, Jul. 05, 2007
Illegal immigrants 'rent' citizens' identities
BY JON GAMBRELL
To his bosses at Pilgrim's Pride, he was Juan Jose Rodriguez -- it said so on the birth certificate and Social Security card he presented when the southwestern Arkansas chicken plant hired him six years ago.
At his De Queen, Ark., home, he was Joel Garibay-Urbina -- with a wife, three kids and a mortgage under his own name.

And to police officers responding to a domestic violence call, he was just the latest illegal immigrant to have two identities after an arrest.

It turns out that for $800, Garibay-Urbina had rented the American dream. Though local police, prosecutors and immigration agents say they don't know how widespread the practice is, federal watchdog reports dating back to 1988 have warned of the relative ease of obtaining a fraudulent birth certificate.

Assuming the identity of a U.S. citizen -- keeping the documents just long enough to convince Pilgrim's Pride he was a U.S. citizen -- Garibay-Urbina was able to get a job, buy a gun and live undetected until police arrested him after he fought with his wife in January.

Garibay-Urbina, who crossed the border at Laredo, Texas, in 1995 with a six-month visitor visa, is slated for a one-year prison term and then deportation to his native Mexico. Had Garibay-Urbina not been accused of domestic battery, it's unlikely police ever would have suspected a crime.

''Birth-certificate fraud is seldom prosecuted unless it can be linked to large dollar losses or other punishable crimes,'' said a 2000 report from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General, its second report on such ID theft in 12 years.

When Garibay-Urbina arrived in De Queen, he met with an ''unknown individual'' to rent a birth certificate and Social Security number before his job search, according to an affidavit filed with the federal court in Texarkana, Ark. With Rodriguez's documents in hand, he started at the chicken plant in January 2001.

Garibay-Urbina worked until Jan. 22, when his wife Guillermina Avila went to the Sevier County Courthouse to tell police he had beaten her and was threatening to kill himself. During an interrogation, Garibay-Urbina told police and immigration agents of the ID ruse.

Darren Anderson, Garibay-Urbina's lawyer, said his client ''indicated it wasn't that difficult'' to rent the birth certificate, but he wouldn't describe the transaction specifically. Prosecutors and immigration officials have no idea how many times Rodriguez's ID cards have been used.

© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

Good values, huh?

I've read several stories about re-cycling identifications after the death of a legal citizen.


[quote]Illegal Immigrant Uses Fake ID To Join Police

Demonstrating a need for more efficient background checks of law enforcement officers, an illegal immigrant who used the fake identity of an American citizen has served on a major city’s police force for five years.
Even scarier is that it took an anonymous tip for officials in the Milwaukee Police Department to discover that an illegal alien easily passed its supposedly rigorous background screening years ago. The Mexican man, Oscar Ayala-Cornejo, assumed the identity of a deceased cousin named Jose Morales about a decade ago.
Incredibly, Milwaukee Police Chief Nannette Hegerty maintains that her department conducted a thorough background check on the illegal immigrant and there was no way to know that he was using someone else’s identity. “No matter what kind of background we did, we wouldn’t have been able to find it, which is unfortunate,â€

This HAS to stop. Would it be unreasonable to subject all job applicants to a fingerprint check? I certainly have nothing to hide and wouldn't object to being fingerprinted if I was applying for a job. Actually, my nephew, who just started his teaching career, had to be fingerprinted in order to get his license to teach. I don't see why they can't require this for everybody.

''Birth-certificate fraud is seldom prosecuted unless it can be linked to large dollar losses or other punishable crimes,'' said a 2000 report from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General, its second report on such ID theft in 12 years.

When Garibay-Urbina arrived in De Queen, he met with an ''unknown individual'' to rent a birth certificate and Social Security number before his job search, according to an affidavit filed with the federal court in Texarkana, Ark. With Rodriguez's documents in hand, he started at the chicken plant in January 2001.

By refusing to stay on top of this our "government" once again fails the American citizen.

this is more widespread that law enforcement knows, very common in LA, New york, Miami and other big cities!!

This goes back to the 80's, when they used to sell them right on 42nd street in NYC, (along with dope) i saw it many times people, peddling to sell fake id's !!
Also the fact of stolen identity of dead people is an old trick.

We need to have a National id, drivers liscense asap!

This has to be going on nationwide.
~~~~~

EXCLUSIVE: Document "Rental" by Illegals Vexes Authorities

Could allow illegals to work in the U.S. indefinately
By Jim Forsyth
Sunday, July 8, 2007
1200 WOAI news has learned that a fast growing racket among illegal immigrants threatens to derail any effort to include a 'tamper proof identification card' into any part of an immigration reform plan.



Officials tell 1200 WOAI news that for between $200 and $800, an illegal immigrant can easily rent the legal documents of a legal U.S. resident.



The illegal rents the Social Security card, U.S. Work Permit, and occasionally even a birth certificate from a U.S. hospital or state drivers license long enough to present them to an employer. If the employer checks them out, they come up legal because they are, in fact, legal.



Adelina Pruneda of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who agreed to speak about the general problem of identity abuse among illegals, says it is a growing worry.



"The criminal organization sells a Social Security card along with a drivers license and a green car, all together, and they charge anywhere between $200 and $600 depending on the authenticity of the entire document."



Officials tell 1200 WOAI news that for the purposes of employment, the illegal simply continues to use the name on the rented documents, which is usually a Latin American name. The renter then moves on to another city or another neighborhood so there is seldom any conflict between the two identities. One police officer familiar with the scam told 1200 WOAI news it is almost impossible for law enforcement to catch on unless the illegal commits another crime, like drunk driving, where fingerprints might be compared.



"If this guy lives a righteous life, and never has any reason to be fingerprinted, there is no way we can ever catch him," the officer said.



If a U.S. birth certificate is included in the rented documents, the illegal could obtain a U.S. passport, although it is impossible to tell whether that has occurred.



Pruneda says the employer would never have any reason to suspect fraud.



"It wasn't a fake Social Security number, it was a real Social Security number, it just didn't belong to that person," Pruneda says.



She says ICE and other agencies are doing what they can to explain to employers the intracies of document fraud.



"We are constantly working with all different companies to make sure they have an idea of what to look out for," she said.



This growing problem could cause serious complications for efforts to include a 'temper proof' i.d. card as part of immigration reform.

http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/news/se ... le=2357952