In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican migrant worker from Illinois convicted of identity theft in 2007. Like most migrant workers, Flores-Figueroa did not know that the social security number in the false papers he was forced to buy in order to get work was a number that actually belonged to another person.
The crime of identity theft was established by an act of Congress in 1998, to deal with the growing problem of people stealing credit cards and personal information to empty bank accounts or get thousands of dollars in credit under someone else’s name. After 9/11/2001, authorities feared that false identities could also be used to facilitate acts of terrorism. This led to the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act of 2004, which made it an aggravated felony punishable by an additional two-year minimum prison sentence.
In 2006 prosecutors realized they would use this anti-terrorist weapon to criminalize illegal immigrants. They won some cases, one of those was Flores-Figueroa, who appealed to the 8th Circuit Court and lost. More raids occurred and 300 workers were charged. The writer of the piece was involved in the cases. He acted as an interpreter in the proceedings and wrote an essay that prompted a congressional investigation.
The prosecutors tried to say that the people didn’t have to know they had real social security numbers, just the fact they were using them made them criminals. The court said they had to know they were using a real person’s identification in order to be charged. Most didn’t know what a social security number was, just that they had to have one to work. The 9-0 decision overturned three Appeal Courts and thousands of individual cases.
Posted by: Patricia
Source: La Prensa San Diego
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