U.S. Supreme Court bans key tool in immigration raids

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4033

By Mary Turck
5 May 2009
MINNEAPOLIS - It’s too late for hundreds of workers in Postville, Iowa, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that charges of aggravated identity theft cannot be based on giving a false Social Security numbers to an employer.
The ruling should end the recent Immigration Control and Enforcement strategy of using identity theft charges as a threat to get undocumented workers to agree to immediate deportation.

In the case before the Supreme Court, Ignacio Carlos Flores-Figueroa had been arrested in East Moline, Ill. Flores-Figueroa, an undocumented worker from Mexico, had first used a completely fictitious Social Security number that belonged to no one. Eventually, he bought phony identification that included a Social Security number that belonged to a real person. The case turned on whether he could be charged with the federal crime of aggravated identity theft. This charge carries a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence.

Flores-Figueroa’s lawyers argued that Congress intended the identity theft law to apply to people who were trying to gain access to victims’ bank accounts or credit cards or otherwise financially harm the victims. Flores-Figueroa, however, used the number only to secure his own employment.

The aggravated identity theft law applies to a person who “knowingly transfers, possesses or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person.”

FULL story at link.