[migrawatch-public] Feds to form S.F. immigration unit

Feds to form S.F. immigration unit
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
Article Last Updated:04/27/2007 09:37:22 AM PDT
San Francisco is one of six U.S. cities slated to get a
new multiagency task force on immigration-document fraud
like that which led agents to arrest 13 workers last week
at an Oakland plastic bag factory.

The task force, led by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, also will target benefit fraud: cases in
which people lie or omit information from their
applications for citizenship, asylum or a visa.

It will be modeled on similar efforts up and running in 11
other cities for the past year. Newtask forces also are
forming in Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, Phoenix and Tampa,
Fla.

Participants include ICE; the Justice Department; the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services; the inspectors
general of the Labor Department, Social Security
Administration and State Department; the State Department
Bureau of Diplomatic Security; the U.S. Postal Inspection
Service; the U.S. Secret Service; and state and local law
enforcement agencies.

By document fraud, the government means manufacture, sale
or use of bogus identity documents such as driver's
licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards or
passports for immigration purposes or criminal activity.

Federal agents last Friday arrested 13 people and began
seeking 34 others who had immigrated illegally from Mexico
and were working for an Oakland plastic bag manufacturer
whose customers included the U.S. government.

ICE's audit of Eagle Bag Corp.'s personnel records found
47 of the company's more than 70 workers had submitted
counterfeit immigration documents with bogus alien
registration numbers to get their jobs. Thirty-three of
them, including five or six of the 13 arrested, had used
stolen Social Security numbers.

"ICE is committed to finding and prosecuting those
individuals who seek to profit by stealing the identities
of others," Julie Myers, assistant secretary for Homeland
Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said
Thursday in a news release. "These task forces demonstrate
our resolve to identify and address the vulnerabilities
exploited by those who would do us harm."

ICE Special Agent Jennifer Holman said Thursday that none
of the 13 arrested last week at Eagle Bag are likely to
face federal prosecution for aggravated identity theft �
punishable by a mandatory minimum of two years in federal
prison � because it's not clear they knew the Social
Security numbers they used were actually valid numbers
belonging to other people.

But Holman said they are being asked where they got the
bogus numbers � potential leads for the new task force.

Many of the federal agencies involved in the task force
already share information on some cases, she said, but
they'll be stepping it up now. To have representatives
from all the

agencies working together in one office "in the long run
... would be ideal," she said, but for now she's unsure of
the logistics.