ICE Raid Uncovers ‘Massive Identity Theft’ Scheme by Illegal Aliens with over 100 American Victims
More than 100 Americans have been victimized by what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are calling a “massive identity theft” scheme by illegal aliens who worked at the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, on June 10, ICE agents raided Glenn Valley Foods and discovered more than 70 illegal aliens working at the meatpacking plant — some for several decades.
The raid helped open jobs for legal immigrants and some Americans.
Glenn Valley Foods executives have repeatedly said they used E-Verify, the federal program that is designed to weed out illegal employment, and believed they had a legal workforce.
Now, ICE agents can reveal that illegal aliens at Glenn Valley Foods were operating a sophisticated identity theft scheme that allowed them to pass through E-Verify using stolen Social Security Numbers of American citizens.
“There have been individuals who have gone on the record recently referring to the identity thieves we arrested last week as ‘good, hardworking, and honest,’” ICE’s Mark Zito said in a statement:
These so-called honest workers have caused an immeasurable amount of financial and emotional hardship for innocent Americans. If pretending to be someone you aren’t in order to steal their lives isn’t blatant, criminal dishonesty, I don’t know what is. [Emphasis added]
In one case, a disabled American in Texas struggled to secure their Social Security benefits because an illegal alien at Glenn Valley Foods had stolen their identity and was using it to work and collect wages.
Likewise, an American in Pennsylvania was denied vital prescriptions by his healthcare provider because his identity had been stolen by an illegal alien at Glenn Valley Foods.
In another case, an American in California has struggled for 15 years to regain his identity and mend financial damages after an illegal alien at Glenn Valley Foods stole it to work at the plant.
Meanwhile, a full-time nursing student in Missouri lost her college tuition assistance after an illegal alien working at Glenn Valley Foods stole her identity. The American was also prevented from renewing her driver’s license as a result of the identity theft because the illegal alien who stole her identity had several unpaid traffic tickets.
In Colorado, an American was hit with an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) notice that required them to repay over $5,000 to the federal government because an illegal alien working at Glenn Valley Foods, who stole their identity, had inflated their income.
“The criminals who stole these identities didn’t just break the law, they upended lives,” Zito said. “These victims aren’t faceless statistics; they’re real people who are being denied healthcare and have lost educational opportunities.”
In September 2019, a similar massive identity theft scheme was uncovered thanks to an ICE raid on several food processing plants across Mississippi — the largest single-state raid in American history.
The allegations in that case claimed that in some instances, illegal aliens would apply for work, be denied because they were not legal residents, and would come back weeks later with a Social Security Number and be hired by plant operators.
Like in the Glenn Valley Foods case, some illegal aliens at the food processing plants had worked for a decade using stolen identities from American citizens.
A comprehensive investigation published by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) found potentially 39 million cases from 2012 to 2016 in which Americans had their identities and Social Security Numbers stolen by illegal aliens.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
