Saturday, November 21, 2009

Overcharge, deport & destroy: overzealous use of the civil immigration laws & raids is itself quasi "criminal."

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that federal identity-theft law can not be applied against many undocumented workers who used false Social Security numbers to work in the U.S. In Flores-Figueroa v. United States the Supreme Court held that, to convict a defendant of aggravated identity theft — which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison — the government must establish that the person knew the identification belonged to another person. The ruling puts a damper on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency’s (ICE) common and controversial strategy of using identity theft charges as a threat to get undocumented workers to agree to immediate deportation or boost prison sentences

video

Hundreds rallied to protest the immigration raid in Postville, Iowa that upturned the small town. Most of the nearly 300 undocumented workers arrested will serve jail time. Russ Mitchell reports.

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