Supreme Court Limits Use of Identity Theft Law in Immigration Cases

The U. S. Supreme Court today rejected a favorite tool of prosecutors in immigration cases, ruling unanimously that a federal identity-theft law may not be used against many illegal workers who used false Social Security numbers to get jobs.

The question in the case was whether workers who use fake identification numbers to commit some other crimes must know they belong to a real person to be subject to a two-year sentence extension for "aggravated identity theft."

The answer, the Supreme Court said, is yes.

Prosecutors had used the threat of that punishment to persuade illegal workers to plead guilty to lesser charges of document fraud.

To read more of this story from The New York Times, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

To read the General Assembly resolution calling for a fair and more humane immigration policy, PLEASE CLICK HERE.