Feds: Raided Operation Made Up To 100 Fake IDs Daily

Carolyn Hileman* | April 26, 2007

CHICAGO — Dozens of people were arrested Tuesday night during a raid in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, but it was how the raid was carried out that’s got residents fuming The U.S. attorney said the raid was not about making immigrants fearful, but instead to arrest a group of people who run a lucrative fake-ID business that puts the security of our country at risk. Police said the bustling counterfeit identification document business generated profits in the millions each year in and around the Little Village Discount Mall at 26th and Albany, saying it had become “competitive and violent.”Police said the organization made and sold as many as 50 to 100 fake IDs every day, and federal officials said the ringleader has already killed one person and was planning more slayings.

But it was the show of force that has immigrant rights groups upset.

Police raided the mall on Tuesday, sparking an impromptu protest that went well into the night. And on Wednesday, protesters planned another rally downtown as a precursor to a larger immigration march next Tuesday. U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Randall Samborn said agents made arrests and conducted searches in the neighborhood.

Witnesses said dozens of undocumented immigrants were apprehended.

Federal authorities said Wednesday that 22 people have been charged with participating in a conspiracy to make false identification documents.

The organization allegedly recruits illegal aliens to come to Chicago and sell false documents on street corners in the Little Village neighborhood, where individuals solicit business for the organization overtly, a U.S. Attorney’s Office release said. These individuals sell all sorts of false identification documents -– such as driver’s licenses purportedly issued by a variety of states, immigration documents such as Resident Alien Cards (Green Cards), and other purportedly government-issued documents, the complaint alleges.

In just one location in the area of Albany and 26th Street, there are as many as 15 to 20 illegal aliens at any one time selling false documents, according to charges. When these sellers locate a customer, they allegedly obtain a photo and personal information and send that information to a document production facility where the false documents are made.

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