It's a legal victory for illegal immigrants in Utah and across the United States.

Illegal immigrants score Supreme Court victory
May 5, 2009



SALT LAKE CITY -- It's a legal victory for illegal immigrants in Utah and across the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously in favor of a Mexican immigrant living in Illinois, saying prosecutors can't charge undocumented workers with aggravated ID theft unless they can prove intent to commit fraud.

That ruling comes in Flores-Figueroa v. United States on Monday. Proyecto Latino de Utah director Tony Yapias was thrilled with the 9-to-0 vote. "5-to-4, we would have said, you know, ‘Wow! … That's a good victory.' But 9-to-0, it's unprecedented," he said.

Yapias says prosecutors have used ID theft as the justification for several immigration raids, including here in Utah, but he says in many cases, the illegal immigrants have no idea they're buying a Social Security number that belongs to someone else.

"Here it is, the Supreme Court of the United States has just said unanimously that this law has been misused by prosecutors," Yapias said.

To him, there's a big difference between the kind of accidental ID theft that someone undocumented and looking for work might commit, compared to the kind committed by someone who rummages through garbage or mailboxes, knowingly stealing someone's identification with the intent to commit fraud.

U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman says this week's Supreme Court ruling should not affect the way he goes after illegal immigrants. "In anticipation of this very issue, we have been operating under this heightened or higher standard for the last two years. So, our prosecutions have been consistent with what the Supreme Court has now ruled on," he said.

Tolman says, as a result, it should not affect cases like the raid on the Swift meat packing plant. "If you take, for example, the Swift case, what we … we were one of the few that were concerned at the outset, that anyone we prosecute for identity theft needed to know that they were actually stealing the identity of someone," he said.

The Utah Attorney General's Office says it is subject to separate Utah laws rather than the federal statutes affected by the ruling.