By Shari Rendall
FAIR
Denver and New York City (NYC) – top destination choices for illegal aliens due to their sanctuary policies – are experiencing an uptick in illegal aliens purchasing fraudulent social security cards. This uptick is concerning given it signals both a growing amount of identity fraud perpetrated on Americans and the use of these numbers to illegally obtain jobs.
In New York City, where nearly 180,000 illegal aliens have entered since 2022, criminals with ties to MS-13 and the 18th Street gang are openly selling social security cards to migrants on street corners in Queens. These violent gangs have become a “one-stop shop” for the illegal aliens that they may have also helped smuggle into the U.S.
In Denver, which has the most migrants per capita than any other city, migrants can buy both a basic social security card and a green card for approximately $100-$150. A social security card that passes E-Verify (more likely to be a real number stolen from a person), costs about $900. Unlike New York, however, authorities do not believe the criminals selling these cards have ties to criminal gangs. According to Denver’s Homeland Security Investigations, the sales are not a crime ring but rather a “few men who may be involved.”
These fake or stolen security cards primarily enable illegal aliens to circumvent the law that bars employers from hiring them. Those who actually apply for asylum are eligible for work permits. However, to discourage asylum fraud, the law prohibits such aliens from receiving their work permit for at least 180 days after filing an application.
While many of these fake social security cards are used for obtaining work, they could also be used by individuals to cause harm on U.S. soil. Roy Fenoff, an associate professor at the Department of Criminal Justice at the South Carolina Citadel said, “There are people getting these cards that are not here just to get a job, that they have other intentions, and this helps them carry out criminal activity.”
These newly arrived illegal aliens who buy fraudulent social security cards and fake identification documents wreak havoc on millions of Americans whose identities have been stolen. Children are prime targets. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “children do not use their social security numbers for employment or to obtain credit so parents generally do not check their children’s credit histories, allowing a person using a child’s social security number to go undetected for years.”
It is concerning that both the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration are not taking action to detect and stop the use of these fraudulent social security cards but instead are tacitly approving it. Years ago, the Social Security Administration estimated that 75 percent of working-age illegal aliens use fraudulent social security numbers for employment. And, during the second term of the Obama Administration, an investigation conducted by the Immigration Reform Law Institute found that from 2012 to 2016, there were 39 million instances where names and social security numbers on W-2 tax forms did not match the legitimate social security records. While these numbers have only grown, the government no longer puts employers on notice about the no-matches, nor does it enforce the laws that prohibit the hiring of illegal aliens. This only encourages the black market for fraudulent cards, while Americans pay the price.
