Illegal Immigrant Who Voted Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison
An illegal immigrant who voted in U.S. elections was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Enrique Salazar Ortiz, a native of Mexico, was convicted of making a false statement on a passport application, unlawful voting by an illegal alien, and aggravated identity theft, reported the San Antonio Express-News. Ortiz used a stolen identity to vote in the 2016 presidential election. The name on the stolen ID was Jesse Vargas Jr.
Vargas himself left the area as a teenager but someone used his identification to vote in local elections “since at least 1994,” Bexar County elections administrator Jacque Callanen said, including in the 2008 Democratic primary. A public defender told U.S. District Judge Fred Biery that the Vargas identity was used by four men in total and that Ortiz had just used it in the 2016 election. Ortiz began using the name several years ago after buying it from a man in a bar for $20, she added. In late 2018 Ortiz admitted to voting in the 2016 election but refused to tell authorities if he voted in any other elections, reported the Express-News.
The fake identification was detected by the State Department in December 2016 after Ortiz mailed in a passport renewal application for a passport that he had been using fraudulently for 10 years. He was arrested in August 2017. According to a report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration released in 2017, illegal aliens steal hundreds of thousands of legal identities to gain employment. Up to 29 million illegal aliens are living in the United States, according to researchers at Yale University.
As part of the guilty plea from Ortiz, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Moore dismissed two other charges, false representation of U.S. citizenship and being an alien in unlawful possession of a firearm. When asked in court whether he knew what he was doing what was illegal, Ortiz said he did. “Unfortunately, yes, I knew it was,” Salazar said.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/illegal-immigrant-who-voted-sentenced-to-30-months-in-prison_2778867.html
The Number of Employment-Related
Identity Theft Victims Is Significantly
Greater Than Identified
https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/201740031fr.pdf