The Department of Homeland Security is detaining document-fraud migrants who inflict massive economic and civic damage on ordinary American families.
The New York Times sketched the identity theft damage done to Dan Kluver, a married father of two in Olivia, Minnesota. The damage was done by a migrant who worked long hours in another state until his arrest by the Department of Homeland Security in March.
The Guatemalan migrant used Kluver’s ID to get a job. The employer reported the wages to the IRS, which then demanded extra taxes from Kluver’s family. The identity theft also dragged Kluver into a wrongful death lawsuit after the migrant killed an American in an auto accident.
The author wrote:
Some years the other [fake] Dan Kluver had earned more than his own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under [the real Kluver’s] Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount. Twice, he’d contacted law enforcement and filed an identity theft report with the federal government, where it landed in a pile along with tens of thousands of similar reports filed each year. He waited for relief while the I.R.S. docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands. Finally, a few months before their wedding in 2012, Kristy decided to pay off the balance, emptying her savings and sending in a check for $6,000. Their relief lasted until the next tax season, when a new [tax] bill arrived — this one for $22,000 [because of the migrants’ income]
In a note attached to the article, author Eli Saslow said:
Daniel and his family actually spent tons of time and an insane amount of energy (and money) trying to untangle this mess. I think there’s a misconception that it’s easy to solve identity theft. He protested his debts, went to the I.R.S., visited Social Security offices around the state and filed police reports three times. There were a few years (likely when [the migrant] was deported), when his taxes were normal and he thought the problem had been solved, but then it would start all over again. The issue is that the system is overwhelmed with these cases.
“Dan Kluver is in debt and has 15 years of hardship that he didn’t deserve,” Saslow added.
However, the article approved by the New York Times‘ pro-migration editors does not disclose how much Kluver — and his wife and children — were required to pay the IRS due to the fraud perpetrated by the migrant, his employers, and Congress.
Deep in the article, the New York Times admitted that the IRS’s oversight system “was backlogged with a million suspicious numbers and almost 80,000 reports of Social Security fraud in the last six months alone.”
The Times soft-pedalled the damage done to Kluver under sympathy for the Guatemalan migrant, Romeo Pérez-Bravo:
By the start of 2025, [the Guatemalan] was preparing for another graveyard shift in St. Joseph, Mo., lacing his work boots in the darkness of his drafty rental while his wife and five children slept. He packed their school lunches for the next day, drove to the dog-food factory and gathered with his co-workers to say their nightly prayer. Then he swiped his badge to begin another 12-hour shift as Daniel Kluver, sinking deeper into an identity that wasn’t really his own.
…
By the time Trump was elected to his second term, there were five children in Perez-Bravo’s house who also depended on the money that came each Friday in Kluver’s name. Most were U.S. citizens, ranging in age from 4 to 19, who answered his Spanish with English and hosted birthday parties at Olive Garden.
The article is also silent about the employers who accepted the Guatemalan’s clearly fake ID numbers, and is silent about the legislators in Congress and the officials at the IRS who did little or nothing to stop the fraud damage for more than 20 years.
This March, local police and the reinvigorated Department of Homeland Security finally aided the American citizen by arresting the illegal immigrant who had stolen his identity. The newspaper reported:
His lawyer had advised him that he was essentially out of options. She had managed to postpone his case until at least January 2026, but he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison followed by deportation to Guatemala.
The article notes in passing that the migrant killed an elderly American in an automobile accident. A court ruled that the death was not his fault.
But the court — and the newspaper — were silent on the fact that the elderly American was killed because the migrant was in the United States, under the tacit protection of the U.S. government, the employers, and the identity theft.
Read the full article here