IDs Sold To Illegal Immigrants

Bob Simon Reports On Illegal Immigrants Who Are Buying IDs To Work In America

(CBS)  But Ivan Hernandez would, and did. He says companies know exactly who they’re employing and why: "I’m telling you it’s a game. They want us to work because they know that we have no rights here, so they know we’re only going to work and work. They produce a lot while we get miserable wages. And since we have the need, we have no choice."

To get his job at the Cargill meatpacking plant in Schuyler, Hernandez bought the Social Security card of a Californian on the black market. How does he then go about getting a job?

"I memorize the Social Security number, the birth date on the birth certificate and the names of the parents," says Hernandez. "And when they called me for an interview, a friend had already told me what they would ask me and I got the job."

But Cargill’s PR director, Mark Klein, says he doesn’t believe imposters can get jobs since the company checks the Social Security numbers of job applicants with local Social Security offices. And that, he says, is more than the law requires: "I feel very good that the people that are coming here now are legal. That they do have the proper documentation."

But the Social Security Administration told 60 Minutes Wednesday that it’s not set up to establish whether or not more than one person is earning wages on the same Social Security card. Hence, the vendors and buyers.

"Are you saying that you don’t know about this network of document vendors that’s operating in the shadows of your plant?" asks Simon.

"No, I have not heard about it here," says Klein. "I’ve read articles that those rings exist. But, no, I’ve not."

Well, 60 Minutes Wednesday already found one of those rings -- and it was time to go back and complete the transaction. Bribiesca and Garcia, our staffers who had posed as illegal immigrants, returned to see the bar owner who promised to provide the stolen identities needed for employment. Cuba, the bar owner, asked Garcia to go to a back room to seal the deal -- and told him his new name: Ricardo Torres Camacho.

With that name, Cuba told Garcia that he could get a job at the Cargill plant. Garcia handed over $1,300 in cash in exchange for a Social Security card and a birth certificate. He was now a Puerto Rican named Ricardo Torres Camacho.

The Social Security card looked real, and the birth certificate had an official-looking stamp, along with Camacho’s birth date, birthplace and the names of his parents. 60 Minutes Wednesday was reluctant to take Cuba’s word for it, so we flew to Ponce, Puerto Rico, Camacho’s alleged hometown.

After four days and the help of an investigator, 60 Minutes Wednesday found Camacho, who confirmed that all of the information on the Social Security card and the birth certificate was correct. Not only that, Camacho said they were his real documents.

He was somewhat surprised to learn that 60 Minutes Wednesday had bought his papers thousands of miles away in Nebraska.

Camacho has been homeless for the past six months. He sleeps in a filthy abandoned home in the center of town. The story he told us was that he didn’t sell his documents. He lost them.

So now, we have this man, the real Ricardo Torres Camacho. And we have the documents we bought in Nebraska with the name Ricardo Torres Camacho.

But there’s more. There is yet another Ricardo Torres Camacho, an illegal immigrant using the same Social Security number as the real Camacho in Puerto Rico. This Camacho lives and works in Kansas, at a meatpacking plant in Dodge City, run by Cargill Meat Solutions, the same company that told 60 Minutes Wednesday that it doesn’t employ illegal immigrants.

60 Minutes Wednesday went back to Klein at Cargill with this discovery. Klein told us that the Camacho at the Dodge City plant had been working there for four years. But when confronted with the evidence, Klein admitted that Camacho had been using someone else’s identity.

"I'm still confident that we run it very tight," says Klein.

"But in January, you said you were confident that there weren’t illegal immigrants working in your plant," says Simon.

"I was confident that, based on what we’ve been told, that they are legal," says Klein. "And we are going to assume that they’re legal."

Adds Klein: "If they present us with the documents, we can’t look at them and just speculate that because they’re Hispanic or because they don’t speak English that they could be illegal."

According to the letter of the law, Klein is right. An employer is not obliged to prove that a worker is legally in the United States. He just has to make what is called a good faith effort.

So immigrants continue to pour through this loophole into America, where they will be illegal -- and unofficially welcome.