Phony-Document Plot Unravels at Tijuana Post Office

A ruptured bundle in a Tijuana post office led to the confiscation of four packages containing more than 40,000 false U.S. Social Security and immigration documents, Mexican police say.

Two suspects in the counterfeiting case were arrested when they arrived at the post office and sought to claim the items, said a spokesman for the Federal Judicial Police in Tijuana.

Authorities learned of the illicit shipment by accident, said the spokesman, who explained that one of the four packages broke open at the post office, revealing its contents.

The seizures were made last month but were revealed publicly only this week, said the federal police official, who requested that his name not be used.

Among the false documents confiscated, the police spokesman said, were thousands of phony Social Security cards and so-called “green cards”--a common term for a range of immigration documents that allow foreign nationals to reside and work in the United States.

The suspects were believed to have been planning to smuggle the counterfeit material into the United States for sale, the police official said.

The investigation into the counterfeiting ring is continuing, said representatives of the federal police in Tijuana and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

INS investigators are working with Mexican authorities on the case, said Rudy Murillo, an INS spokesman in San Diego. INS officials declined to provide additional details.

The package originated in the Mexican city of Torreon, capital of the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, authorities said.

Mexican investigators are attempting to trace the source of the forged materials, the Mexican police official said.

Counterfeit U.S. documents are in great demand along the U.S.-Mexico border, which draws thousands of would-be immigrants each day. The U.S. Border Patrol records more than 1,500 arrests each day in the San Diego area, the prime entry zone for undocumented foreigners en route north.

Phony-document mills have proliferated in the Tijuana-San Diego area, as well as in Los Angeles and other immigrant centers, according to U.S. investigators.

Spurring the fraudulent-papers business, officials say, was passage of a 1986 U.S. law requiring all employers to verify that prospective workers are in the United States legally. Many undocumented immigrants have been able to skirt the law by purchasing phony papers, investigators say.

The two suspects arrested on counterfeiting charges were identified as Rafael Valera Machuca, 25, and Guillermo Gutierrez Castillo, 31.