Colorado county tax probe targets illegal workers

Sometimes she showed them how to get on the tax rolls in the first place, helping clients without Social Security numbers apply for a special ID they needed to file their returns.

Some were illegal immigrants who got jobs using fake or stolen information, but that wasn't an issue for the Internal Revenue Service: Legal or not, everyone must pay their taxes.

Nor was it an issue for Cerrillo: "I'm not here to judge them. If they need to file taxes, then I help them file taxes." But Weld County authorities saw it differently.

Last month, they served a warrant to search thousands of records at Amalia's Translation and Tax Services, looking for illegal immigrants who have used Americans' Social Security numbers to file their own taxes.

"Obviously, the federal government isn't doing their job, and it's falling to local agencies to do it," Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said.

The search is the latest sign of escalating tension as local authorities seek to combat illegal immigration, traditionally a federal concern.

Weld County Dist. Atty. Ken Buck said prosecutors from throughout the Southwest have inquired about the effort.

Some people in this northern Colorado city say the operation is a witch hunt that has sent panic through a community still raw from immigration raids at a meatpacking plant two years ago.

"They are working hard and trying to comply with tax laws," Kim Baker Medina, a Fort Collins immigration attorney, said of workers. "This is an excuse to try to round up immigrants."

Operation Number Games began as a single case in August, when Weld County sheriff's detectives arrested a local man, Servando Trejo. Trejo admitted he had begun using a fake Social Security number years earlier when he slipped across the border and had used it ever since, according to a search warrant.

He told detectives he obtained a tax identification number and filed federal tax returns with the help of Cerrillo after confiding in her that he was using a fake Social Security number.

"Everyone knows to go to her for their taxes," he said, according to a search warrant.

Individual tax identification numbers were created by the Internal Revenue Service in 1996 for taxpayers who don't qualify for a Social Security number but have a tax liability. Many illegal immigrants use these tax ID numbers to file their tax returns, attaching W-2 forms with the false Social Security numbers they used to get a job.