A previously deported illegal alien has been sentenced to four months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release after re-entering the United States and stealing an American’s Social Security number for employment purposes.
Maria Julia Diaz-Ventura, 34, pleaded guilty in May to illegally re-entering the U.S. after being deported in 2017. The Guatemalan national was also found guilty of using another person’s Social Security card for employment forms in Waterloo, New Hampton, Lime Springs, and Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 2021. She also claimed to be a U.S. citizen, NBC 7 reported.
She was sentenced to prison on Wednesday.
Diaz-Ventura’s arrest comes as the nation deals with one of the worst illegal immigration crises in decades. Data indicates that in the fiscal year 2021, authorities encountered 1.7 million migrants. In the first eight months of the fiscal year 2022, over 1.5 million migrants were apprehended, according to Senator James Risch (R-ID) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Biden administration has released at least 1,049,532 into the U.S. interior. Those figures do not include the number of illegal aliens who evaded authorities entirely.
To help solve the problem, border states like Arizona and Texas have begun busing illegal immigrants to blue cities and states.
In Washington, D.C., Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser said in late July that she has asked for the National Guard to be deployed to help handle the influx of illegal immigrants coming into the nation’s capital.
Bowser described the situation as a “growing humanitarian crisis” of “people who are seeking asylum coming across the country to get to their final destinations,” saying that Washington, D.C., would “continue to pursue federal involvement.”
“We’ve had a number of discussions,” she added. “We’ve facilitated FEMA’s involvement with a million-dollar grant that has now been increased to work with a lead nonprofit agency. We’ve facilitated using those grant funds to set up respite center in a neighboring jurisdiction and I’ve also asked the Secretary of the Army to deploy the D.C. National Guard to help lead that effort.”
In New York City, Democrat Mayor Eric Adams recently warned that the influx of illegal immigrants will impact every block and the daily way of life throughout the Big Apple.
In 2021, then-candidate Adams told voters that he “would make sure” that “undocumented New Yorkers are being given the support they need, so that their families no longer live in the shadows of the American dream, but are part of that dream.” Now that more of those individuals have arrived in New York City, the Democratic mayor is imploring help from all New Yorkers to keep that promise alive while stating they will be a “burden” on the system.
“If there was ever an all-hands-on-deck moment, this is it. This is it,” Adams noted. “Our system … was inundated with … you know, those who were seeking shelter because of the callousness of those other states that pushed them out. We’re here. We’re receiving them and everyone is going to have to be on board and we can’t have of the historical, ‘I believe people should be housed but just don’t house them on my block.’”
Similar to the Diaz-Ventura case, an illegal alien named Pedro Hernandez-Romero, a Mexican national, pleaded guilty in July in federal court to using the identity and Social Security number of an American citizen after illegally re-entering the United States after deportation. According to Eyewitness News, Hernandez-Romero received around $26,000 in Pennsylvania Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits as part of its state COVID relief program.