Lawmakers look at ways to prevent child identity theft

The nightmare started with a phone call.

A bureaucratic voice on the other end of the line spoke clearly but that didn’t make the message easier to understand.

According to the Workforce Services employee, Jennifer Grizzell’s 3-year-old son was currently employed.

Or rather, wages had been reported to his Social Security number going back years.

“I was really shocked. I was really confused. I didn’t know how something like that could happen,” Grizzell said.

The government agent didn’t have answers. Neither did the Social Security Administration, or the credit agencies, or the police.

It wasn’t until Grizzell reached out directly to the Utah Attorney General’s Office that an investigation was launched, an arrest was made and charges were prosecuted.

Only then, more than two years after that first phone call, did Grizzell discover that a decade before her son was even born an unauthorized immigrant had purchased a forged Social Security number on the streets of Salt Lake City to gain employment.

The woman, whose sentence was ultimately commuted, had used the same Social Security number as the one Grizzell’s son received to secure work at a TJ Maxx in Park City and the Zermatt resort in Midway.

Now, almost 15 years later, Grizzell remains uncertain.

Despite the countless hours she spent attempting to clear the record, it is yet to be seen whether her 18-year-old son’s credit score, medical history and financial future have been permanently affected by a case of infant identity theft.

“I’m still just kind of waiting to see, and hoping that I did enough that he’s not going to have to deal with that,” Grizzell said.

But Grizzell is certain about one thing: there are likely many more children whose Social Security numbers are being used fraudulently. And there is much more that could be done to stop it.

Using E-Verify to stop identity theft

This legislative session, Rep. Neil Walter, R-St. George, has introduced a bill that would significantly tighten requirements for Utah businesses to verify the residency status of their workers.

The bill, HB214, Employer Verification Amendments, was held by the House Business, Labor, and Commerce Standing Committee on Wednesday after extensive debate between committee members on both sides of the aisle.

This session, House Republicans have introduced a slate of bills that would enhance penalties for human trafficking, fentanyl distribution and driving without a license; improve coordination between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and repeal a 2019 law that prevented class A misdemeanors from leading to immediate deportations.

Walter‘s bill in its current form would increase the number of businesses that must use a status verification system to verify the federal legal working status of new employees by reducing the applicable company size from 150 employees down to five.

It would also reaffirm that individuals who use fraudulent identification for the purpose of obtaining employment are subject to criminal prosecution under Utah’s identity fraud statutes that impose a third degree felony or a second degree felony depending on the damage caused.

“Identity theft is becoming a bigger issue,” Walter said. “And one of the ways we can focus on security for basic documentation is making sure that we don’t have individuals using identification illegally to obtain employment and removing incentives for people to essentially create forms of documentation that are not proper.”

There are currently hundreds of Utah children that may be at risk of their government identification being used by someone else for employment purposes.

In 2023, there were 222 Utah children 12 years old or younger — including 10 that hadn’t turned 1 yet — whose Social Security numbers were being used for employment purposes, and 165 employers who were paying wages to the Social Security numbers of Utah children, according to Utah Department of Workforce Services data.

The data collected by Workforce Services only represents children receiving some kind of public assistance, suggesting that the true number of Utah children affected by employment-driven identity fraud is much higher.

There are 310,000 children in Utah receiving public assistance. The Department of Workforce Services confirmed that it is their policy to notify a family applying for public assistance if it appears that a child’s Social Security number is being used for employment services.

But the problem is not limited to children. Workforce Services data identified nearly 8,000 Social Security numbers being used under 3 to 10 last names for employment purposes out of 1.9 million workers in the state.

While Walter’s bill has been included in the Legislature’s public safety package addressing immigration, Walter said that increasing E-Verify requirements is not intended to punish immigrant communities in the state.

“This legislation doesn’t target a individual or a community. The legislation is targeting a behavior,” Walter said. “We don’t want to provide any kind of safe harbor or make it easy for somebody that is using identification illegally.”

E-Verify vacillation

The debate over E-Verify has a long history in Utah.

In 2008, lawmakers required public employers to use a status verification system for all new employees, and required public contractors to do the same.

In 2010, lawmakers legislated the same requirement for private employers with 15 or more employees. This requirement was reaffirmed in a comprehensive 2011 bill on immigration that included penalties for businesses that failed to comply.

In 2022, lawmakers approved HB116 which raised the employee threshold for businesses required to verify the residency status of workers from 15 employees to 150, significantly reducing the number of companies under the requirement.

The initiative to relax E-Verify requirements was motivated by evidence that E-Verify was overly burdensome for small businesses that lack human resources departments and that E-Verify did not yield significant results because unauthorized immigrants could simply forge another Social Security number or try again at a different employer, according to former Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, who was floor sponsor for HB116.

“That was the argument, that it just was a program that was very costly, very administrative-overhead heavy with very little actual benefit,” Bramble said.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told the Deseret News at the beginning of the legislative session that he supports Walter’s bill.

But he said the federal government must improve the accuracy and enforcement of E-Verify, as well as streamline the process for businesses, so that it becomes a practical way to address identity theft.

“It’s really kind of a broken system,” Cox said. “It’s just really paper-heavy and doesn’t have the intended impact that people think it does.”

To participate in E-Verify, companies must register with the system, and then upload information from a new employee’s I-9 form, which contains a Social Security number, within three days after the employee’s first day.

The program then compares this information against records kept by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. If the employee is determined to be an unauthorized immigrant the employer is notified not to hire the individual.

A customer satisfaction survey conducted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2021 found that 88% of E-Verify participants had a satisfactory experience with E-Verify.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Walter said E-Verify has improved its process in recent years to only require I-9 information, to provide an immediate response in 90% of cases and to only take 10 minutes to sign up.

Around 10 states require most or all employers to use E-Verify. Another two dozen states have no E-Verify requirements at the state level. And two states, California and Illinois, restrict the use of E-Verify by employers.

Representatives of the construction and agricultural industries in Utah spoke against the bill during Wednesday’s hearing, saying that the enforcement of E-Verify by federal authorities would exacerbate workforce deficits and increase prices of food and homes.

“This has significant impacts on the construction industry and many other industries that employ people who do not have proper documentation,” said Robert Babcock, the president of the construction law firm Babcock Scott and Babcock. “We already have a workforce shortage, if you drive those out of the business, where are they going to be replaced?”

Walter addresses child insurance for noncitizens

Walter has also introduced a bill this session that would address the number of unauthorized immigrants receiving subsidized health care in the state of Utah.

HB178, Noncitizen Health Insurance Policies Amendments, would eliminate the option for children who are unauthorized immigrants to qualify for the Utah Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Currently, children can qualify for the program if they are a U.S. citizen, are a Utah resident, have a household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, have no access to other health insurance and do not qualify for Medicaid benefits.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program provides wellness exams, immunizations, emergency care, prescriptions, hearing and eye exams, mental health services and dental care.

Utah code also provides for “alternative eligibility” that would cover children who meet these requirements but who are not citizens, as long as they have been in the state for at least 180 days.

Walter’s bill would eliminate the “alternative eligibility” category for otherwise ineligible children under the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

This change would remove CHIP benefits for 1,800 individuals, according to the Department of Workforce Services.

HB178 has still not been assigned a committee hearing by the House rules committee.