RIGHT SPEAK: An Illegal Alien Stole An American’s Identity For 15 Years. NYT Says He’s A Victim Too; NY Times Story On Illegal Immigrant Stealing Minnesota Man's Identity Sparks Debate, Gets Blasted by JD Vance

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An Illegal Alien Stole An American’s Identity For 15 Years. NYT Says He’s A Victim Too:

Every fact in the story underscores the massive cost and toll of illegal immigration.

“Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price,” The New York Times’ Eli Saslow and Gabriela Bhaskar wrote Sunday.

But before you start thinking that perhaps there was a paperwork blunder in which the government erroneously handed out the same Social Security number to two Americans and chaos transpired, I’ll save you the suspense: Despite the Times’ insistence, this wasn’t some double-victim case. This was full-on identity theft by an illegal alien who had repeatedly broken into the country. Under the stolen identity of Dan Kluver, this illegal alien racked up DUIs, other offenses, giant tax bills (for the real Kluver), and fatally struck a grandfather with his vehicle.

And yet, Guatemalan national Romeo Pérez-Bravo is somehow also a victim, merely a sympathetic worker and father living under “borrowed identities” desperate to “fix” the mess he created.

Meanwhile the real Kluver — an American citizen from Minnesota — lived his life “without ever getting into trouble.” He coaches baseball, works at a factory, and teaches Sunday school. “He had never fired a gun, or smoked a cigarette, or missed a payment, or been arrested,” the Times details.

But according to the government, the IRS, and the law, Kluver had racked up debt, killed someone, and was driving with a suspended license.

“Over the years, there had been signs that something wasn’t right — stray letters about wages earned in unfamiliar towns and collection notices for debt that wasn’t his,” the Times explained. “Kluver had tried to untangle the mess several times by hiring tax specialists and driving to government offices across the state only to run into the same bureaucratic dead ends. But now the problem was bigger than unpaid taxes. Someone was impersonating him, moving through the world as Dan Kluver, building a life in his name with a government-issued ID.”

It wasn’t until Kluver was pulled over and informed his license was suspended that he began to put the pieces together that someone had stolen his identity.

But the damage had already been done. According to the Times, “some years” Pérez-Bravo “had earned more than [Kluver’s] own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under his Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount.”

Kluver tried to inform authorities, but his complaint “landed in a pile along with tens of thousands of similar reports filed each year.” And while Kluver “waited for relief … the I.R.S. docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands.”

Kluver’s then-wife-to-be ended up “emptying her savings” to pay off the remaining debt around 2012, sending the government a check for $6,000. But the relief was short-lived, because in the next tax season, they received a new bill for $22,000 because of Pérez-Bravo. --->READ MORE HERE

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NY Times story on illegal immigrant stealing Minnesota man's identity sparks debate, gets blasted by JD Vance:

Vice president joins Republican senators criticizing newspaper's coverage of illegal immigrant case

The New York Times sparked intense debate on social media with its story of an illegal immigrant accused of stealing an American's identity on Monday, with Vice President JD Vance blasting the paper’s "shameful" framing of the story at the center of the controversy.

The Times published a lengthy report, "Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price," on the nightmarish plight of a Minnesota man, Daniel Kluver, whose identity was reportedly stolen by an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, Romeo Pérez-Bravo.

Kluver endured years of IRS fines and even garnished paychecks as the man assuming his identity earned incomes in other states that pushed the real Kluver into an improper tax bracket.

Pérez-Bravo assumed several identities over decades living illegally in the U.S. According to the Times, he racked up several drunk-driving charges and was deported in 2005, 2008 and 2009, but he returned each time and bought another illicit ID, according to the report. The fake Kluver was involved in a fatal car accident in 2022 when he accidentally struck and killed a man who was riding with his granddaughter on a motorized tricycle, according to the report. That led to a wrongful death lawsuit, with Kluver listed as the defendant.

The Times story highlighted the real Kluver's frustrations with liberal politicians in Minnesota who thought illegal immigration was a victimless crime, as he pointed to his debts and the frustrations of waiting for an investigation to find the impostor. Eventually, investigators took his case and discovered Pérez-Bravo, who was charged with aggravated identity theft and false representation of a Social Security number. He was held in detention for six weeks before an initial bond hearing in April and is currently awaiting trial, where he almost certainly will face prison time and another deportation, the Times reported.