Colorado courts: Illegal aliens’ tax records are not your business

posted at 12:30 pm on December 15, 2009 by MadisonConservative

So what if they’re illegally in this country? So what if they should be deported, according to law? So what if the business employing them is breaking the law by doing so? They have a right to privacy, dammit!

DENVER | The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that authorities violated the constitutional privacy rights of suspected undocumented workers when they seized their tax records in an identity-theft investigation, a decision that infuriated foes of illegal immigration.

In a 4-3 decision, the court held that Weld County investigators lacked probable cause to search a tax preparer’s office in search of the tax records of illegal immigrants suspected of identity theft. The court also ruled that the tax filings were confidential.

…

More than 70 people were charged with criminal impersonation and identity theft after the 2008 search of the office of Amalia’s Translation and Tax Service in Greeley. During the investigation, known as Operation Numbers Game, authorities copied the files of 1,338 tax filers thought to have used false or stolen Social Security numbers.

The district court ruled that the Weld County Sheriff’s Office conducted “an exploratory search” that allowed investigators to rummage through “the confidential records of thousands of persons based on nothing more than a suspicion that one or more of them may have committed a crime.“

Um…beggin’ yer pardon, mate…were they illegal aliens? Then they were already committing a crime.

Silly me. Even the Washington Times, you’ll note, has accepted that there is no such thing as an illegal alien. There are only “undocumented workers”, and if you try to make an argument involving borders and citizenship, you’re nothing but a dirty racist.

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