Florida Man Faces 20 Years in Prison for Filing More Than 200 Fake Immigration Applications
Olga Puerta, originally from Colombia, holds an American flag as she joins with other people during a ceremony to become American citizens at a U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services naturalization ceremony in a Miami Field Office on August 16, 2019 in Miami, Florida. The ceremony included 150 citizenship candidates from across the globe. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A Florida man has been convicted of pretending to be an immigration lawyer and filing over 200 immigration applications in Hillsborough County areas, including Plant City, Ruskin, and Wimauma.

Suspect Elvis Harold Reyes pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Tampa federal court on mail fraud and aggravated identity theft charges, as reported by Tampa Bay Times.

He is currently facing up to 20 years in prison for mail fraud and a mandatory consecutive sentence of two years for identity theft. However, a sentencing date has yet to be set.

Court documents stated that Reyes owned and operated EHR Ministries Inc. He then portrayed himself as an immigration attorney, although he never had a law license.

Reyes' main targets were undocumented immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries looking for Florida driver licenses and work authorizations.

According to prosecutors, the suspect also gave the victims' false, inaccurate, and incomplete legal and immigration advice to persuade them to retain his services and EHR Ministries.

Reyes filed around 215 fraudulent applications. Intended losses to victims exceed $1 million, according to an NBC Miami news report.

Aside from pretending to be an immigration lawyer, he also portrayed himself as an attorney, pastor, accountant, and former immigration official. He targeted victims in mostly Hispanic areas, particularly in southern Hillsborough County.

Univision Tampa Bay's investigation triggered the Hillsborough County Sheriff to probe Reyes.

More than 30 of his victims have worked as a group, talking on the phone and sharing text messages, and organizing Zoom meetings to keep one another up to date on the court case. This was since February.

Many of Reyes' victims have lost the money they had been saving for years. One of them was Ignacio Lopez, who said it had been very hard.

Lopez is a 36-year-old husband and father of three. He came to the United States illegally more than a decade ago from Mexico.

Lopez said he had lost his $4,000 to Reyes.

"We are humble people with family and children," Lopez noted in a report.

Illegal Immigrants in The U.S.

Illegal immigrants have also been the target of the Trump administration for the past four years.

One of President Donald Trump's efforts on illegal immigration is to exclude illegal immigrants from the population totals used to allocate House of Representatives district to states, as reported by Reuters.

Many argued that Trump's move could leave several million people uncounted and cause California, Texas, and New Jersey to lose House seats.

The census is legally mandated by the U.S. Constitution, and the challengers argued that the Constitution's text prohibits Trump from excluding illegal immigrants from the population count.

One of Trump's famous efforts on illegal immigration is putting up a border wall, which President-elect Joe Biden has promised to terminate.

However, Border Report said terminating the contracts could cost billions of dollars, as per U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan.