Fake IDs Targeted in Raids by U.S. Agents

• 19 Arrested in D.C., 4 in Pr. George's County
  

Federal agents arrested 19 people yesterday in a dramatic afternoon raid on the sidewalk of a busy commercial strip in Adams Morgan and said they will be charged with selling illegal identification documents. In a similar raid, agents searched an apartment they called a "document mill" in the Hyattsville area of Prince George's County and arrested four men. The arrests were the latest actions in Operation Card Shark, an effort by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to combat sales of fake documents in Adams Morgan's notorious open-air market and elsewhere in the Washington area. Immigration agents were joined in the raids by members of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force and several other law enforcement agencies. Local and federal officers conducted two raids in June on the long-established market in Adams Morgan. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, fake document sales in Adams Morgan, a center of the District's Latino community, have come under increasing scrutiny. [more]