Fake documents hid presence of illegal immigrants in Birnamwood

BIRNAMWOOD — False documents and multiple aliases hid the presence of three Birnamwood residents alleged to be in the country illegally, including one now facing multiple sex offense charges, according to the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department.

Hobil R. Bravo-Perez, 19, has been charged with first-degree sexual assault of a child under the age of 13, trafficking of a child, child enticement, child enticement-prostitution, sexual assault of a child and repeated sexual assault of a child.

He was arrested Sept. 13 at his residence in Birnamwood after authorities executed a search warrant.

The complaint states Bravo-Perez was in the country illegally, along with his two brothers who were at the Birnamwood address when the search warrant was executed.

One of the brothers, Edgar B. Bravo-Perez, 22, has been charged with a felony count of possession of methamphetamine. He was also faces misdemeanor counts of operating while intoxicated-causing injury and hit-and-run.

According to the criminal complaint, Hobil and Edgar Bravo-Perez had each been cited in the past for operating a vehicle without a license and were using false names at the time of those incidents.

The third brother, Jorge Luis Bravo-Perez, 29, is listed by the border patrol in Texas as an inadmissible alien, according to the criminal complaint.

That wasn’t known by authorities at the time the search warrant was executed, according to Shawano County Sheriff’s Detective Chris Gamm.

“It wasn’t until later in the day when I was looking at the criminal histories that I saw that notification on his criminal history,” Gamm said.

Gamm then contacted the Milwaukee office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“They’re aware of the case, and that’s their jurisdiction,” he said. “We have not been contacted by them to assist in locating him yet.”

Gamm said fake paperwork prevented the other two brothers from being caught sooner for their illegal status.

“At the house, we found fake U.S. Permanent Resident cards and fake Social Security cards, which is what they were using for employment, or what they told us they used to gain employment,” he said.

Gamm said those false documents could have also been used when stopped by law enforcement.

“I’ve stopped a few from out of the country and I see these cards also,” he said. “Unless they are in the database when we run them under the name that they’ve given, they could give us any name. Right now we don’t have a good process to identify them. If they don’t have any ID on them, we’re stuck using the information that they give us.”

The county jail does have an identification system that is tied in with the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which scans fingerprints and scans all other available databases for identification.

“Everyone in every jail across the country, when they’re fingerprinted, their fingerprints go into that AFIS system,” Gamm said.

“We’re working on getting some of those units in the car, because people lie to us all the time,” he said.

Gamm said, however, that putting the system into squad cars would be costly and would take multiple steps to access the AFIS system remotely.

Gamm said fake immigration documents often “look real enough” to the lay person, but often don’t have the official government decals or protections on the ID.

“A lot of time we don’t know that,” he said. “We’re always behind the technology.”