Alamance County has been identifying and deporting illegal immigrants from its jails for more than a year, but now a librarian's arrest has some worried that county officials may be using another tool -- public health department medical records.
The concerns stem from a State Bureau of Investigation probe of the county health department. Some county officials, who called in the agency, think department employees were helping illegal immigrants work under false names.
The sheriff has suggested that the librarian's arrest was related to her care at the health department but has not said whether medical information was used to identify her. The woman's arrest and the circumstances surrounding it have become so contentious that some residents are organizing against the county's efforts to drive out illegal immigrants.
The librarian, Marxavi Angel Martinez, 23, is a former cheerleader and honor student who grew up in the county, friends say. Few who knew her had any idea that her parents brought her from Mexico illegally as a toddler.
Martinez, who was arrested in the library, is charged with four federal felonies, all related to what authorities say was her use of a dead person's Social Security number. If found guilty, she would face several years in prison before being deported.
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