A 24-year-old Venezuelan man suspected of using forged documents to claim to be a teenager and enroll as a student at an Ohio high school was arrested on Monday, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Anthony Emmanuel Labrador-Sierra was charged with forgery and later detained by the police in Perrysburg, Ohio, which said that he had been living in the United States illegally since March 24, 2020.
Mr. Labrador-Sierra enrolled in January 2024 at Perrysburg High School in the city, which is about 10 miles southwest of Toledo, presenting himself as a 16-year-old student “experiencing homelessness or without a legal guardian,” according to a statement from the school district.
The court system granted guardianship of Mr. Labrador-Sierra to a local family based on documents he had provided, the school district said.
More than a year later, on May 14, his guardians, who have not been publicly identified, alerted school officials that they believed Mr. Labrador-Sierra was not a teenager but a 24-year-old adult. The district asked the guardians to keep him from returning to school during an investigation into the discrepancy, school officials said.
The next day, school administrators met with Mr. Labrador-Sierra to discuss the concerns. According to the district’s statement, he denied the allegations and maintained that the documents he had provided, including a birth certificate showing him as now 17, were valid.
It was unclear if Mr. Labrador-Sierra had pleaded in the case and if he had any legal representation. He was being held at the local jail in Wood County, Ohio, the police said.
Tom Hosler, superintendent of the Perrysburg Schools, said in a statement posted on the school’s website that Mr. Labrador-Sierra went to “extraordinary lengths to conceal his identity — using forged documents to obtain a social security number, an Ohio driver’s license, temporary protective status and even legal guardianship.”
“Nothing is more important than the safety and security of our students,” Mr. Hosler said in the statement. “When we learn of a concerning situation, we act.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, has lodged a detainer, a notice that it seeks to pick up Mr. Labrador-Sierra from custody, according to a statement from Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the department.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter focused on transportation. He is based in Washington.
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