The New York Times ran a startlingly sympathetic profile this week that treated an illegal immigrant who allegedly stole a Minnesota man’s identity as if he were just another victim of circumstance, and conservatives erupted. Vice President JD Vance called the paper’s framing “shameful,” a terse rebuke that captured the fury of hardworking Americans who watched a life be upended while elite outlets searched for empathy for the rule-breaker.
Dan Kluver’s ordeal is exactly the kind of harm the open-borders crowd pretends doesn’t exist: years of phantom wages showing up under his Social Security number, IRS fines, garnished paychecks, and the stress of being wrongfully tied to criminal incidents. The impostor’s use of Kluver’s identity even dragged him into a wrongful-death lawsuit after a crash in which a man died and a child was injured — consequences the New York Times oddly downplayed in its human-interest sweep.
The man accused of stealing Kluver’s identity, identified in reporting as Romeo Pérez-Bravo, is no innocent bystander — he was deported multiple times in 2005, 2008 and 2009, allegedly bought fraudulent IDs, and has a record of DUIs and other charges. Authorities have charged him with aggravated identity theft and false representation of a Social Security number; the Department of Justice has outlined the criminal penalties he faces if convicted. This is not a sad accident of bureaucracy — it’s criminal conduct with real victims.
What’s galling is how The New York Times headline — “Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price.” — blurs the moral lines and invites sympathy for the lawbreaker while sidelining the American who lost years of his life and savings. Senators and conservative commentators were right to call out that framing, and the swampy media class should be ashamed that it so often prioritizes a feel-good narrative over the truth. The Times’ self-defense about explaining complexity rings hollow when the complexity is used to excuse illegal behavior.
This story is a painful reminder that open borders are not an abstract policy debate — they translate directly into ruined credit, stolen identities, and families left to pick up the pieces. Writers like Brianna Lyman and other conservative voices have correctly pointed out that the paper’s piece reads like a defense brief for lawbreaking rather than a serious reckoning with the victims. If America is to remain a nation of laws, the media must stop gaslighting citizens who pay the price for lax enforcement.
Enough of moral equivalence. Perez-Bravo faces mandatory prison terms under federal law if convicted, and responsible prosecutors should pursue the full penalties while our policymakers fix the border and strengthen identity protections so this sort of theft can’t destroy another American family. Employers, agencies, and courts must stop treating identity fraud as a bureaucratic inconvenience and start treating it like the violent violation of property and person that it is.
Patriots should be furious that a respected national paper would let ideology blind it to the plain injustice here. Hold the media accountable, back leaders who demand secure borders and enforcement, and remember Dan Kluver when the elites try to tell you that our victims are the villains — because a nation that protects its citizens first is a nation that endures.
