INS Clerk Is Charged With Possessing Fake Documents : Investigation: Los Angeles-based employee was also moonlighting as an immigration consultant without the agency’s knowledge, officials say.

A Los Angeles-based INS clerk who moonlighted as a private immigration consultant, without the agency’s knowledge, has been arrested and charged with possessing counterfeited INS identification documents.

Jaime Guerra, 48, of Huntington Park was arrested last Friday and arraigned this week in federal district court for allegedly “forging information on real (government) documents,” said Richard K. Rogers, Immigration and Naturalization Service district director.

INS officials did not make Guerra’s arrest public until they received repeated requests for confirmation from The Times. Guerra is the second Los Angeles INS employee arrested in the past three months for alleged falsification of immigration documents.

Late last year, an INS employee was charged with entering false information into a government computer, which would have enabled illegal immigrants to receive authentic, but illicit, green cards. That case is making its way through the courts, Rogers said.

Rogers said Thursday that he believes such incidents are not pervasive in the understaffed and long-troubled agency.

“We try to put a sufficient amount of controls in,” Rogers said. “We also police ourselves. I hope this is not widespread and I don’t think this is.”

Guerra was arrested after an investigation that began when INS agents were running a standard audit of a Los Angeles employer who had hired immigrants bearing federal employment authorization documents. When the INS agents discovered an employee in possession of a seemingly valid document that had in fact been forged, their questioning led them to Guerra, INS officials said.

In the process, they discovered that Guerra, a three-year INS adjudications clerk, was also running an immigration consulting business, VI Services, in Rosemead.

“It was something he shouldn’t be doing,” said Rogers, who termed it a conflict of interest. “We would have never authorized it.”

Rogers said Guerra, whose job involved helping prepare and review immigration identification documents, has not been charged at this time with selling counterfeit documents. “But the investigation is continuing,” Rogers added.

Rogers said Guerra, charged with possessing unlawfully produced identification documents, is free on bail but has not shown up for work. If he does, Rogers said, “we will serve him with a notice . . . that he will be suspended.”