Federal authorities arrested a Mexican national who worked for three decades at a major military contractor after she allegedly used a stolen certificate of naturalization to hide her immigration status.
Alma Patricia Contreras Villafana, 54, of South Los Angeles, was taken into custody Friday at the Torrance factory operated by Howmet Aerospace, where she worked as a machinist. The arrest followed a standoff lasting more than two hours after company officials refused to let Homeland Security agents enter the building.
Investigators said Contreras Villafana had been tipped off to the presence of law enforcement and left her workstation to hide in a conference room. When she finally emerged, agents placed her in handcuffs.
She is charged with five counts of wire fraud, one count of use of a false and forged certificate of naturalization, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of false claim to United States citizenship. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud count, up to 10 years for use of a false and forged certificate of naturalization, up to three years for falsely claiming US citizenship, and a mandatory two-year consecutive prison sentence for aggravated identity theft.
Court papers show Contreras Villafana first secured employment at a Howmet subsidiary in 1996 by attesting on her Form I-9 that she was a US citizen. She submitted another I-9 this year falsely stating she was a US citizen to keep her job at Howmet, providing a certificate of naturalization number that belonged to another person, according to prosecutors.
Over the three decades she worked at Howmet and its subsidiary, she was paid at least $1,402,459, prosecutors said.
“It’s alarming that an illegal immigrant who ignored a decades-old removal order was allowed to work for 30 years at a company involved with our nation’s military,” said Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli.
“It’s also a sign of how lax things were in terms of enforcing immigration laws that Congress passed decades ago. Those days are over. We will not allow our national security to be jeopardized in this manner again.”
Immigration records show Contreras Villafana was previously ordered to leave the US by an immigration judge in 2003, seven years after she first began working at the aerospace company.
Pittsburgh, Pa.-based Howmet is a major manufacturer of components for jet engines and titanium structures used in aerospace, as well as fasteners and forged aluminum wheels for heavy trucks. The publicly traded company has more than two dozen factories around the world and does a high volume of business with the US military, including manufacturing parts for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II fighter jet.
In 2024, Howmet’s Pittsburgh headquarters was targeted by anti-Israel protestors for selling parts to Lockheed Martin for jets used by Israeli forces. The F-35 Lightning II has been sold to allies worldwide, including Israel.
Homeland Security Investigations is continuing to probe the case. A representative for Howmet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.