Immigration News

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Feds put away final human smuggling ringleader
National smuggling ring uncovered after Grand Forks workers walked off job


The last known ringleader in a case of human smuggling that began unraveling at a Grand Forks restaurant and turned into one of the biggest human trafficking cases in the nation's history was sentenced to prison in federal court this week in Fargo.

It ends a key phase of the case - involving 6,000 illegal immigrant workers slaving in Asian restaurants across the Midwest - but more cases against more restaurant owners might be built, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Nick Chase, who prosecuted the case.

"This whole case started with two Mexican guys who walked away from the restaurant in Grand Forks - or were fired - and were found walking along a road outside Grand Forks in a thunderstorm," Chase said Thursday.

That was in August 2004. The two Mexican men told agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement they had been working more than 70 hours a week for less than $2 an hour at the Buffet House, a Chinese restaurant on Gateway Drive and Stanford Road. They had been living with eight other restaurant employees in a small apartment a block from the restaurant.

Federal officials soon found that the owners of the Buffet House, Yun Di Lu and Hong Peng, illegally were employing several Mexican men in virtual slave conditions.

Soon, a multistate racket of human smuggling based in Texas was uncovered, which from 2000 to early 2005 had shipped 6,000 illegal immigrants to restaurants in several states, including North Dakota and Minnesota.

Ya Cao, of McKinney, Texas, was sentenced Wednesday in Fargo to 21 months in prison for her role in the scheme. She was the last of eight co-conspirators who ran the pipeline smuggling humans into virtual slavery, Chase said.

In sentencing Cao, U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson said the scheme was an especially "destructive conspiracy" that amounted to modern-day "slave labor" and treated the illegal immigrant workers "like animals."

"These people were essentially held in bondage," Erickson said.

It was started by Shan Wei Yu, also of McKinney, who was tried last year in federal court in Grand Forks and sentenced by Erickson in December to nine years in prison, more than the federal sentencing guidelines suggest.

Also last year, Yu's associate, An Dong Cen, 35, of Houston, was sentenced in the case.

Cao was the eighth and last of the ringleaders sentenced; all are Chinese. All of the workers were Hispanic illegal immigrants, Chase said.

It was the first such case prosecuted in North Dakota, Chase said.

Lee Finstad, a Grand Forks attorney, defended Cao and sought a lesser sentence this week, saying she had a clean record and had cooperated with authorities.

Yu, through his company, Great Texas Employment Agency, took advantage of Cao after she came to America to seek political asylum, Finstad said.

"My client did not come to the United States with the intent to commit any criminal activity," Finstad told Judge Erickson Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.

Erickson told Finstad Cao was lucky she didn't get three years in prison.

Finstad asked Erickson to delay the start of Cao's sentence because her husband and son recently received permission to leave China for the United States. Erickson said Cao could report on Aug. 1 to a prison close to where her family decides to live.

At an earlier hearing, Finstad said that Cao pleaded guilty to avoid being deported. He said Cao has an accounting degree from a Chinese college, and went to cosmetology school in Texas before starting her own salon.

"It's a real tear-jerker," Finstad said after the earlier hearing, according to the AP.

"This sentencing concludes this phase of a sordid criminal enterprise," Chase's boss, U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, said in a news release this week. "Those prosecutions led to the supplier of those illegal workers, which turned out to be one of the largest-on-record human smuggling rings in terms of workers smuggled."

Six of the illegal immigrant employees found working in the Buffet House in Grand Forks were deported once their illegal status was determined. Several cooperated in the investigation.

Owners Lu and Peng were sentenced last year in Grand Forks to four months in prison; Peng was deported to China, Lu still is seeking asylum in the United States. The restaurant was closed but reopened months ago under new ownership.

Here's how it worked: Restaurant owners paid $450 to get a cheap employee, who was run up through the pipeline, probably from Texas or California. Cell phone calls connected Yu's employment agency to Asian restaurants around the Midwest.

Restaurant owners then deducted that $450 from the paltry paychecks of the illegal employees, as well as rent money for the crowded apartments and meal money. The owners also did not deduct federal income tax or Social Security payments from the pay of the overworked illegal immigrant workers.

The case involved restaurants in Grand Forks, Devils Lake, Fargo, Bismarck and Minot as well as Aberdeen, S.D., the Twin Cities and Duluth, and in several other Midwest states.

"It appeared it was really kind of an assessment of supply and demand at its most sinister level," Chase said. "The head of this conspiracy basically realized there was a big market in restaurants he knew of that needed illegal workers because they were cheap. And he was living in an area where there was an abundance of illegal workers."

No violence was used, but restaurant owners asked for small people or those who did not speak English or were new to America, obviously looking for people who could be controlled, Chase said.

"These guys were taken (from Texas) to places like Grand Forks and Devils Lake and dropped off, and the workers relied on the employer for housing, for a job and for food. They have no connections in Grand Forks or Devils Lake, don't speak English, and get paid less than they were told they would, and conditions are less than what was promised. But where exactly do they turn at that point?"

Only 50 or 60 of the illegal immigrant workers were processed in the investigation, many of them deported. The whereabouts of the rest of the 6,000 workers sent through the pipeline in the years 2000 to 2004 are not known, Chase said.

The case likely isn't over, Chase said.

"Cao has given us a lot of information, and we seized a lot of ledgers of deliveries," Chase said, referring to illegal workers placed in Asian restaurants across the Midwest. "This information is being followed up on, in at least 30 federal districts."

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‘Illegal means unlawful’

WHEELING — Immigration law falls within the federal government’s domain, and the state has a statute against hiring illegal aliens.

But neither bothers much with enforcement.

Last month, Ohio County Sheriff Tom Burgoyne’s deputies arrested three self-admittedly undocumented workers from Mexico whom they found on a work site in Wheeling, Burgoyne said. They were digging ditches in a residential neighborhood where television cable belonging to cable-TV giant Comcast Corp. was to be laid.

The policy of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is to serve such offenders with papers to appear in federal court deportation hearings, which can be scheduled as long as a year and a half in the future.

Two of the workers arrested in Wheeling had already been served with such papers, though their dates had not yet come up. The third was given a hearing date, and all three were then released, free until their court dates arrived.

But Burgoyne said no one, in his estimation, really expected them to show up for the hearings. “They’re gone, they’re lost to the wind,” he said.

ICE has told Burgoyne and his deputies that they are not authorized even to ask if suspects they encounter are in the country illegally, he said. The agency has also instructed him not to jail illegal aliens if there are no other criminal warrants out for them.

But these are instructions that he has been ignoring. “If they’re illegal, that means unlawful,” Burgoyne said.

(The county can charge the federal government $50 a day to cover costs for jailing each suspect held on federal offenses.)

Officials from ICE refused repeated requests to comment for this story.

Undeterred by federal inaction, Burgoyne and Ohio County prosecutor Scott Smith decided to go after the employer of the undocumented workers, under a state law that bars their employment.

Comcast, through one of its contractors, had hired the subcontractor that was responsible for the ditch-digging. That company is called Consultants Unlimited Inc., and it is based in Midlothian, Va. A woman answering the phone at Consultants Unlimited denied that the workers were illegal. She refused to identify herself.

But Comcast says it has fired the company because of the arrests.

“Comcast has discontinued its relationship with one of its subcontractors, Consultants Unlimited, who has clearly violated our company’s policies and procedures,” said spokeswoman Jody Doherty.

Smith’s office had the state Division of Labor investigate the case, and it is close to presenting him with its evidence, said division spokesman Karl Angel.

The division is investigating two other cases involving alleged violations of the undocumented-worker law, both in the Morgantown area, Angel said. “But the number of these cases is not indicative of the problem,” he added.

From January 2005 to the end of last March, the Division of Labor had conducted 2,944 such investigations, according to division records. In the first three months of this year, there were 230 violations.

Violations of the law are a misdemeanor punishable with a fine of up to $1,000 for each first offense and up to $5,000 for second offenses.

The workers told Burgoyne they were earning $13 an hour and living in a Red Roof Inn in nearby St. Clairsville, Ohio. One deputy, on overhearing the figure, spoke up: “Sheriff, that’s what I make.”

“A lot of people laid off from the mills or mines would be tickled to death to make that much money,” Burgoyne said.

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Illegal Hiring Is Rarely Penalized
Politics, 9/11 Cited in Lax Enforcement

The Bush administration, which is vowing to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal workers, virtually abandoned such employer sanctions before it began pushing to overhaul U.S. immigration laws last year, government statistics show.

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.

The government's steady retreat from workplace enforcement in the 20 years since it became illegal to hire undocumented workers is the result of fierce political pressure from business lobbies, immigrant rights groups and members of Congress, according to law enforcement veterans. Punishing employers also was de-emphasized as the government recognized that it lacks the tools to do the job well, and as the Department of Homeland Security shifted resources to combat terrorism.

The administration says it is learning from past failures, and switching to a strategy of building more criminal cases, instead of relying on ineffective administrative fines or pinprick raids against individual businesses by outnumbered agents.

It is seeking more resources to sanction employers, toughen penalties and finally set up a reliable system -- first proposed in 1981 -- to verify the eligibility of workers. That would allow the government to hold employers accountable for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

The Homeland Security Department also is seeking access to Social Security Administration records of workers whose numbers and names don't match -- access that has long been blocked by privacy concerns.

Still, in light of the government's record, experts on all sides of the debate are skeptical that the administration will be able to remove the job magnet that attracts illegal immigrants.

"The claims of this administration and its commitment to interior enforcement of immigration laws are laughable," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group that favors tougher workplace enforcement, among other measures. "The administration only discovered immigration enforcement over the past few months, five years into its existence, and only then because they realized that a pro-enforcement pose was necessary to get their amnesty plan approved."

Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports immigrant rights, agreed that enforcement has been "woefully tiny."

"Why should the public believe it, because the government hasn't done it before?" Kelley asked.

In recent months, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which succeeded the INS, has dramatically stepped up enforcement efforts. It won 127 criminal convictions last year, up from 46 in 2004, and obtained $15 million in settlements from an investigation of Wal-Mart and 12 subcontractors last fall, a spokesman said. Comparable figures before 2003 were not tracked, the agency said.

In the past few months, ICE has led several high-profile actions: against a Houston-based pallet-services company, Maryland restaurateurs and Kentucky homebuilders, among others. The activity marks a pronounced shift in emphasis, after increasing bipartisan criticism.

However, experts say the linchpin of comprehensive new enforcement plans -- developing an electronic employment-eligibility verification system to replace the paper I-9 forms used for two decades -- is years from being ready. Meanwhile, a cottage industry of document fraud and identity theft will continue, they say.

While most of the government's get-tough rhetoric has focused on people illegally crossing the border, others noted, about 40 percent of the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States entered the country legally on visas and simply stayed. That means they probably can be caught only at work.

Major work-site crackdowns have run into trouble in the past. A spring 1998 sweep that targeted the Vidalia onion harvest in Georgia, and Operation Vanguard, a 1999 clampdown on meatpacking plants in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota, provide case studies of how the government fared when confronted by a coalition that included low-wage immigrant workers and the industries that hire them, analysts said.

The Georgia raids netted 4,034 illegal immigrants, prompting other unauthorized workers to stay home. As the $90 million onion crop sat in the field, farmers "started screaming to their local representatives," said Bart Szafnicki, INS assistant district director for investigations in Atlanta from 1991 to 2001.

Georgia's two senators and three of its House members, led by then-Sen. Paul Coverdell (R) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R), complained in a letter to Washington that the INS did not understand the needs of America's farmers. The raids stopped.

For Operation Vanguard, the INS used a more sophisticated tactic. It subpoenaed personnel records from Midwestern meatpacking plants and checked them against INS and Social Security databases of authorized workers, then interviewed suspect employees. Of 24,148 employees checked, 4,495, or 19 percent, had dubious documents at about 40 plants in Nebraska, western Iowa and South Dakota. Of those workers, 70 percent disappeared rather than be interviewed. Of 1,042 questioned, 34 were arrested and deported.

Nebraska's members of Congress at first called for tougher enforcement, recalled Mark Reed, then INS director of operations. But when the result shut down some plants, "all hell broke loose," he said.

Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns (R), who was governor at the time, appointed a task force to oppose the operation. Former governor Ben Nelson (D), now a U.S. senator, was hired as a lobbyist by meatpackers and ranchers. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) pressured the Justice Department to stop.

Members of Congress at first hostile to immigrants embraced "all the same people who were so repugnant to them before," Reed said, "and they prevailed." Operation Vanguard -- which was designed to expand to four states in four months and nationwide the next year, eventually including the lodging, food and construction industries -- was killed.

Congress "came to recognize that these people . . . had become a very important part of their community, churches, schools, sports, barbecues, families -- and most importantly the economy," Reed said. "You've got to be careful what you ask for."

The mention of Operation Vanguard provokes strong reactions in Omaha, where people say a similar effort today would still cause trouble.

Henry Davis, chief executive of Greater Omaha Packing Company and a third-generation meatpacker, fumes that the INS singled out Nebraska's beef industry. Davis said there is a symbiosis between his company and its workers. His business, which slaughters 2,400 cattle a day, offers free English and citizenship classes, paid vacations, health fairs and citizenship ceremonies to workers, he said.

Lourdes Gouveia, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who has studied the meatpacking industry for two decades, said Operation Vanguard's lessons have gone unlearned. Rather than leave the country after the crackdown, workers just changed jobs.

Meatpackers "need workers, and white Americans are not going to apply for these jobs," said Ben Salazar, a longtime activist and publisher of the newspaper Nuestro Mundo. "Immigrants know they're needed, so they will take their chances."

In an interview, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged the administration's record but said a combination of carrots and sticks for business can work.

"It would be hard to sustain political support for vigorous work-site enforcement if you don't give employers an avenue to hire their workers in a way that is legal, because you're basically saying, 'You've got to go out of business,' " Chertoff said.

On the other hand, he said, "businesses need to understand if you don't . . . play by the rules, we're really going to come down on you. . . . That's a very powerful place to stand in resisting people who are going to push back."

Company officials who knowingly employ illegal workers can be fined and, if they continue, face jail time. Housing or harboring illegal workers or laundering money can carry long prison sentences. But the easy availability of fraudulent documents frustrates investigators, as does a law that protects businesses as long as a worker's document "appears on its face to be genuine."

Statistics show that the numbers of fines and convictions dropped sharply after 1999, with fines all but phased out except for occasional small cases. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a 2003 memorandum issued by ICE required field offices to request approval before opening work-site cases not related to protecting "critical infrastructure," such as nuclear plants. Agents focused on removing unauthorized workers, not punishing employers.

ICE also faced a $500 million budget shortfall, and resources were shifted from traditional enforcement to investigations related to national security. Farms, restaurants and the nation's food supply chain "did not make the cut," Reed said. "We were pushed away from doing enforcement."

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Mexico Worries About Its Own Southern Border

Quiet as it is kept in political circles, Mexico, so much the focus of the United States' immigration debate, has its own set of immigration problems. And as elected officials from President Vicente Fox on down denounce Washington's plans to deploy troops and build more walls along the United States border, Mexico has begun a re-examination of its own policies and prejudices.

Here at Mexico's own southern edge, Guatemalans cross legally and illegally to do jobs that Mexicans departing for the north no longer want. And hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from nearly two dozen other countries, including China, Ecuador, Cuba and Somalia, pass through on their way to the United States.

Dense jungle makes establishing an effective law enforcement presence along the line impossible. Crossing the border is often as easy as hopping a fence or rafting for 10 minutes. But, under pressure from the United States, Mexico has steadily increased checkpoints along highways at the border including several posts with military forces.

The Mexican authorities report that detentions and deportations have risen in the past four years by an estimated 74 percent, to 240,000, nearly half along the southern border. But they acknowledged there had also been a boom in immigrant smuggling and increased incidents of abuses and attacks by corrupt law enforcement officials, vigilantes and bandits. Meanwhile, the waves of migrants continue to grow.

Few politicians have made public speeches about such matters. But Deputy Foreign Minister Gerónimo Gutiérrez recently acknowledged that Mexico's immigration laws were "tougher than those being contemplated by the United States," where the authorities caught 1.5 million people illegally crossing the Mexican border last year. He spoke before a congressional panel to discuss "Mexico in the Face of the Migratory Phenomenon."

In an interview, Mr. Gutiérrez said Mexico needed to "review its laws in order to have more legitimacy when we present our points of view to the United States."

Another high-level official in the Foreign Ministry was more blunt, but spoke only on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen as undermining Mexico in its dealings with the United States.

"Are we where we should be in the treatment of migrants?" the official said. "No we are not. But is the Mexican government aware of that? Yes, and it is something we are trying to correct."

Unlike the immigration debate in the United States, where immigration opponents and proponents bandy about estimated costs and benefits for everything from the agriculture industry to suburban horticulture, hard numbers on the effects of illegal migration on Mexico are rare. A trip to Chiapas raises questions about whether Mexico practices at home what it preaches abroad.

If the major characters in the migration drama unfolding in Chiapas could be captured in a collage, it would include a burly, white-haired farmer named Eusebio Ortega Contreras, who did not hide that most of the workers who picked mangos in his fields for $6 a day were underage, undocumented Guatemalans. Indians from Chiapas used to do these jobs, Mr. Ortega said. But in the past five years, they have been migrating to the United States. And lately, he said, he has begun to worry that he is going to lose the Guatemalans, too.

"We know that the conditions we provide our workers are not adequate," said Mr. Ortega, president of the local fruit growers' association, who showed a reporter the meager shelter he can offer: an awning off a hay shed for a roof and lined-up milk crates for beds. "But costs are going up. Production is going down. We barely earn enough money to maintain our orchards, much less improve conditions for the workers."

Joaquín Aguilar Vásquez, a 22-year-old father of two, would be standing with his knapsack in front of a passenger bus for the northern border, because jobs here at home barely kept his family fed. He said he started migrating two years ago to work in an electronics factory in Tijuana, where he earned $12 a day and saved enough to build a house. When he reaches Tijuana this time, he said, he will hire a smuggler to sneak him to a construction job in New Orleans.

There would be a skinny unidentified Chinese citizen, chain-smoking in the new migration detention center after being caught with more than 50 of his countrymen stowed away among banana crates in the back of a tractor-trailer. Next to him would be a group of Cuban rafters who floated to Mexico because of the increased United States Coast Guard presence around Florida. And there would be a flock of Central Americans, so scruffy and tough they seemed right out of "Oliver Twist," hopping a freight train north.

In the collage, Edwin Godoy, a 21-year-old Honduran who said he was deported last year from Miami and separated from his wife and two children, would be posing in front.

"They call this train the beast," Mr. Godoy shouted in English to get attention. "Do you want to know why? Because it can either take you where you want to go, or it can kill you. Some of us won't make it out of here alive."

At the start of his presidency nearly six years ago, Mr. Fox pledged that, as part of negotiations with the United States for legal status for illegal Mexican immigrants, this country would crack down on the flow of illegal immigrants crossing from Guatemala. He talked of a so-called Southern Plan that was to be an "unprecedented effort," and the United States offered an estimated $2 million a year to help Mexico deport illegal Central American immigrants.

George Grayson, an expert on Mexico at the College of William and Mary who has made several research trips to Mexico's southern border, said little had come of those efforts. He described this border as an "open sesame for illegal migrants, drug traffickers, exotic animals and Mayan artifacts."

And Mr. Grayson said the United States ended its support for deportation after the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, which instead provides some technical aid and training to increase security at Mexico's southern border checkpoints.

Mexican migration officials acknowledged that they had fewer than 450 agents patrolling the five states along this frontier, which has some 200 official and unofficial crossing points.

cont'd

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The rains came recently and flooded most rivers, making parts of this border as treacherous as the Sonora Desert, the deadly Arizona gateway where more than 460 migrants died of exposure and dehydration last year. But human rights advocates and government migration officials say nature does not do as much harm here as crime and corruption.

The Rev. Ademar Barilli, a human rights advocate who, with the support of the Roman Catholic Church, runs a shelter for migrants in Tecún Umán, a Guatemalan border city, said that unlike crossing patterns at the northern border, migrants here did not typically go far into remote areas, hoping to avoid the authorities. Instead, he said, the migrants try to bribe their way through.

"A migrant with money can make it across Mexico with no problems," Father Barilli said. "A migrant with no money gets nowhere."

Mexican law authorizes only federal migration agents and federal preventive police officers to inspect cars for illegal migrants and to demand proof of legal status. But Mexican authorities acknowledge that migrants face run-ins with every level of law enforcement.

Migrants are also routinely detained by machete-wielding farmers, who extort their money by threatening to turn them over to the police. So many female migrants have been raped or coerced into sex, the authorities said, that some begin taking birth control pills a few months before embarking on the journey north.

Few are punished for such crimes, the authorities added, because the migrants rarely report them.

"This society does not see migrants as human beings, it sees them as criminals," said Lucía del Carmen Bermúdez, coordinator for a government migration agency called Grupo Beta. "The majority of the attacks against migrants are not committed by authorities, although there is still a big problem with corruption in Mexico. Most violence against migrants comes from civilians."

Grupo Beta is a uniquely Mexican creation; established 16 years ago in Tijuana to protect migrants. It was a time, said Pedro Espíndola, the director of Grupo Beta, when Mexican migration to the United States began to soar, and smuggling groups evolved from small-time, community-based operations into transnational criminal cartels.

Grupo Beta was expanded to the southern border in 1996, Mr. Espíndola said, when throngs of Central American migrants, aiming for the United States, began hopping freight trains in Tapachula. Train stations became easy staging areas for gangs to ambush migrants. Hospitals became overwhelmed with men and women who had fallen beneath moving locomotives, often losing limbs to their wheels.

Last year, Grupo Beta reported, 72 migrants died crossing the southern border, mostly in accidents on trains or highways. Human rights groups say the real figure is more than twice as high. And in the 16 years since one woman, Olga Sánchez Martínez, began selling bread and embroidery to operate a shelter and then a clinic for migrants, she said, she has treated more than 2,500 migrants with machete and gunshot wounds or severed limbs.

Last year's rains did so much damage to the bridges and roads around Tapachula that the train does not stop here anymore. But that has not stopped the migrants.

Some detour north of here, the authorities said, to train stations that run through the state of Tabasco. But migrants like Mr. Godoy, the Honduran, have so far refused to abandon this route. He walked eight days along the tracks that run from here to the station in Arriaga, about 120 miles away. Then he, along with at least 300 others, hopped a freight train that leaves there almost nightly, in plain view of evening traffic, the local police and the train's engineer.

It was Mr. Godoy's third attempt in three months. He said he had been caught by United States Border Patrol officers in Laredo, Tex., on each of his previous trips.

"I am not going to give up," he said. "I had a good life in Miami. I got no criminal record. I never hurt nobody. I'm just trying to be with my kids, you know? That's all I need."

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Mexican customs to be stationed in Kansas City
New 'inland port' in heartland part of international plan that bypasses unions

A Mexican customs office is being built in the U.S. heartland as part of a newly designed "inland port" facility that links with a Mexican seaport, an official in Kansas City confirms.

Tasha Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council wrote to author and WND columnist Jerome Corsi to correct some details of a column on the subject, but she affirmed that a key purpose of the Kansas City Inland Port, or SmartPort, will be to facilitate the movement of containers from the Far East through the Mexican port at Lazaro Cardenas rather that the West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Corsi also had written that Kansas City Southern had acquired Mexican railroads to create a "NAFTA Railroad" that would link Lazaro Cardenas to the U.S. for container transport.

Hammes explained that with American consumption of goods from the Far East increasing, U.S. coastal ports are at capacity.

"The Lazaro Cardenas port is providing an alternative way to get products to North America," she said. "These products will come to Kansas City by way of rail. This is nothing new, other than the fact that Kansas City Southern acquired the Mexican railroad serving this port and that the major work has been done on the port of Lazaro Cardenas so that it has higher capacity and can handle larger containers."

Hammes pointed out that the Kansas City SmartPort is "a non-profit organization, not a physical building or facility being built for Mexico."

Hammes confirmed Kansas City plans to house a Mexican customs facility in the city's port, but she pointed out it will handle outbound U.S. freight exclusively, not inbound.

Hammes clarified that Kansas City, Mo., is leasing the site to Kansas City SmartPort. It will not be leased to any Mexican government agency or be sovereign territory of Mexico.

"It will employ both U.S. and Mexican Customs officials just like the current facilities in place at our nation's borders," she said. "It's a facility that U.S. companies will use to expedite the process of shipping their goods to customers in Mexico."

A brochure on the Kansas City SmartPort website documents the connection between Lazaro Cardenas and Kansas City's decision to become America's number one "inland port," saying:

    "Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays. It will streamline shipments from Asia and cut the time and labor costs associated with shipping through the congested ports on the West Coast."

Corsi contends a main purpose of opening Lazaro Cardenas to receive a greater volume of containers from the Far East and linking it with the planned NAFTA Super-Corridor and Kansas City SmartPort is to reduce labor costs.

Longshoremen would not be employed at the port of Lazaro Cardenas, and, in Mexico, the employees of Kansas City Southern would not be United Transportation Union workers.

To the extent that Mexican trucks become involved in the operation, it would mean Teamster Union drivers would not be employed in the operation.

Hammes made no comment on this aspect of Corsi's column.

To speed the crossing at Laredo, Texas, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America working groups within the U.S. Department of Commerce will allow Mexican trucks to be equipped with electronic FAST technology so the trucks can cross the border in express lanes.

At the Kansas City SmartPort hub, the containers can be transferred to semi-trailers heading east or west, or simply stay on the Mexican trucks all the way into Canada.

According to the SmartPort website, in March 2005, Kansas City signed a cooperative pact with representatives from the Mexican state of Michoacan, where Lazaro Cardenas is located, to increase the cargo volume between Lazaro Cardenas and Kansas City.

Shipments will be pre-screened in Southeast Asia, and the shipper will send advance notification to Mexican and American Customs with the corresponding ''pre-clearance'' information on the cargo. Upon arrival in Mexico, containers will pass through multiple X-ray and gamma ray screenings, allowing any containers with anomalies to quickly be removed for further inspection.

Container shipments will be tracked using intelligent transportation systems, or ITS, that could include global positioning systems or radio frequency identification systems, and monitored on their way to inland trade-processing centers in Kansas City and elsewhere in the United States.

As the Kansas City SmartPort website boasts: ''Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays. It will streamline shipments from Asia and cut the time and labor costs associated with shipping through the congested ports on the West Coast.''

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Reform likely to make wait longer for legal migrants


The latest fights over immigration have focused on who should get a place in line for a legal life in the United States. But the real agony, says Tien Bui, comes when you finally get in line.

Bui, who came to the U.S. as a Vietnamese refugee and is now an engineer for Boeing Inc., can't take the career-boosting position he's been offered because his citizenship application is lodged somewhere inside the Department of Homeland Security. With green card in hand, Bui has waited patiently since 2003 for his fingerprints to clear background checks, a process that's become more involved since Sept. 11.

But if Congress approves a new guest-worker program, the overall waiting period for Bui and the millions of legal immigrants like him could grow even longer, says a report by the Government Accountability Office.

President Bush mandated that by September of this year, cases in Homeland Security's immigration backlog should be processed in six months or less, a deadline the department is optimistic it can meet.

But a spiderweb of agencies -- including the Department of Labor, the Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- are also involved in evaluating and approving immigration applications.

If there are more petitions to process, the overall delays could increase, experts say. At Homeland Security alone, some skilled foreign workers must wait five years to apply for a green card, something U.S. engineering companies say harms their competitive edge.

"I truly think if Albert Einstein were in my office in 2006, he would be saying 'I'm going to Canada rather than wait any longer,' " said Judy Bourdeau, a Kansas City immigration lawyer who is filing employment petitions for several

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Bill would force state contractors to verify workers
Republicans press Reilly on illegal immigration

Employers with state contracts would be required to make sure their workers have valid Social Security numbers by checking a federal online database under a bill proposed yesterday by Senate Republicans to combat illegal immigration.

Responding to a Globe story that showed that contractors on publicly funded projects hired workers with fake Social Security numbers, Senate minority whip Bruce E. Tarr and Senator Scott P. Brown of Wrentham said their bill would bar such companies from doing business with the state.

``It's absolutely absurd that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would be a partner in the illegal act of employing someone who has no authority to be in this country," said Tarr. ``There's very strong sentiment in Massachusetts that we shouldn't be an accomplice to a criminal act."

Currently, federal law requires all employers to examine the documents, such as green cards or Social Security cards, that establish an employee's identity and eligibility to work in the United States. But the law only requires that the documents ``appear to be genuine" and stresses that employers are not expected to be ``document experts."

Those loose standards, say construction industry specialists, enabled contractors to use undocumented workers on projects that received millions of dollars from the state, including construction of dormitories at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and the building of the new Middlesex County Jail. Globe reporters who checked the Social Security numbers of the workers on the public projects found that some were obviously fraudulent, including one used by a laborer that was 666-66-6666 and others that belonged to dead people.

The bill that Republicans plan to unveil today at the State House would also require Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly to enter into an agreement with the US attorney general to help investigate possible violations of federal immigration law and enforce it.

Reilly said Monday that it was not his responsibility to crack down on Massachusetts employers that hire undocumented immigrants, and that he would continue his policy of taking no action against the companies.

In addition, the legislation would impose a $5,000 fine or incarceration for up to five years for workers who use false identification documents to get state-funded jobs.

The federal government already imposes penalties on employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants but does not penalize the employees, Tarr said.

Prospects for the bill, which is expected to be filed by tomorrow, are difficult to gauge. Although there are only six Republicans in the Senate, compared with 34 Democrats, Tarr said the issue of illegal immigration has stoked passions on both sides of the aisle, and he hoped it would gain passage before the legislative session ends Aug. 1.

The Senate has already passed, as part of its budget, a Republican measure that would crack down on illegal immigration by requiring Reilly's office to set up a hot line to receive complaints about companies that hire undocumented immigrants and to report the firms to federal authorities. The Senate and House are in negotiations over that proposal.

But the measure being unveiled today goes considerably further and targets undocumented workers on state-funded jobs.

`We want to act right away, because we don't want another minute to go by when we're part of this activity, with regard to hiring employees that are illegal," said Tarr, of Gloucester.

The proposal drew praise from John M. Pourbaix, executive director of Construction Industries of Massachusetts, the industry's trade and lobbying group. He said his members would accept a requirement that they check Social Security numbers as long as the process is simple.

``It would be an additional step, and it would be an additional cost, but if it was easy to use and they could get a quick response, I think the contractors would absolutely comply with that," Pourbaix said, although he emphasized that he has not yet spoken with his members. ``If it's burdensome, that would be problematic."

The bill would require employers with state contracts to check Social Security numbers on databases of valid numbers run by the Department of Homeland Security or the Social Security Administration or private databases, Tarr said.

Homeland Security has already launched an initiative, known as the Basic Pilot Program, that allows employers to verify a worker's status using online databases. But that program is being used by only a small number of companies nationwide. Dunkin' Donuts has begun participating and has put up signs in shops alerting customers that employees have been screened.

No state in the country mandates that employers substantiate that their workers are legal, according to the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. Georgia recently passed a measure that would do so by July 1, 2007.

David R. Guarino, a spokesman for Reilly, said his boss will look at the bill when it is filed but feels that ``the flow of illegal immigrants into our country and the failure of our federal government to enforce our immigration laws is a national problem that requires a national solution."

``If there's a meaningful role for the state to play, of course, we'll assist," Guarino said.

Reilly, a Democratic aspirant for governor, has faced intense criticism in some circles for holding to a position he established in 2001, when he said he would aggressively fight for the rights and wages of immigrant workers, legal or not, and promised not to report them to federal authorities. He also said he would enforce wage and labor laws against companies, but not act against them for employing undocumented immigrants. Enforcing regulations that require companies to pay workers the prevailing wage, he said, was his most effective tool for combating the hiring of undocumented immigrants.

Governor Mitt Romney has also not seen the bill introduced by fellow Republicans but supported the idea in principle, said Eric Fehrnstrom, his spokesman.

[Soldier4Christ]

Libros en Español? Atlanta library says ‘no mas’
Board member says system can’t supply reading books for all languages

The library system in this suburban Atlanta county says no mas — it won’t buy any more thrillers, romance novels or other works of adult fiction in Spanish.

The decision has angered Hispanic leaders and thrust Gwinnett County — where one out of six residents is Hispanic — into the nation’s immigration debate.

Last week, the library board in this fast-growing county of 700,000 people eliminated the $3,000 that had been set aside to buy Spanish-language fiction in the coming fiscal year. It offered no explanation, but the chairman said such book purchases would lead readers of other foreign languages to demand the same treatment.

However, one board member, Brett Taylor, said the move came after some residents objected to using taxpayer dollars to entertain readers who might be illegal immigrants.

“The argument was we didn’t need to cater to illegal aliens,” Taylor said. “I’m personally offended by that. We have to look out for everybody.”

Amid debate, director fired
The budget cut passed without discussion at a June 12 meeting, minutes after reporters and residents rushed out the room because the library director had been fired for reasons the board has not disclosed.

The 13-branch library system spent $2,200 for adult fiction in Spanish since it started buying such books in January. It will continue to buy children’s books and adult nonfiction in Spanish, but not, say, the latest John Grisham thriller in Spanish, or a Marcela Serrano novel in its original language.

“We can’t supply pleasure reading material for all language groups, so we’re not going to go down that road,” said Lloyd Breck, chairman of the library board.

Hispanic advocates were outraged, and said such cutbacks are rare across the country.

“A library is more than a place for kids to read books; it’s often the center of the community,” said Raul Gonzalez of the National Council of La Raza. “A vast majority of the people who don’t speak English as their first language — guess what — they’re citizens of the U.S.”

Other counties face similar battles
Amid the heated national debate over illegal immigrants and whether English should be the official U.S. language, some critics elsewhere around the country have also been objecting to public libraries’ efforts to buy more bilingual materials.

Last fall, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., wrote a public letter asking if the library in Denver was increasing its Spanish-language collection at the expense of English material.

In Gwinnett County, board member Dale Todd said her only objection to the Spanish-language books is that Harlequin romance novels are not of high enough literary value to put in a library. Instead, she said, the library should offer life-skills books to help immigrants make their way in America.

The library system has 798 adult Spanish titles and will spend about $12,000 out of an annual budget of $22.2 million for Spanish-language adult nonfiction in the coming fiscal year, said Mabel Anne Kincheloe, director of materials management.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Court makes it tougher on illegal residents

The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a blow to some longtime illegal residents, upholding the deportation of a Mexican man who lived in the United States for 20 years.

By an 8-1 vote, justices said that Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, who was deported several times from the 1970s to 1981, is subject to a 1996 law Congress passed to streamline the legal process for expelling aliens who have been deported at least once before and returned.

After his last deportation in 1981, Fernandez-Vargas returned to the United States, fathered a child, started a trucking company in Utah and eventually married his longtime companion, a U.S. citizen.

But by the time he applied for legal status -- after his marriage in 2001 -- Congress had passed the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which revoked the right to appeal to an immigration judge an order of removal.

Fernandez-Vargas was sent back to Mexico in 2004, and wanted to return to his family in the United States. He argued that the 1996 law should not be applied to him because he last entered America more than a decade before Congress passed the statute.

"Fernandez-Vargas continued to violate the law by remaining in this country day after day and ... the United States was entitled to bring that continuing violation to an end," Justice David Souter wrote in the decision.

It was unclear how broad of an impact the ruling would have.

Souter said that unlawful immigrants like Fernandez-Vargas should have known about the 1996 law and taken "advantage of a grace period."

Also on Thursday the court:

# Made it easier for workers to show they were victims of retaliation after they accuse their employers of discrimination, ruling 9-0 in favor of a woman railroad forklift operator.

# Ruled 7-2 that defendants, not prosecutors, have the burden of proving in federal trials that they committed a crime under duress. The ruling could prompt states to change their laws.

# Ruled 6-3 that a California inmate had to go through a prison grievance system before bringing a suit claiming he was wrongly punished for alleged inappropriate activity with volunteer priests.

# Voted 5-3 to dismiss a case involving a test for diagnosing B vitamin deficiencies. That avoided a ruling that could have affected claims over tens of thousands of older patents.

[Soldier4Christ]

Sarandon: U.S. Should Help Build Schools

 Susan Sarandon, outspoken actress and liberal political activist, thinks the United States should help build schools in Mexico _ not walls along the border.

Visiting a preschool in a slum bordering a vast, municipal garbage dump in Tijuana, Sarandon said education was the key to improving lives in Mexico. She criticized a U.S. congressional proposal to extend walls along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

 The school was founded by New York educator David Lynch, who came to Tijuana in 1980 as a volunteer teacher. He later built the school for the children of Mexicans who eke out a living gathering recyclable material from the dump.

Sarandon, who has starred in movies such as "Thelma & Louise" and "The Client," has been supporting the project for years.

"I'm very proud, especially with the world careening out of control," she said. "People feel they have no control over their lives. I think this school is helping people to get control over their lives."

[Soldier4Christ]

Reports find Linebacker caught 860 immigrants
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau

AUSTIN -- Although decreasing crime and preventing terrorism is the public mission of Operation Linebacker along the border, internal El Paso County Sheriff's Office documents released this week show that in El Paso, it has been most effective in detaining undocumented immigrants.

The reports -- obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas -- show that between Jan. 15 and June 3, the El Paso County Sheriff's Office called U.S. Border Patrol agents about at least 860 undocumented immigrants.

"This mission is reducing crime in the communities that we serve, referring undocumented persons who were able to cross our border past Border Patrol to that agency," El Paso County Assistant Chief Deputy Ralph Mitchell wrote in a March 22 summary of the mission.

"We have found that when we came in contact with undocumented persons, they would provide information about where we could find others who have eluded federal officials," Mitchell added.

He goes on to report officers seized no drugs and arrested 78 criminals in the first three months of Operation Linebacker.

"I have determined what I expected: Linebacker works," he wrote.

El Paso County Sheriff's Office spokesman Rick Glancey would not discuss the documents with the El Paso Times, citing ongoing litigation. But he insisted that rounding up undocumented aliens is not a role of Operation Linebacker.

"We just stumble upon them, quite frankly," Glancey said. "There is no goal. I don't even like that word in terms of that."

Each of 16 departments in the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition is implementing Operation Linebacker, a project the group started in January to help the Border Patrol, a little differently.

Criminal defense and immigration lawyers said no law prevents local law enforcement from finding undocumented immigrants and turning them over to federal officials.

And while other sheriff's departments said they also turn over undocumented immigrants when they find them, none -- including the El Paso County Sheriff's Office -- said it specifically seeks out such scofflaws.

"We could be doing that all day long," Hidalgo County Sheriff Guadalupe "Lupe" Treviño said. "And what's going to happen to the real criminals, the thieves, the pseudo-cop home invaders, the kidnappers?"

In recent months, El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego has come under fire from immigration activists, civil rights groups and politicians for his implementation of Operation Linebacker.

Samaniego has consistently derided the attacks as political vendettas and said his mission is simply to protect the people of El Paso and the United States.

Sheriffs in some other border counties said they also often come across undocumented immigrants in their Operation Linebacker work.

Kinney County Sheriff's Deputy James Blankenship said his department turned over 232 undocumented immigrants in the rural, ranching area in the past five months.

"Our main emphasis is the security and such of the county, looking for drug smuggling and terrorist activity," he said.

He said the 10 deputies assigned to Operation Linebacker patrol border areas and farther into the county, some in unmarked cars, others more visibly. In total, he said, the operation has netted six narcotics arrests and seven stolen vehicles.

In Zapata County, Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said his deputies stick to patrolling the border. "If we come across somebody who looks like an illegal immigrant, we're going to let them go unless we have another reason to stop them," he said.

Hidalgo County's Treviño said his Linebacker operation is composed of a team of investigators who specifically seek out undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, including kidnapping, murder and sexual assault.

He has instructed his deputies not to ask residents about their immigration status. That practice, he said, has engendered trust in the undocumented immigrant community, making it easier for his deputies to track down those who pose a serious threat.

In the first month of Operation Linebacker, he said, the unit solved four murders and seized about 2,500 pounds marijuana and 90 pounds of cocaine.

"We measure success by the number of criminal illegal immigrants we have identified, apprehended, arrested and prosecuted," Treviño said. "We measure success by the number of contacts made in the community, the avenues of communication we open up in the community."

Keith Hampton is a lawyer and the legislative chairman of the Texas Criminal Defense Association. He said no laws prevent local officers from finding undocumented immigrants and turning them over to federal agents who have jurisdiction over such cases.

"Under state law, they have all sorts of authority," Hampton said.

The law, however, does prevent local and state law enforcement officers from arresting undocumented immigrants unless they commit a criminal offense. Crossing into the country without proper documentation is a federal civil infraction.

"A Texas peace officer may not arrest without warrant an alien solely upon the suspicion that he has entered the country illegally," then Texas Attorney General John Hill ruled in 1977.

While the law does not prevent local law enforcement or anyone else from reporting undocumented immigrants, Austin immigration lawyer Daniel Kowalski said that unless the person has committed a crime, an officer could not legally detain the person.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry has provided almost $10 million for Operation Linebacker. His spokeswoman, Rachael Novier, said the governor sees the mission's goal as promoting safety and preventing terrorism.

While he encourages local law enforcement to cooperate with other agencies, Novier said, immigration law enforcement remains a federal responsibility.

"The intent of Operation Linebacker and the funding provided to support Operation Linebacker is to reduce border-related crime and violence," she said.

ACLU of Texas Executive Director Will Harrell said he worries that if Samaniego is using Operation Linebacker money -- which was given under the federal Byrne Grant program that does not specify use for immigration law enforcement -- to track down immigrants, he could jeopardize funding for the whole program.

"Everybody is pointing the finger at everybody else, and nobody is taking responsibility for Samaniego's actions," Harrell said.

Westsider Bert Corbell, a nurse at Thomason Hospital, said that Samaniego is only doing his job, and that if other law enforcement officials followed suit, the country would not be experiencing the current divisive debate over how to deal with 11 million undocumented immigrants.

"If they would just enforce the law, we would be fine," she said. "Just enforce the laws that are already on the books and quit molly coddling."

[Soldier4Christ]

Supreme Court Upholds Strict Deportation Law
An illegal immigrant is subject to a policy passed after his arrival and cannot remain, justices rule, despite a job and family here.


WASHINGTON — Illegal immigrants who return to the United States after being deported are "continuous lawbreakers" and are subject to automatic removal from this country, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, even if they have lived here more than 20 years and have jobs and families.

The 8-1 decision upholds a strict 1996 law that adopted a no-leniency policy for those who returned illegally to this country after having been deported.

"This is a 'two strikes and you're out' law," said Washington lawyer David Gossett, who challenged its application to illegal immigrants who reentered the country before 1996, when Congress toughened the law. He estimated that Thursday's ruling would apply to "tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands" of immigrants who reentered the country illegally in recent decades.

His client, Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, is a 53-year-old citizen of Mexico who, starting in the 1970s, entered the United States illegally — and was subsequently deported — several times.

In 1982, he returned for the last time and settled quietly in Utah. He started a trucking business, fathered a son in 1989 and married the boy's mother in 2001.

Based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen, he applied for lawful permanent residence in the United States. That filing backfired, since it tipped off immigration authorities that he was here illegally. He was taken into custody and deported to Juarez, Mexico, two years ago. His wife, Rita, has continued the legal battle on his behalf.

The Supreme Court took up the case because several lower courts — including the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction in California and eight other Western states — had adopted a lenient standard for illegal immigrants who had been in the United States for decades. The 9th Circuit judges had ruled that Congress did not mean to apply the new law to illegal immigrants who had reentered the country before 1996.

But writing for the majority on the Supreme Court, Justice David H. Souter disagreed, saying that Congress meant the law to apply to every once-deported immigrant who had returned illegally and stayed.

Fernandez-Vargas "had an ample warning" of the strict new law in 1996, and "he chose to remain after the new statute became effective," Souter wrote in Fernandez-Vargas vs. Gonzales. "He claims a right to continue illegal conduct indefinitely under the terms on which it began, an entitlement of legal stasis for those whose lawbreaking is continuous."

Souter acknowledged that complying with the law "would have come at a high personal price, for Fernandez-Vargas would have had to leave a business and a family he had established during his illegal residence."

But in the end, he is paying for "continuously illegal action" over an extended period, Souter wrote.

At one point, the court appeared to leave open the possibility that the result could be different for once-deported illegal immigrants who had married U.S. citizens or applied to become legal residents before 1996. Some judges have blocked the deportation of such immigrants, but those are "facts not in play here," Souter said in a footnote.

In the past, it was understood that persons who entered the United States illegally after having been deported were subject to being sent home again. However, the immigration laws allowed them to seek a waiver if, for example, they had a job and a family.

The no-exceptions rule was adopted shortly after Republicans took control of Congress in the 1994 elections. It appears in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and says that "an alien [who] reentered the United States illegally after having been removed" may not seek to have his case "reopened or reviewed. [He] is not eligible and may not apply for any relief … and the alien shall be removed … at any time after the reentry."

Jennifer Chacon, a law professor at UC Davis, said the ruling highlights an unfairness in the law.

"This concerns the people we should be the least concerned about. They are stable people with jobs: grandparents, parents, husbands," she said. "These people are not security threats."

This year, Congress and the Bush administration have been debating whether to change immigration laws again. The Senate's bill, but not the House version, would give longtime illegal immigrants a path to seeking legal status in the United States.

But immigration experts said it was not altogether clear that the proposed changes in the law, if adopted, would aid those who reentered the country after being deported.

The American Civil Liberties Union and several immigrant-rights groups had urged the court not to apply the 1996 law retroactively.

"It is a disappointing decision, and it is a further example of the harshness of the 1996 law," said Lucas Guttentag, who heads the ACLU Foundation's Immigrants' Rights Project.

Dissenting alone, Justice John Paul Stevens said the court usually did not apply new laws to old cases. Because Fernandez-Vargas had a 15-year record of stable work and a family, he would have been eligible to stay in the United States prior to the passage of the 1996 law. For that reason, it is unfair to apply the law to him now, Stevens said.

[Soldier4Christ]

Schwarzenegger denies border troops request
Bush appealed for 1,500 more National Guard members on U.S.-Mexico line

The Bush administration this week asked California to send an additional 1,500 National Guard troops to the Mexican border, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied the request, two California National Guard officials said Friday.

The National Guard Bureau, an arm of the Pentagon, asked for the troops to fill recruiting shortfalls for the mission in New Mexico and Arizona. But Schwarzenegger said the request would stretch the California guard too thin if an emergency or disaster struck.

The overall deployment for the border mission would remain at 6,000, the guard officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Schwarzenegger's communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, said the governor felt sending more troops was an inappropriate burden on the state and would disrupt the guard's training schedule.

On June 1, Schwarzenegger agreed to send the California National Guard to the Mexican border to help the federal government's effort to control illegal immigration. That ended a 17-day standoff with the Bush administration over whether the state would join the border effort and who would pay for it.

California has committed to putting 1,000 troops on the border by July 31 and has 250 there already.

[Soldier4Christ]

GOP Candidate's Call for Labor Camp Rebuked

Republican Candidate's Call for Forced Labor Camp for Immigrants Angers Two GOP Lawmakers

A Republican gubernatorial candidate's call for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants drew rebukes Friday from two GOP lawmakers, who labeled it a low point in the immigration debate.

Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, caused an international stir this week when EFE, a Mexican news service, quoted him as saying he wanted to hold undocumented immigrants in camps to use them "as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting."

The article described Goldwater's plan as a "concentration camp" for migrants.

Goldwater, a candidate for governor in Arizona, said in a statement Friday that his comments were taken out of context. He said he was calling for a work program for convicted nonviolent felons, similar to "tried and tested, effective and accepted practices" used by state and local jails.

But two Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jim Kolbe, called Goldwater's comments "deeply offensive" and asked state Republicans to reject his candidacy in the Sept. 12 primary.

"That Mr. Goldwater is either unaware of or indifferent to the loaded symbolism, injustice and un-Americanism of his 'plan' to address the many serious issues caused by illegal immigration reveals his flaws as a candidate and a stunning lack of respect for the basic values of a generous and decent society," McCain said in a statement.

Kolbe said that if the comments are true, Goldwater "has demonstrated his complete unworthiness for public office, and I am confident he will be soundly rejected by Republicans from the party of Barry Goldwater, who consistently demonstrated his compassion and respect for all people. This is a sad day in the national debate on immigration policy."

McCain and Kolbe favor a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants.

Goldwater made a similar comment at an April anti-immigration rally.

"Build us that wall now!" Goldwater said, referring to a proposal to add 700 miles of fences along the U.S.-Mexico border. He promised then that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall.

Barry Goldwater, the former Arizona senator, was the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.