Group Wields Racketeering Law Against Landlords to Combat Illegal Immigration
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 22, 2008

PLAINFIELD, N.J. (AP) — A federal lawsuit challenging the right of landlords to rent to illegal immigrants has stoked tensions over immigration that have been rising for years here.

A group opposed to illegal immigration filed suit against a Plainfield property management company this month, seeking to set a legal precedent by using a federal law normally employed against racketeers to punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants.

The lawsuit accuses the company, Connolly Properties, of allowing so many undocumented tenants to live in its buildings that it amounted to unlawful harboring and should be considered a criminal enterprise that encouraged illegal immigration.

The suit was brought by the Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington — the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The institute previously supported ordinances in Hazelton, Pa., and Riverside, N.J., that tried to punish landlords who rented to illegal immigrants or businesses that hired them.

A judge overturned the Hazelton ordinance, ruling it unconstitutional, and Riverside rescinded its ordinance, with officials saying the town could not afford the legal costs of defending it.

Flor Gonzalez, head of the Latin American Coalition in Plainfield, worries that her city may become the latest battleground in the nationwide debate over immigration.

She says that tensions over the city’s large immigrant population have been rising, with a recent series of beatings and robberies of immigrants, raids by federal immigration officials and ticketing of day laborers by the police.

“This is the worst it’s been. There is a lot of unfriendliness and disrespect against immigrants, and a lot has been happening quietly,â€