Thread: 29 Employees of company that works on USMC base, arrested

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/n...24workers.html
Lakeside drywaller operating on base
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 24, 2006

A federal audit of a drywall company operating at Camp Pendleton has revealed that out of 364 employee records reviewed, more than one-third of those employees were undocumented.

Yesterday morning, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego arrested 29 employees of Standard Drywall Inc., a company based in Lakeside that according to its Web site employs about 1,300 people and has multiple locations in Western states.

The employees, who were arrested at their homes, were among 135 San Diego-area workers found to be in the country illegally after a four-month audit of the company's payroll records. Records for 364 employees of the company's Lakeside location were audited, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack.

Agents set out yesterday morning in search of 56 unauthorized Standard Drywall employees but found only 29 of them, mostly Mexican nationals save for one Honduran, Mack said. At least a dozen counterfeit Social Security cards and legal-resident documents were found among them.

The rest of the 135 who turned up in the audit no longer are employed by the company, Mack said.

According to the agency, the employees arrested yesterday did not work on the 125,000-acre Marine base, which has a daytime population of about 100,000, including military personnel, family members and contractors. They were targeted because the company has an active contract with Camp Pendleton, where federal agents are auditing businesses.

“They don't really have any correlation with Camp Pendleton,” said Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Garcia, adding that Standard Drywall had been subcontracted by another company operating on the base.

The drywall company was hired to renovate an old mess hall into a band hall, and its workers had no access to sensitive areas, Garcia said.

Blaine Caya, co-owner of Standard Drywall, would not comment when reached by phone at the company's Corona office. In addition to locations in Lakeside and Corona, the company has offices in Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada.

Since last fall, nearly 100 companies that do work at Camp Pendleton have been audited as part of ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement effort to review employers that could present a security threat.

Dubbed “Operation Safe Cities,” the operation has resulted in audits of 882 companies in San Diego and Imperial counties since December 2003. It has turned up 970 employees who are unauthorized to work in the United States, 464 of whom have been arrested and placed in deportation proceedings.

Only one of the companies found employing those workers, Golden State Fence Co., has faced criminal charges. Standard Drywall, which immigration officials said cooperated, does not face criminal penalties.

The employees arrested yesterday also will be put into deportation proceedings. One man, who was found with a gun, also faces criminal charges of being an alien in possession of a firearm, Mack said.



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Leslie Berestein: (619) 542-4579; leslie.berestein@uniontrib.com

Watched that on tV last night, the cameras kept panning to the pile of social security cards and fake green cards.
I noticed that there was no mention of penalizing the employer.