Mortgage loans for illegal aliens allowed but rare
BY MARK MINTON

Posted on Sunday, January 27, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/214937/

ROGERS — While Arturo Reyes Jr. sits in jail on charges of harboring illegal aliens, his wife and co-defendant, Silvia Reyes, is under federal detention at their home — a brick house with a soaring foyer and a soccer goal in the yard.

There’s also a hole dug for a backyard pool. That’s a project that may have to wait.

The Reyeses’ plans were upended last month when immigration agents raided the family business, Acambaro Mexican restaurants.

Prosecutors are not only mounting a criminal case but also moving to seize the Reyes home and other properties that they call the fruits of the illegal labor the Reyeses allegedly used in their restaurants.

Largely overshadowed: The bank that holds the mortgages. Arvest Bank, based in Bentonville, is one of few the banks in Northwest Arkansas where an illegal alien can hope to get a home loan.

The Dec. 10 raid at Acambaro restaurants in Washington and Benton counties rounded up 19 illegal aliens for deportation and landed the Reyeses and two Acambaro managers in jail on charges that they knowingly hired illegal workers.

Arturo Reyes Jr. has pleaded innocent to a three-count indictment alleging he harbored and shielded illegal aliens by providing them with financial support through employment. Reyes also is charged with money laundering. He is scheduled for trial Feb. 25 in U. S. District Court. Silvia Reyes has yet to be formally charged.

LENT $ 2 MILLION The family’s $ 460, 000 home in a gated neighborhood in Rogers stands as the most obvious symbol of the wealth that prosecutors allege the Reyeses accumulated by exploiting illegal workers. The U. S. attorney’s office in Fort Smith contends the Reyeses should forfeit the house, the lot next door and nine other properties, including restaurant buildings and a warehouse, because “they were used in the commission of, or are properties which were derived from and represent the proceeds of, the concealing or harboring of an alien or aliens.â€