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Barletta: Hazleton won’t enforce immigration law
Wednesday, 16 August 2006
By L.A. TARONE
tarone@standardspeaker.com
Don’t expect city officials to go breaking into businesses demanding green cards in enforcement of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act.

Mayor Louis Barletta said the city has no such intention.

Following City Council’s passage of a slightly revised IIRA Tuesday night, William Walker of West Hazleton asked Barletta how the ordinance will be enforced once it passes second and third readings.

"We cannot and will not enforce immigration law; that’s the federal government’s job," Barletta said. "So, if ICE (the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) visits a plant and takes out employees as illegal, the city will follow up."

In those instances, Barletta said, city officials would visit the business involved and start asking questions about how it hired an illegal and whether it "knowingly" did so. If the city determines it did, the loss of business license would take effect.

Similarly, city officials would also determine whether anyone involved in the above-mentioned ICE raid rented property. If so, officials would visit the landlord, or apartment manager or agent and make a determination as to whether the apartment was "knowingly" rented to an illegal.

If so, the landlord would be assessed a $1,000 fine for each day for every illegal on the premises.

"The landlord would have the permit on file for every tenant," Barletta said. "So he would be able to produce one if we asked."

He said the reason the city took on registration – rather than have landlords do it, as the original 2004 ordinance called for – was that it has access to more information channels to verify someone’s immigration status.

"That’s why we have the city issuing the permits; it takes the burden off landlords and also eliminates things such as racial profiling," Barletta said.