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Fire Coalition puts heat on illegal immigration


12:59 AM PST on Friday, March 2, 2007

By SHARON McNARY
The Press-Enterprise

Many of the groups that protest the presence of illegal immigrants in their communities have a common link. Behind the scenes, an Inland-based group called the Fire Coalition is supplying ideas and tactics to a national network of anti-illegal immigration groups.

Frank Bellino / The Press-Enterprise
Romoland's Jason Mrochek, 32, is hoping to stop companies from hiring undocumented immigrant workers.
The Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition's most visible project so far is WeHireAliens.com, which is a Web site that lets anybody submit anonymous -- and sometimes mistaken -- reports of companies hiring undocumented workers.

Critics describe the group's tactics as aggressive, even undemocratic.

On March 10, the coalition will launch Operation Bankrupt, encouraging aggrieved Bank of America account holders to cut up their ATM and credit cards to protest the bank's plan to issue credit cards to people who don't have Social Security numbers -- which includes undocumented immigrants.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, the coalition orchestrated Operation Body Count, a series of demonstrations at state capitals to commemorate victims of crimes that the group contends were committedby illegal immigrants.

"What we're doing is standing up for what everybody should get behind, what the Constitution says -- enforcing the law across the board," said Jason Mrochek, 32, of Romoland. The software salesman is the coalition's national director and a co-founder.

The coalition's Web site lists 78 local leaders in 29 states who can e-mail a call for action to thousands of people, quickly assembling groups for demonstrations, public hearings and other activities, Mrochek said. Each leader heads a "Fire team" which may be a chapter of Minutemen border watchers or another local anti-illegal immigration activist group.

"They want to put a Fire brand on everything they're doing," Mrochek said. "It's really about empowering folks at the local level."

Civil-rights advocates say the group targets individuals -- such as suspected illegal immigrants at day labor centers -- rather than debate immigration policies.

"WeHireAliens.com holds people up to ridicule and humiliation," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights law firm and education group. "They put stuff up (on the Web site) and there is virtually no evidence."

The coalition "is associated with the hardest-line people in the anti-immigration movement," Potok said.

Mrochek said the Fire Coalition does not avoid including groups that use strong language or confrontational tactics.

"We are more willing to align ourselves with people who are willing to say this is wrong, this is right," he said.

Impetus in Talk Radio

As a teen growing up in Fallbrook, south of Temecula, Mrochek noticed groups of day laborers congregating on a corner near a Catholic church that he passed on his way to school.

"I thought it was kind of junky, that they would hang out there," Mrochek said. "They were primarily Hispanic. The impression it left was very bad."

He left California to earn a bachelor's degree in systems engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served two years in the Army, and returned with his wife and first son in 1999 to a town he said he didn't recognize because it appeared that so many illegal immigrants had moved there.

He began attributing news about government financial crises, struggling schools and closed hospital emergency rooms, increased traffic and crime to a common source: illegal immigration.

"There are millions of illegal immigrants in Southern California," Mrochek said. "They are a net drain on our economy."

That issue is far from settled. While some immigration studies describe undocumented immigrants as a burden on social services, others contend their contributions as workers and taxpayers create a net gain for the economy.

Despite Mrochek's concerns, he did nothing on the issue until 2004, when he joined the "Fire Dreier" campaign of "The John and Ken Show," a talk radio program on KFI AM 640. They urged Republicans to make a "political human sacrifice" and vote against Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas, for not taking a tough enough stance on illegal immigration. Dreier kept his seat, but with his smallest margin of victory in 24 years, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

"They were the only ones articulating what I had been thinking, coming to the same conclusion," Mrochek said of the radio hosts.

Afterward, about a dozen of the show's fans met and planned future activities. They wanted to keep "Fire" as part of their name, so they came up with Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition.

"Our short-term strategy is to make the illegal immigrants, the open-borders lobby and their supporters fight for every square inch," Mrochek said. He wants undocumented immigrants barred from jobs, hospital emergency rooms and rental homes.

"Our long-term plan is to turn out those politicians who are not doing the will of the citizens and replace them with citizen patriots who will do what's in the best interest of our country," he said.

To Mrochek, the immigration problem in the United States boils down to a failure by the government to defend its borders and make people obey the law.

Ultimately, he said, he would support the deportation of the tens of millions of people he estimates are illegally in the United States, lauding the Eisenhower administration's forcible repatriation of an estimated 1.3 million Mexicans in 1954-55.

WeHireAliens.com

WeHireAliens.com, a Web site with a Menifee address, was launched in February 2005. It lists nearly 3,000 companies nationwide that it calls "illegal employers," including at least 622 in California and 72 in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

If the reports contain a "reasonable suspicion" that a company is violating immigration laws, Mrochek said, he posts it on the Web site and forwards the information to immigration authorities, the FBI and the Social Security Administration.

Mrochek said he does not notify the companies or independently confirm reports of alleged illegal hiring.

Some business people targeted by the site said they should not be included.

"It sounds like a big racist thing. I don't know the motivation for it, but they've got their facts wrong," said Alan Williams, whose Mallory Construction was described in this anonymous post: "The streets and job sites were full of illegal looking, Spanish speaking males. No English spoken here!!"

The Mentone company has one employee, a person who has legal documentation, Williams said. His subcontractors are responsible for documenting that their own employees are here legally. Workers who are Hispanic or who speak Spanish are not necessarily illegal immigrants, he said.

Williams said he may consider suing if the site causes problems for him and his business.

Mrochek said he is protected by the First Amendment. The group has not been sued, Mrochek said.

But Peter Scheer, attorney for the California First Amendment Coalition, said that by reviewing and editing the accusations before posting them, Mrochek is exposing his organization to greater liability than if the comments were posted directly to the Internet.

Operation Body Count

A Fire Coalition affiliate, the American Freedom Riders, sent a group of 40 motorcyclists in December and January for its "Operation Adios Illegals" to confront workers at a church-based day labor spot in Cave Creek, Ariz.

American Freedom Riders co-founder Danny Smith said the coalition recently helped his group coordinate a national series of monthly protests in 30 cities. The demonstrations were in support of two Border Patrol officers who were convicted of shooting a man suspected of smuggling drugs and then concealing it from their supervisor.

"The Fire Coalition has people who are firecrackers," Smith said. "They're creative, they're active, and they do what they say."

Over Thanksgiving weekend, the coalition orchestrated Operation Body Count, holding tributes at state capitals for the 25 murder and negligent homicide victims that the group says die each day at the hands of illegal immigrants. The Riders, using instructions from the Fire Coalition, put on the Arizona event.

The homicide statistic is from Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. He used a Government Accountability Office estimate that 27 percent of federal prison inmates are noncitizens to conclude that illegal immigrants commit 28 percent of all murders, all rapes and all other crimes.

The methodology is not credible, said Félix Gutiérrez, a professor of journalism and communications at the Annenberg School for Communications at USC who reviewed a speech in which King explained how he computed the estimate.

"If he thinks this is a real number, he should do what the NAACP did 100 years ago quantifying lynchings," Gutiérrez said.

"They documented it on a case-by-case basis."

An inaccurate but compelling statistic, repeated often enough, can gain adherents, he said.

"You build on the figure that may or may not be true and then you build pseudo-events around them," Gutiérrez said. "It can be very dangerous."

Mrochek stands by the statistic, saying it is the most accurate available.

"We have to extrapolate, and that is part of the problem," he said. "No one is tracking the crimes by illegal aliens."

Reach Sharon McNary at 951-368-9458 or smcnary@PE.com