Employment Agencies Provided Jobs For Illegal Immigrants
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Posted By - Kevin Rowson

Last Updated On: 6/5/2010 1:46:44 PM

GWINNETT COUNTY, GA -- While states and the federal government are trying to figure out how to handle illegal immigration, local, state and federal law enforcement officials in Atlanta are cracking down on illegal immigrants who are breaking the law.

Five people were indicted by a federal grand jury Friday for encouraging illegal immigrants to stay in the country to work. Two others were charged in a criminal complaint with similar charges.

FBI and ICE agents descended on three employment agencies in Chamblee Thursday where some of the arrests were made. They also served search warrants at all three offices.

The indictment said "The owners of the employment agencies conspired with others to transport and provide jobs to illegal aliens." The owners were identified as Pili Chen, 55, of Tucker, Ai Lin Fu, 40, of Norcross, and Chun Yan Lin, 44, of Chamblee.

The indictment said the agency owners primarily placed the illegal aliens in Chinese restaurants in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia.

It further said the agencies charged the undocumented aliens a commission and transportation fee to place them in a restaurant and in some cases charged the restaurant owners, who deducted the fees from the worker's modest pay.

In a statement US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said "These defendants allegedly provided jobs that frequently exploited the workers by subjecting them to long shifts, six days a week, often with substandard pay and living conditions."

Yates also said "The defendants took large deductions from the workers' pay to reimburse themselves for the costs of the employment agencies' illegal services."

"This was not the only location where search warrants and arrests were made, but this was the primary location," said FBI Special Agent Stephen Emmett outside the employment agencies Thursday.

Other search warrants were served at the restaurants where the undocumented workers got jobs. Co-conspirators Xiang Mei Ke, 32, of Duluth and Jing Xing Jiang, 42, of Lawrenceville owned restaurants in Gainesville and Lawrenceville.

The indictment said the restaurants used undocumented aliens brokered by the conspiring employment agencies. "The restaurant owners often provided housing, sometimes in their own houses, to the workers in order to better monitor them and shield them from detection," the US Attorney's statement read. "They also paid the workers cash to avoid paying unemployment taxes."

At one of the restaurants, Fuji Buffet, in Lawrenceville patron Mike Danford said it's wrong to exploit people. "Also we're cheating the system because there's legitimate people including myself who've been looking for employment, so this is not the way to do it," he said.

Also arrested were Liang Feng Chen, 32, and Sau Ting Cheng, 41, both of Duluth. They are the owners of Grand Buffet and Grill, a restaurant in Duluth.

Patron Sidney Edike said he noticed fewer employees in the restaurant after the arrests. "There was not a lot of people like it used to be, you know today it was like deserted," he said. "I didn't see much workers there too."

During Thursday's operation, 39 individuals were administratively detained by ICE for being in the United States without documentation. The US Attorney said their cases are expected to be handled administratively and they are expected to be deported from the United States.

The same day the arrests were made at the employment agencies, Cherokee County investigators announced they broke up an operation that manufactured fake ID's for illegal immigrants.

FBI and ICE investigators say there is no connection between the two investigations. They are both examples of a complex immigration problem in Georgia and the United States.

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