Thread: NJ immigration lawsuit employs racketeering laws

NJ immigration lawsuit employs racketeering laws
6/21/2008, 4:10 p.m. EDT
By SAMANTHA HENRY
The Associated Press

PLAINFIELD, N.J. (AP) — A federal lawsuit using a novel method to challenge a landlord's right to rent to illegal immigrants is stoking tensions that have been rising for years in this diverse city of 50,000 south of Newark.

A prominent group that opposes illegal immigration sued a Plainfield property management company this month, seeking to set a legal precedent by using anti-racketeering legislation to crack down on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants.

The suit alleges the company has so many undocumented tenants in their buildings that it constitutes unlawful harboring and should be considered by the courts as a criminal enterprise that encourages illegal immigration.

The suit was brought by the Immigration Reform Law Institute — the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform — against Connolly Properties on behalf of a former Connolly employee and two tenants who are U.S. citizens.

The tenants allege they were steered into buildings occupied by illegal immigrants who were too afraid about their legal status to complain about decrepit conditions, according to Mike Hethmon, a lawyer for the group that filed the suit.

Flor Gonzalez, head of the Plainfield-based Latin American Coalition, worries that her city may become the latest battleground in the nationwide debate over immigration. The suit comes as tensions over the city's large immigrant population are rising to a boil, she said, with police ticketing day laborers, a recent spate of beatings and robberies against immigrants, and raids by federal immigration officials.

"This is the worst it's been. There is a lot of unfriendliness and disrespect against immigrants, and a lot has been happening quietly," Gonzalez said. "We need big help in this town."

Connolly Properties has at least 45 rental complexes in northern New Jersey and Allentown, Pa.

Ron Simoncini, a Connolly spokesman, said company officials were bewildered as to why they had been targeted in an anti-racketeering lawsuit. He said he could not comment further before filing a response to the lawsuit.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — or RICO — prosecutes organized crime and immigration-related offenses, including human trafficking and harboring and smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S.

Hethmon said his group decided to take on the case as part of its strategy of "attrition through enforcement," or urging illegal immigrants to leave the country by making it more difficult for them to find employment and housing in the U.S.

"We have felt for a long time that the racketeering statute would be useful in dealing with situations where businesses and commercial enterprises were heavily involved with illegal immigration," Hethmon said. "We've also felt that individual citizens, communities, neighborhoods and law-abiding small businesses have always needed tools with which they can defend themselves against the harmful effects of illegal immigration."

Using anti-racketeering laws to prosecute landlords is a legal strategy that immigration experts say they expect to be tried in other parts of the nation.

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"I think it's a new tactic because some of the other things haven't worked," said Donald W. Benson, a lawyer with the labor law firm Littler Mendelson, who has been tracking the use of RICO laws in immigration cases. "Congress couldn't reach a consensus to reform the immigration laws, states are trying to fill in the gaps and they're having varied success, and local groups are trying to work through local ordinances, so it's just one part of a much bigger picture of immigration struggles in the U.S."

Now, lawyers in the Plainfield case — and in a few other cases where employers have been sued under RICO for hiring undocumented workers — are arguing that RICO should be more broadly interpreted to include those who hire or rent housing to illegal immigrants.

Benson said that most of the attempts to use RICO in this way have been dismissed by judges in the preliminary stages, but that they were slowly gaining some traction, with one case reaching the settlement stage.

According to the 2000 census, Plainfield is about 60 percent black and 20 percent white, and has a significant Hispanic population. In the past decade, Gonzalez said, there's been a dramatic influx of Hispanic immigrants, mostly from Central America.

Mayor Sharon M. Robinson-Briggs said she was not aware of the particulars of the lawsuit but said immigrants deserve respect, regardless of their status.

"All our residents deserve to be treated fairly and equitably, whether they are born here or not," she said.
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/ ... ist=jersey

Flor Gonzalez, head of the Plainfield-based Latin American Coalition, worries that her city may become the latest battleground in the nationwide debate over immigration.

"This is the worst it's been. There is a lot of unfriendliness and disrespect against immigrants, and a lot has been happening quietly," Gonzalez said. "We need big help in this town."

Its not "unfriendliness and disrespect against immigrants". IT IS ANGER OVER ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DISOBEYING THE LAWS OF THE COUNTRY.

How much more can Americans be expected to take? Illegal aliens are thumbing their noses at our laws DAY AFTER DAY AFTER DAY. It gets monotinous and infuriating when they refuse to acknowledge and obey the law. I wouldn't want to be friends with people like them.

Flor Gonzales knows the law but she chooses to lump all "immigrants" together. She knows that there are laws already on the books against "illegal" immigrants. What she wants is blanket amnesty for all her people, and its not going to happen.

"This is the worst it's been. There is a lot of unfriendliness and disrespect against immigrants, and a lot has been happening quietly," Gonzalez said. "We need big help in this town."

Those who enter this country in violation of immigration laws are not IMMIGRANTS!

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