Thread: Illinois restaurant owner sentenced for harboring illegal al

LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAW — 2/07/08

Illinois restaurant owner sentenced for harboring illegal aliens

The former owner of a local restaurant was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for harboring illegal aliens at his buffet restaurant. The sentence resulted from a criminal worksite enforcement investigation conducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Xian Xi Ye, 41, was sentenced January 28, 2008, by US District Judge Jeanne E. Scott to 18 months in prison for harboring illegal aliens. Xi Ye, the former owner of the "Buffet City" restaurant, appeared in federal court in Springfield via video connection from the Federal Medical Center in South Carolina. In addition to the prison sentence, Xi Ye was also ordered to pay a $2,500 fine within one year. As an illegal alien from China, Xi Ye will be turned over to ICE and placed into deportation proceedings after he completes his prison sentence.

Xi Ye pled guilty in September 2007 to providing housing, employment and transportation to the illegal aliens who worked at his restaurant. The charges resulted from a criminal worksite investigation conducted by ICE in September 2006, with assistance from the US Department of Labor. At that time, ICE agents also arrested 16 undocumented workers who were employed at the Buffet City restaurant and placed them into deportation proceedings.

Assistant US Attorney Patrick J. Chesley, Central District of Illinois, successfully prosecuted the case against Xi Ye.

Xi Ye's co-defendant, Xiang Hui Ye, 29, former co-owner and manager of the restaurant, is scheduled for sentencing January 31. Hui Ye was convicted in October following a jury trial charging him with harboring and employing illegal aliens at the restaurant.

"ICE aggressively targets employers who knowingly and recklessly employ an illegal alien workforce," said Greg Archambeault, resident agent-in-charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Springfield. "We will use all our investigative tools to pursue employers who take advantage of illegal labor to make an unlawful profit."

For more information on this and other topics, consult CCH Employment Practices Guide or CCH Labor Relations.

http://hr.cch.com/news/employment/020708a.asp

Wow – This is Good!
I am going to start Googleing all the local restaurants and CATERING HALLS I can find that have either a link to “posting Commentsâ€

We are going around this in Waukegan! A customer was at a local south of the border restaurant and the topic came up about illegal alien employees. The owner said he employed 1000's of illegal aliens and if he didn't like it he could.....

Another poster who used to do pest control said she used to see mattresses all the time in the back or basement of local restaurants.

http://www.waukegan.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9302

Thanks for the idea madinchicago. I will look around my area as well.

This must be a new Operation. I didn't see this posted.

This town is about twenty minutes north of Waukegan, across the border.


FEDS ARREST ILLEGALS HERE

WLIP NEWS, February 4, 2008:

Federal immigration agents executed search warrants and arrested at least 20 people - twelve Chinese and eight Mexican, according to reports - in Kenosha and other Wisconsin cities. They are in custody, and deportation proceedings have been started. Also, Kam Yu Cheng, 57, of West Bend was taken into custody for harboring illegal immigrants. Records show that immigration officials were alerted back in November that Cheng and two of her relatives were using illegal immigrants at King Buffet restaurants in Fond du Lac and West Bend. A house where illegal immigrants reportedly were living was raided on Tuesday. Reports say the illegal immigrants were forced to work 13 hours daily during the week and 15 hours on weekends. Officials found three Mexicans and one Chinese in an otherwise-unfurnished apartment with four mattresses spread on the floors in two bedrooms and the living room. Other arrests were made in Brown, Door, Outagamie, Sheboygan and Winnebago counties.

http://wlip.com/-big-FEDS-ARREST-ILLEGA ... HERE/67388

Did trio find profit in illegal immigrants?
Posted: Feb. 10, 2008


Mike Nichols

The King Buffet sits smack-dab in the middle of one of those nondescript, cookie-cutter strip malls on a section of Highway 33 that West Bend residents call Washington St.

A liquor store sits to one side. Whatever was on the other side has gone out of business. Signs on the front doors of King Buffet on Saturday morning indicated the fate there was different.

A handwritten note said there was a "Temporary Repair" occurring in the kitchen.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, the doors were still locked. But somebody had posted a replacement sign that said merely, "Open Soon."

There's no reason to doubt it.

But, if federal criminal complaints are accurate, something more than the kitchen needs repairing at the King Buffet - and in America's immigration system.

Last week, federal complaints named three people who own or help run both the King and another restaurant in Fond du Lac: Wu Lin, a Chinese citizen; Ming Wong, Wu Lin's wife and a naturalized U.S. citizen; and Kam Cheng, who is related to Ming Wong and is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S.

All three are accused of harboring and concealing illegal immigrants "for private financial gain and commercial advantage," according to a criminal complaint.

That's a fancy, lawyer-way of saying they were either flat-out greedy or were trying to edge out their rivals, the honest restaurant owners working long hours and paying fair wages and struggling to get by the legal and expensive way.

Maybe it was greed.

Wong, the feds contend, purchased a $43,000 BMW last summer and appears to own five other vehicles, according to federal court records. Still, she had enough money, the feds say, to lose $58,000 at Potawatomi Bingo Casino.

Restaurant employees, in the meantime, worked up to 15 hours a day, were paid meager wages and, in at least some instances, slept on mattresses in an unfurnished apartment, according to the feds.

I'll bet the seat of a BMW might seem sort of comfortable in comparison to that.

"I don't want to comment anything about this case now," Wong, who with Cheng is free on a personal recognizance bond, said Sunday.

It was unclear if Lin was in custody. But it appears many of the people who worked in the restaurants are.

Many of those employees are now in deportation proceedings, and some folks will want to focus on that - just like they want our politicians to focus on that. Keep them out forever, all of them, and the millions and millions like them. Somehow. But there is no somehow, no simple somehow, anyway.

There's an almost infinite number of illegal immigrants in this country now, and the federal government hasn't even been able to keep track of the ones in prison or jail. That would seem like the logical place to start, and focus.

There, and on people who take advantage of the situation in an effort, as the feds contend, to get "commercial advantage" over the honest folks.

"Myself, I always pay the people. . . . I pay them good. I do not underpay them," Bill Tsiampas, the owner of the Omicron Family Restaurant, which is also in West Bend, said Sunday afternoon.

Guys like Tsiampas, who says he is from Greece but is a naturalized American, are always working.

Guys like him will have to work all the harder, I suspect, when the King Buffet opens again.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=716546