3 to plead guilty in Iridium illegals case
By Andrew Scott
Pocono Record Writer
January 30, 2008 6:00 AM

SCRANTON — Three people will plead guilty to harboring and transporting the undocumented immigrants arrested in June at Iridium Industries in East Stroudsburg, according to federal authorities. Two other defendants' cases are pending.

Sui Tek Lim, Hew Deng Kong, Sufini Alisaito (also known as "Ling" and "Maidah") and Hardy Ko, all undocumented immigrants themselves, and ringleader Jimmy Nguyen (pronounced "Nwin") were indicted by a federal grand jury in November, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Fisanick of the U.S. Middle District Court's Criminal Division in Scranton.

Lim, Kong, Alisaito and Ko are being held in Lackawanna County Jail without bail or bond while Nguyen is free. Kong, Alisaito and Ko will appear in federal court Feb. 26 to change their "not guilty" pleas to "guilty," Fisanick said. Lim's and Nguyen's cases are still pending.

The five were charged in connection with the June 20 arrests of 81 undocumented immigrants at Iridium, which makes plastic squeeze tubes for L'Oreal, Victoria's Secret and other clients. The immigrants came from Mexico, Ecuador, Indonesia and Malaysia, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

Iridium claimed it didn't know the workers were undocumented, but former employees, such as Dorothy Crespo of Stroud Township, said the company knowingly employed the immigrants in sweatshop conditions.

The June raid's focus was H&T Services, also known as H&T Time Services, a Wilkes-Barre temporary employment agency that supplied the workers to Iridium, Fisanick said. Nguyen created H&T in 2002 and entered into a contract with Iridium in January 2003.

On at least three occasions between January and May 2007, Nguyen, Lim, Kong, Alisaito and Ko drove the undocumented immigrants in vans to work at Iridium, Fisanick charged.

Monroe County attorney Ysabel Williams represented some of the 81 people arrested in June, but cannot recall the exact number of illegals she represented or their names. Williams said some of her clients have been deported while others were released and have applied for or were granted voluntary departure from the country.

"Each case is different," Williams said. "Those arrested are sent to different jails throughout the country to be held, but many of their families living in this area don't know they can hire local attorneys to represent their loved ones.

"Attorneys aren't allowed to approach people to solicit services," she said. "People have to contact attorneys. But, if people don't know there are attorneys here they can contact, it makes it harder."

The cases of the 81 arrested at Iridium are hard to track because:


U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn't release the names of those it arrests, due to privacy laws.
It would take too many man-hours to track down each and every one of those 81 cases, man-hours for which the cost to the agency would have to be justified.

"It's a staggering amount of work to follow each person's name through the system to find out the status of each case," said Immigration spokesman Michael Gilhooly of the Vermont office, which covers the Northeastern states. "It just wouldn't be practical."

As of the time of the June raid, Iridium reportedly had not been charged with any wrongdoing and had received more than $9 million in public assistance since it opened in 1999.

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