Thread: NJ-Immigration racketeering suit dismissed

Immigration racketeering suit dismissed
April 9, 2009


PLAINFIELD — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to use anti-mob legislation to stop a New Jersey property manager from renting apartments to illegal immigrants.



A nationwide group favoring stricter immigration controls argued that Connolly Properties, a large landlord with buildings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, rented so many apartments to illegal immigrants that it constituted harboring under federal racketeering laws.

The suit was brought by the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that backed the nation's first anti-illegal immigration ordinances in Hazelton, Pa., and Riverside, N.J.

Numerous advocacy groups supporting Latino residents in Plainfield, where the case originated, praised the ruling issued today.


http://www.app.com/article/20090409/NEW ... 5/1001/rss

I wonder if the Federal Judge was paid off in US dollars or Mexican Peso's.

Probably paid off with our bail out money, after all they won't tell us where it went!! I say alot a whole lot of it went to these special interest groups to fight us at every level!

Originally Posted by ELE

I wonder if the Federal Judge was paid off in US dollars or Mexican Peso's.

I agree with you!

I think I can see how this would fail under RICO law standards, which admittedly, place a "high bar" to claims. To succeed in a RICO suit you have to show that there are two separate "predicate acts" from the list of crimes that are included. I think, even if FAIR showed that there was a violation of the IRCA and that the landlord was harboring, they might have needed to show there was another category of crime, too. Smart prosecutors often meet this by including a loosely defined "money laundering" complaint as well, if they can't find another crime. But if in all other respects if this was a legit property rental company, and not an underworld syndicate shuffling money around through different enterprises, they might not have found that.

Perhaps the fact that it was a big, multi state operation, though could have opened up some possibilities. Or maybe the judge was just stupid. I dunno. Just my unprofessional opinion. I do think that the RICO act should be brought into play on immigration violations, since the Congress worked those crimes into RICO law in 1996. Here is a lawyer with an informative site;
http://www.ricoact.com/

I haven't found any sympathetic hearing with lawyers I have written, too though. Mendoza v Zirkle fruit, I think , was a successful RICO claim. I don't know about Mohawk Industries. William Foster was the atty.