Papers No Bar to Sweeps, INS Warns Firms

After the largest raid on a Southern California employer since the passage of the new immigration law, the regional chief of the Immigration and Naturalization Service said Wednesday that employers do not shield themselves from INS sweeps by gathering proof of workers’ legal status.

INS Regional Commissioner Harold W. Ezell called a Santa Ana furniture manufacturer’s claim that it had complied with the law by obtaining documentation from 107 workers arrested in the raid Tuesday a “smoke screen.”

“As long as I’ve been at this job, B.P. John’s been hiring illegal aliens,” Ezell said of the company.

“The bottom line is, when they refused to give us permission to enter (and interrogate workers), we knew that they were covering something there. So we went and got a search warrant.”

Linda Wong, assistant counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the raid validated her “worst fears.”

“No matter what the employer does, he will lose,” Wong said. “They (employers) will have to stand their ground and challenge searches meant to contravene the law.”

Both INS and Border Patrol agents were involved in Tuesday’s arrests. It was the largest sweep in this area since the INS began raiding factories again about three months ago, following a virtual moratorium imposed when the new immigration law went into effect in November, Los Angeles District INS Director Ernest Gustafson said.

In the last three months, the agency has arrested suspected illegal aliens at about 15 factories, but “not on a scale seen Tuesday,” Gustafson said.

About 15 of the 107 suspected illegal aliens arrested Tuesday appeared to be eligible for legalization, INS officials said, although they had not yet applied for amnesty. Eighty-eight of the remaining 92 were transported by bus to Mexico, and the other four asked for a hearing before an immigration judge.

No Citations Issued

The company was not fined or cited for violating any provisions of the immigration law but still could be if subsequent investigation of its personnel files shows that it knowingly hired illegal aliens. It also would face fines if any of the employees arrested Tuesday are found working for the company during future raids.

Ezell said that the raid followed standard agency procedure and that the law does not require agents to inspect the company’s documentation for its workers--known as I-9 forms--before the raid.

“We had evidence that led us to believe they had illegals in there,” he said. “The I-9s don’t show that. They show whether a person asked for documents when he hired them.”

But B.P. John’s personnel director, Charles Miller, said the agency was “kind of mocking the law they asked be written. . . . We’ve stayed very up to date on what the law is, and we’ve fully complied.”

The new law, known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, requires employers to obtain identification and proof of work eligibility from each employee hired after Nov. 6, 1986. Employers and employees alike must sign forms attesting to their belief that the documents are valid.

Fines Up to $10,000

Employees are subject to fines if they do not complete the forms. Employers are subject to fines and potential criminal penalties if they knowingly hire illegal aliens. The fines range from $250 to $10,000 for each illegal alien hired.

John Hermann, president of Total Employee Relations Services Inc., which has conducted seminars on the new immigration law, said many of his clients were calling him Wednesday with questions about the meaning of Tuesday’s raid.

“They are being very aggressive, and they’re not so much interested in the paper work,” Hermann said of the INS. “Many employers are competitive only through the use of undocumented aliens . . . and have to clean up their act.”

B.P. John has been a target of the INS in the past. In October, 1985, INS and Border Patrol agents arrested 194 suspected illegal aliens at its factory. The company has been raided at least one other time since then, Miller said.

The company denied that the INS access to the factory floor on Tuesday “because that is an extremely disruptive process,” Miller said. “It can just shut production down and costs thousands and thousands of dollars.”

The raid, which came while a full shift of about 500 workers was on the job, cost the company about $100,000 in lost production, Miller said.

Four Earlier Visits

INS officials visited B.P. John on four occasions during the last three weeks, Miller said, asking whether the company understood its obligations under the new law. On one visit, the agents asked to talk to the company’s workers, but Miller refused, offering instead to let them inspect the company’s I-9s, he said.

But immigration officials told him that they weren’t interested in the forms and that there probably would be a raid, Miller said.

Last week, Miller said, he found that INS agents were interviewing employees in the parking lot as they left the factory. When he was told that they did not have a warrant, he asked the agents to leave, he said.