Hotel Owners Agree to Pay U.S. $70,000 in Fines : Immigration: INS penalty against two Mission Bay inns is largest against San Diego-area firms for hiring undocumented workers.

The owners of two large Mission Bay hotels, accused of hiring undocumented workers and committing numerous other violations of the 1986 immigration reform law, have agreed to pay $70,000 in federal fines--the largest ever levied against a San Diego-area employer for such infractions.

The fines stem from heavily publicized U.S. immigration raids last May against the two hotels, the Bahia and Catamaran Resort.

William Evans, managing director of the two hotels, which have 640 rooms and about 600 employees, said the hotels have decided to pay the fines, which were proposed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on March 14. The hotels’ attorneys have been negotiating with the INS for months.

“We basically want to get on with our primary business, which is hotel-keeping,” said Evans, who acknowledged a host of paper-work violations at the time the immigration inspectors arrived.

In proposing the fines, the INS cited 362 separate counts, or violations, against hotel management, said Rudy Murillo, INS spokesman in San Diego. Hotel officials have 30 days to respond. Among the options are paying the fine or contesting the assessments and requesting a hearing before an administrative law judge.

Evans conceded that some illegal immigrants may have been working at the hotels. He said the unauthorized workers had presented false documentation to hotel management. He was now confident, he added, that the hotel’s immigration paper work is “pristine.”

Apart from paying the fine, Evans said that his mother, Anne L. Evans, one of two chiefs of protocol for the city of San Diego, had agreed to drop her related claim against INS officials. Evans, in a federal lawsuit filed last May, challenged the validity of the raids and sought a court injunction preventing similar actions. A long-delayed hearing was scheduled for next month in federal court in San Diego.

In court papers, hotel management charged that overzealous INS agents conducting the raids attempted to create a “panic” among hotel employees, many of whom are Latino. INS officials responded that the procedures used during the raid were legal and that a proper warrant had been secured.

Of 30 people taken into custody during the raids, INS authorities determined that 29 were Mexican citizens living in the United States illegally, said Murillo, who added that the 29 were returned to Mexico. The other person apprehended was found to be in the United States legally and was released from custody, Murillo said.

In the notice announcing the fine, U.S. officials charged that hotel management failed to maintain paper work as required by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Among other provisions, that sweeping law forbids employers from knowingly hiring undocumented workers. The purpose is to cut off the job market for illegal immigrants.

The statute set up an extensive set of documentation-keeping procedures that U.S. employers must follow. Employers must now fill out forms for each worker, attesting to workers’ eligibility to be in the United States.

Anyone who continues to knowingly hire illegal aliens--or employers who fail to comply with the paper-work requirements--are subject to a range of civil and criminal penalties and fines, known as employer sanctions, that were also created by the 1986 law.

The $70,000 proposed fine is by far the largest to date against an employer in San Diego for violations of the 1986 law.