Firm Fined $1.1 Million for Hiring Illegal Workers : Immigration: Penalty against Georgia peach harvester is largest ever levied against U.S. employer. The company plans an appeal.

Federal immigration officials Friday announced that a Georgia peach firm has been fined $1.1 million for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, the largest such penalty ever levied against a U.S. employer.

Lane Packing Co., one of the state’s largest peach harvesters and packagers, hired undocumented Mexican workers who were smuggled into the country as part of an unusual, massive ring, officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service said.

Over a period of two years, officials said, the ring imported at least 6,000 illegal workers, charging them a total of almost $3 million. Officials said the ring supplied labor for numerous fruit and vegetable fields in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina.

The fine represents the last stage in “Operation Peach Harvest,” which was launched in the spring of 1991 and included INS agents from Atlanta and Del Rio, Tex., along with agents from the U.S. Labor Department.

Last June, INS agents raided Lane Packing, located in Ft. Valley, Ga., apprehending 130 illegal workers, who since have been deported to Mexico. By the end of the year, four Lane Packing employees had been convicted of various criminal acts, including smuggling of immigrants, selling false documents, giving false statements and entering the United States illegally.

“This will put a dent in illegal employment activities and also cripple a major smuggling ring,” Thomas Fischer, INS district director, told a news conference here.

The INS announcement bolsters the agency’s effort to portray itself as a protector of American borders and jobs, but it also focuses new attention on a raging debate over the use of employer sanctions. Under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the sanctions may be levied when employers fail to certify that employees are either U.S. citizens or legal residents.

INS officials said that of 1,275 forms Lane Packing filled out on its employees’ eligibility, 1,257 contained errors.

At INS headquarters in Washington, spokesman Verne Jervis said the fine demonstrates that employers hiring illegal immigrants “will be taking a very substantial risk.”

But immigrant-rights activists view the sanctions as too costly, confusing and unfair to people who “look foreign” because they are forced to present documentation, such as a driver’s license or Social Security card, even if they are born in the United States.

In Washington, Mario Moreno, regional counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that while his group is not advocating hiring illegal workers, “we want to repeal that sucker” (the sanctions provision) because “the last thing Hispanics or Asians need is another obstacle to getting a job.”

INS officials argue that illegal workers are underpaid, maltreated and that they take jobs from U.S. citizens. Fischer said that INS officials were tipped to the Lane Packing violations by residents in central Georgia’s Peach County, who resented the foreigners, and by people in Texas, where the illegal workers entered from Mexico.

The Southern smuggling operation, known to have been in operation for at least two years, differs from most because company employees were involved “in every aspect,” said Gil Kleinknecht, INS associate commissioner for enforcement. He said Lane Packing employees helped arrange transportation, documentation and housing for the smuggled workers.

“They were in the whole loop,” he said, unlike the typical California company, which does not have to become so intricately involved in smuggling because illegal immigrant labor is so plentiful in the West.

During its known two years of operation, the ring generated at least $2.8 million in illicit payments for transportation, false documents, rent, utility charges and employment fees, according to INS officials.

“You’re looking at big bucks being taken out of our Southeastern economy,” said Fischer, who called the scheme a “bondage-type operation.”

INS officials said the immigrants in Operation Peach Harvest entered the country through Texas, smuggled in trucks and cars, with the help of Lane Packing employees.

Four such employees, brothers Bernado, David and Gaston Maceda and their stepbrother, Aquileo Castillo, were convicted in mid- to late-1991 and given sentences ranging from five years’ probation to 10 months in jail.

In the past, Atlanta has been a distribution point for smuggled immigrants, mostly Mexican, who arrive by airplane from Los Angeles, but Fischer said those shipments stopped when Eastern Airlines went out of business last year. However, he said INS officials in Charlotte, N.C., just last week intercepted 21 illegal immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador on a USAir flight from Los Angeles.

Faced with smugglers’ continuing success, INS officials say they are throwing about a third of their investigative resources into the effort to penalize employers who violate the hiring laws.

INS officials said that in 1990, the government collected $8 million of $18.5 million assessed under the sanctions provisions, up from 1989 when $3.9 million was collected from an assessed $13.2 million.

Before Friday’s civil fine of $1,151,190, the largest fine was $580,000 levied against the Piedmont Quilting Co. of Walhalla, S.C., according to INS officials, who said the company eventually settled with a payment of $225,000.

Jay Hawkins, a Macon, Ga., lawyer who is general counsel for Lane Packing, said the company will appeal the fine to an administrative law judge in Atlanta.