Company, 9 People Indicted in Alleged Immigrant Ring

Using a new conspiracy law, federal officials on Monday announced the indictment of nine people and a Georgia corporation on suspicion of illegally smuggling Mexicans into the United States to work at a T-shirt manufacturing company.

The indictment marks the first time that officials have identified alleged conspirators at every step of the operation--in this case, officials said, from recruitment in the central Mexican town of Queretero, through homes where the immigrants were harbored in New Mexico, to Atlantic Finishing Inc. plants in Trenton, Ga., and Henegar, Ala.

The smuggling ring allegedly began in 1991 and may have shuttled hundreds of immigrants into the company, with each newcomer paying a fee of $900 or $1,000, officials said.

Investigation of the case began with the December 1996 stop of a van containing illegal immigrants in New Mexico and included 15 local and federal law enforcement agencies.

“It’s the first indicted case that we know of where we have taken the entire span--from the interior of Mexico to interior United States factories,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. John Kelly. “We’ve got drivers, we’ve got people who watched the border checkpoints, we’ve got the people who transported them across the United States, we’ve got the safe houses . . . we’ve got the personnel people at the company, and we’ve got the president of the company.”

Kelly added: “This case is really not significant in terms of its size,” Kelly added. “It’s more that it’s a remarkable insight into how the demand created by an American manufacturing company for low-wage workers will induce Mexican nationals to smuggle their countrymen.”

The case is being prosecuted under a provision in the 1996 reform of immigration law. The measure, for the first time, made it a federal crime to conspire to transport illegal immigrants.

Atlantic Finishing President Fred Parrish of Chattanooga, Tenn., two of his employees and six others each face 10 years in prison and fines of $250,000 if convicted on the charges of conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal immigrants, among other things.

The 14-year-old company, which has more than 100 employees and claims annual sales of $5 million to $10 million, was indicted on conspiracy as well, facing a fine of $500,000.

No one answered the telephone at Atlantic Finishing’s headquarters in Dalton, Ga., near Chattanooga. Parrish could not be reached at his home.

According to the indictment returned last week by a federal grand jury in New Mexico, Parrish first recruited illegal immigrant workers in late 1991 or early 1992 at Los Reyes restaurant in Dalton. By 1994, the indictment alleges, the company employed at least 26 undocumented workers, including two of the defendants, Saul Resendiz-Cortes and Abisneigo Resendiz-Cortes.

The indictment describes a scheme in which Saul Resendiz-Cortes and several others brought illegal immigrants across the Rio Grande to safe houses in the southern New Mexico towns of Las Cruces and Hatch, then drove them cross-country to other safe houses in Georgia and Alabama.

Linda Barrett and Barbara Lee Blevins, personnel managers at Atlantic Finishing, helped the immigrants file false papers, according to the indictment.

The alleged ring was busted in part through undercover work in 1997, when three law enforcement officers smuggled illegal immigrants from Texas to Georgia at the behest of Saul Resendiz-Cortes, according to the indictment.

Parrish was arrested on Thursday and has been released on $10,000 bond, Kelly said. Saul Resendiz-Cortes remains at large. The five other alleged Mexican smugglers were arrested; four remain in custody, one was released. The two personnel managers have not been arrested, Kelly said.

Illegal immigrants working at the company will be sent back to their homelands but not formally deported, leaving their records unmarred.