News Update - September 25, 2008

By Alan Lee, Esq.^†‡

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Raids Two Chinese Restaurants

On September 18, special agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed federal criminal search warrants on two Chinese restaurants and two homes owned by the businesses’ owners in Sacramento, California. The raids were part of an ongoing investigation that began in May of 2006 in response to a neighbor’s call about suspicious activity in one of the homes. According to Daniel Lane, assistant special agent in charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Sacramento, “no business, regardless of size, type, or location, is immune from complying with the law.” In total, 21 undocumented workers, discovered during the searches, were arrested on administrative immigration violations. The countries of origin of these workers include China (9), Mexico (5), Guatemala (3), Indonesia (2), Singapore (1), and Honduras (1). The undocumented workers were taken to the ICE office in Sacramento where they were photographed, fingerprinted, processed, and interviewed. One detainee was released on humanitarian grounds. The other 20 were transferred to an ICE contract detention center in Northern California where they will await a hearing before a federal immigration judge. Since September 30 of last year, ICE has made 1,070 criminal arrests and 4,700 administrative arrests for immigration violations during worksite enforcement investigations.

† The author is a 26+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

‡ This article © 2008 Alan Lee, Esq.

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