1. Feds target restaurant industry
2. BP faces misconduct accusations
3. ACLU sues to stop laptop searches
4. LAPD arrest 22 in protest
5. VA DMV nixes work permit card

1.
Immigration Crackdown Steps Into the Kitchen
By Sarah Kershaw
The New York Times, September 8, 2010

FOR a man facing the possibility of up to 30 years in prison, almost $4 million in fines and the government seizure of his small French restaurant here, Michel Malecot has an unusually jovial and serene air.

During lunch recently, he walked around the French Gourmet, his 45-seat restaurant, bakery and catering company in the city’s Pacific Beach neighborhood, hugging his regular customers and planting a kiss on each cheek, before meandering back into the sprawling kitchen to make himself a herring baguette with butter.

“Serve this with warm potatoes,” Mr. Malecot said, “and c’est bon.”

An immigrant from the South of France, he came here in 1972, settling in San Diego because he said the climate reminded him of home. And now it is the knotty issue of immigration that has made him a local cause célèbre, thrust him into one of the nation’s most contentious debates, jeopardized his future and sent a current of fear through the $550-billion-plus restaurant industry.

In April, Mr. Malecot, 58, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of illegally hiring 12 undocumented immigrants and, in what prosecutors portray as a brazen deception, continuing to employ them after learning that they were in the country illegally. He pleaded not guilty. Now, if convicted, he faces the possibility of forfeiture of the restaurant building, along with an adjacent rental property, Froggy’s Bar. Legal experts say it would be an exceptionally stiff punishment, but one that could be a sign of things to come for an industry that is one of the nation’s largest employers of immigrants.

“They’re using a body of law intended for drug dealers and money launderers and going after an iconic bakery and philanthropic business,” said Jot Condie, the president of the California Restaurant Association, which has 22,000 members. “If their strategy is to get the attention of the industry, mission accomplished.”

Under a policy that went into effect in April 2009, the Obama administration is taking a much tougher stance on employers who hire illegal immigrants than any administration in decades. Enforcement agents have subjected businesses across the country to much greater scrutiny, using tactics that were almost nonexistent until two years ago. Federal officials said they expected to announce record numbers of investigations and fines by the end of the year. As of July 31, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, had announced investigations of 2,073 businesses so far this year, outpacing the 1,461 conducted in all of 2009.

Restaurants are not the only businesses to fall under the searchlight. But until recently, immigration enforcement had been notoriously lax, with a kind of universal wink at kitchens filled with employees working either off the books or with false documents, government officials and industry experts say.

But that is quickly changing, based on the rising number of investigations and the penalties being sought against restaurateurs.

In June, the owner of two Maryland restaurants who pleaded guilty to hiring and harboring illegal immigrants was ordered to forfeit to the government more than $700,000 in assets — in addition to his motorcycle — and faces up to 10 years in prison. In November, a restaurateur in Mississippi who had pleaded guilty to hiring illegal immigrants was sentenced to a year in prison and a year of supervised release. Combined fines in the case, shared among several defendants, amount to $600,000.

Out of a total of about 12.7 million workers in the restaurant industry, an estimated 1.4 million — both legal and illegal immigrants — are foreign born, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to 2008 estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, about 20 percent of the nearly 2.6 million chefs, head cooks and cooks are illegal immigrants. Among the 360,000 dishwashers, 28 percent are undocumented, according to the estimates.

Those numbers sounded low to a Manhattan chef and restaurateur who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he does not want to draw attention to his TriBeCa restaurant.

“We always, always hire the undocumented workers,” he said. “It’s not just me, it’s everybody in the industry. First, they are willing to do the work. Second, they are willing to learn. Third, they are not paid as well. It’s an economic decision. It’s less expensive to hire an undocumented person.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/dining/08crackdown.html?partner=rss&em...

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2.
Border Patrol is grappling with misconduct cases in its ranks
By Ken Dilanian
Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2010

One by one, Border Patrol agents took the witness stand in the federal courthouse here last week to testify against a fellow officer, their faces creased with anguish.

By their accounts, Agent Jesus Enrique Diaz Jr., a husband and father with seven years on the job, tortured a 16-year-old drug smuggler two years ago by wrenching his handcuffed arms upward as he pressed a knee into his back. In an effort to make the boy reveal where he had hidden marijuana bundles near the Rio Grande, Diaz also kicked him and dropped him face-first on the ground, agents testified.

No one stopped the alleged assault as the 110-pound juvenile screamed, but some agents talked afterward about the "disgust" they felt and reported it. "I knew that what he was doing was wrong," Agent Gabriel Lerma testified.

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The result was a rare Justice Department prosecution of a Border Patrol agent on civil rights charges, and the latest indication of problems within the Border Patrol, which has grown rapidly in recent years to become the second-largest police agency in the country with sworn officers after the New York Police Department.

Diaz denies the allegations — he is also charged with lying to investigators — and the case ended in mistrial Thursday because a juror was taking notes in violation of the judge's instruction. A retrial is planned, and Diaz remains on unpaid suspension.

Regardless of the outcome, the Border Patrol is grappling with a spate of misconduct cases in its ranks, which have expanded from 4,000 agents in the early 1990s to 21,000 today.

In the last 18 months, five Border Patrol agents have been accused or convicted of sex crimes, including one agent who pleaded guilty in January to raping a woman while off duty, and another who is accused of sexually assaulting a migrant while her young children were nearby in a car.

Another agent, Gamalier Reyes Rivera, is jailed in San Diego on $10-million bail, awaiting trial on attempted murder charges in a hatchet attack that paralyzed a man.

In June, Agent Eduardo Moreno pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge for assaulting a migrant in 2006 at a processing center in Nogales, Ariz.

That same month, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old Mexican in El Paso after a group of young men threw rocks at the agent, authorities said. A poor-quality cellphone video of the incident shows that the teen was a considerable distance away, on the Mexican side of the border, when he was shot.

That case is under investigation, as is a San Diego incident in May, when Border Patrol agents were involved along with customs personnel in the death of a detainee who was beaten and shocked with a Taser up to four times. The agents said the detainee became violent while being deported to Mexico. The Taser, the beating and methamphetamine in the detainee's system all were factors in his death, according to the San Diego County medical examiner.

The Border Patrol treats detainees "very, very poorly," said Tony Payan, a political scientist who studies the agency at the University of Texas at El Paso. "They see themselves as a quasi-military body defending the country. Add to that the fact that they are expanding rapidly, and you have thousands of rookies who have very little experience."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, the Border Patrol's parent agency, said in a statement that "the overwhelming majority of CBP agents and officers perform their duties with honor and distinction.... We do not tolerate corruption or abuse within our ranks, and we fully cooperate with any criminal or administrative investigations of alleged misconduct by any of our personnel, on or off duty."

The Border Patrol added about 9,000 agents between 2005 and 2009. The agency said it employs a rigorous vetting process for new recruits.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border-patrol-20100...

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3.
ACLU sues DHS over border laptop searches
By Gautham Nagesh
The Hill (Washington, D.C.), September 8, 2010

Privacy advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union are mounting a legal challenge against the Department of Homeland Security's policy of searching travelers' laptops at the border without reasonable suspicion.

The ACLU announced Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit along with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) on behalf of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), alleging the policy violates Americans' First Amendment rights to privacy and free speech.

Privacy advocates have long argued the policy violates individuals' rights and may deter business travelers from visiting the U.S., lest they lose valuable corporate secrets. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) has introduced a bill that would require a warrant before seizing a traveler's laptop.

“These days, almost everybody carries a cell phone or laptop when traveling, and almost everyone stores information they wouldn’t want to share with government officials — from financial records to love letters to family photos,” said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

Customs and Border Protection began searching electronic devices at the border without reasonable suspicion under former President George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The policy has survived two previous legal challenges, most notably a three-judge panel that upheld the practice in April 2008. Most challenges to the law have come from individuals accused of possessing child pornography on their hard drives.

“Innocent Americans should not be made to feel like the personal information they store on their laptops and cell phones is vulnerable to searches by government officials any time they travel out of the country,” Crump said.

The Obama administration disappointed privacy advocates last year by announcing it would continue the Bush policy of searching and sometimes seizing laptops without suspicion, even from U.S. citizens. The administration has argued that laptops and electronic devices entering the country exist in murky legal territory beyond the jurisdiction of the Fourth Amendment, which bars unlawful search and seizure.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/117389-aclu-sues-dhs...

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4.
Second night of LA clashes after immigrant killed
Agence France Presse, September 8, 2010

Los Angeles riot police arrested 22 protestors and fired rubber bullets in a second night of clashes after a Guatemalan immigrant was shot dead in a confrontation with officers, officials said early Wednesday.

Angry mostly Hispanic demonstrators hurled rocks, bottles and eggs at the local police station in the MacArthur Park area near downtown Los Angeles, according to an AFP photographer on the scene.

Those arrested were detained on charges including unlawful assembly and failing to disperse after the violence, said Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer Karen Rayner.

The black-clad riot police fired rubber bullets and non-lethal bean-bags to disperse the crowd. No protestors or police were injured, but one person was struck by a slingshot projectile, according to police.

About 300 people earlier blocked a nearby road junction, and police declared an unlawful assembly before moving in. On Monday night there were some 100 protestors.

The fresh unrest -- in a city where dozens of people died in race riots in 1992 after the notorious police beating of a young black man, Rodney King -- came hours after the Los Angeles police chief defended his officers.

Speaking a day after protestors burned mattresses and other rubbish Monday night, police chief Charlie Beck said the officers involved had been defending themselves in the shooting Sunday.

Thirty-seven year-old construction worker Manuel Jamines was shot dead after threatening a passer-by with a knife. He ignored orders from bicycle officers to drop his weapon, instead lunging at them, a spokesman said.

"He was ordered several times in English and Spanish to drop the knife, and failed to comply," said Beck.

"The suspect then raised the knife over his head and advanced on officers, at which time an officer-involved shooting occurred. The suspect fell to the ground where he was taken into custody without further incident."
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iXEoA1HceZLscWEV8LvlM...

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5.
Va. no longer accepting federal document for driver's licenses
By Bob Lewis
The Associated Press, September 8, 2010

Virginia's Department of Motor Vehicles is no longer accepting a federal document issued to immigrants as proof of residence for obtaining a driver's license.

In a crackdown on illegal immigration, Gov. Bob McDonnell ordered DMV to no longer consider Employment Authorization Documents evidence of an alien's legal presence in the country.

The move comes after a 23-year-old Bolivian national with drunken driving convictions in 2007 and 2008 was involved in an August car crash that killed a nun in Prince William County.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/7/va-no-longer-accepting-em...