Ex-Resort Employees Await ICE Hearings

Lansdowne Workers Were Arrested in Raid

By Bill Brubaker (Contact)

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Six weeks after immigration agents raided Lansdowne Resort in Loudoun County, most of the 59 workers arrested on civil charges of entering the United States illegally have been released from custody while they await hearings on their immigration status, authorities said.

Six of the former workers have been deported or left the country voluntarily, resolving their cases, and one has been charged with a criminal offense, officials said.

Jose Manuel Guerra, 47, a native of El Salvador, has been charged with using bogus Social Security and alien registration numbers to get a job at Lansdowne, according to court documents. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Guerra admitted to a federal agent that he bought a fake U.S. immigration resident alien card from an unknown person on an unknown street in the District for $50, court documents say.

More criminal charges cannot be ruled out against former workers or managers at the resort, said Pat A. Reilly, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. None of the resort's administrators has been charged.

"The investigation continues. I mean, 59 people have a lot of information" that could implicate others, Reilly said.

ICE officials said they are looking into how the Lansdowne workers entered the United States without legal documents, how some obtained fraudulent papers and how they got jobs at the resort.

The civil administrative charges by ICE remain against 53 of the former Lansdowne workers, 15 of whom remain in custody, officials said. The other 38 have been released while they await hearings; a judge will decide whether they can stay in the United States.

The investigation began in July after a routine inspection of federal employment verification forms, known as I-9s, that immigrant workers had submitted at the resort, officials said. Agents said they determined that many of the workers were using fraudulent documents or had stolen identities.

On April 8, ICE agents descended upon Lansdowne and interviewed about 100 employees, which led to the 59 arrests.

"ICE nabs illegal workers at an affluent hotel resort in northern Virginia," the agency's news release was headlined.

The raid came just a few weeks after ICE agents raided a construction company office in Prince William County, arresting 34 workers suspected of being in the United States illegally.

The former Lansdowne workers are nationals of El Salvador (40), Peru (seven), Honduras (five), Bolivia (three), Mexico (two), Guatemala (one) and Argentina (one), federal officials said.

Lansdowne bills itself as a luxurious resort with 310 rooms and suites overlooking the Potomac River and a championship golf course.

The resort's marketing and public relations director, Marjorie Lane, did not respond to repeated requests Thursday and Friday for an interview. Reached on her cellphone Friday, Lane said she was not available to talk.

Lansdowne's controller and acting general manager, David Millar, also declined an interview Friday, saying he had to attend a business meeting and a child's football game.

The resort is owned by Houston-based Benchmark Hospitality International.

Government officials say it's often difficult for employers to detect whether their workers' documents are authentic.

"Generally, it's a hall of mirrors for employers," Reilly said. "It's hard to find out who you've got, really, because [some workers] have fraudulent documentation. We don't ask people to be document experts at the places of employment. We just ask them to do due diligence."

Reilly said some employers might "look the other way" and hire suspected illegal immigrants because "it is hard to get labor."

Some employers have been prosecuted for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In one case, ICE agents discovered that lower-level managers had facilitated the hiring, according to Reilly.

Many of the Lansdowne workers were released from custody on humanitarian grounds — to care for children, for example — after agents determined they were not flight risks, Reilly said.

"All kinds of criteria come into play when we're deciding whether somebody can get out [of jail], such as whether they have ties to the community, whether they have assets, whether they have a fixed address," she said.

Guerra remains in jail, pending a court hearing.

An ICE agent said in a sworn affidavit that Guerra carried two identity cards from El Salvador with an October 1960 birth date and a fake U.S. resident alien card with an October 1965 birth date.

The alleged fake card had "incorrect font, incorrect photograph and text alignment, improperly trimmed edges, improper coloring, and failure to show fine detail," according to the affidavit, filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

And the number on the card had been assigned to another man, who was identified in the affidavit as Abdul R., a Pakistani 27 years younger than Guerra.

Tagged: crime, immigration

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