A Buckeye trailer manufacturing firm and its owner were ordered by a federal judge to pay $30,000 in fines and received two years' probation for hiring undocumented workers.
Richard Taylor and his company, Arizona Trailer Manufacturing, was convicted in U.S. District Court and sentenced on Wednesday. Dennis Burke, Arizona U.S. Attorney and Matt Allen, special agent in charge for the local office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau put out a news release today touting the conviction.
Burke said it was a "unique" case in which the owner admitted to the crime, while Allen said in the release that it was important because it busted "an employer who contributed to the magnet driving illegal immigration in the United States by knowingly violating our laws."The case involved a whopping total of 10 illegal immigrants out of the estimated tens of thousands who live and work in Arizona. Court records show that Taylor 'fessed up to an ICE agent four years ago.
Special Agent Wesley Walters wrote in an affidavit that after Taylor found out that 10 of his employees were undocumented, he submitted fraudulent paperwork to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that sought to legally employ the Mexican citizens.
The forms claimed that most of these folks were not current employees, were living in Mexico and that he needed them because no one else was available to fill the jobs, the affidavit states. Payroll records showed most of the immigrants were employed by Arizona Trailer until as late as 2010.
The agent wrote that when he interviewed Taylor on September 21, 2010, the owner admitted that he found out the employees had no legal right to work in the country in the summer of 2007, but decided to keep employing them anyway,
The company's Web site states that it builds thousands of custom trailers each year.
