New Jersey Landlord Beats Back RICO Suit Charge That Renting To Illegal Immigrants Constitutes "Harboring"

In Plainfield, New Jersey, myCentralJersey.com reports:

• A federal judge has denied an appeal of an earlier decision to dismiss part of a landmark lawsuit that challenged the rights of landlords to rent apartments to illegal immigrants. The suit, brought last July against the city-based Connolly Properties Inc., alleged that the company systematically marketed and rented apartments to illegal immigrants and kept them generally separate from other tenants. Citing RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statutes, which most commonly are used to target organized crime, the suit alleged that the practice constituted "harboring" aliens or helping them avoid detection by federal authorities.(1)

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• Presiding Judge William J. Martini, sitting in Newark, last week said in a decision letter to counsel that to be considered harboring, an entity's activities must "prevent government authorities from detecting (an) alien's unlawful presence." He said the activities alleged in the suit do not meet that description. "The only behavior that even comes close ... (is) segregating the illegal aliens from the other residents," Martini wrote, "but even this falls short of the overt types of behavior that the case law has recognized as preventing the government from detecting the presence of illegal aliens."

For more, see Appeal denied in landmark suit involving Connolly Properties.

(1) Reportedly, the case drew direct involvement from two national law groups, as the Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Reform Law Institute, or IRLI, sided with the plaintiffs in the case and the New York City-based LatinoJustice PRLDEF (formerly the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund) sided with the defendants.