Greensboro
Contractor for TIMCO charged
3-20-05
By Taft Wireback Staff Writer
News & Record
GREENSBORO -- Federal agents have charged an official with one of TIMCO's labor contractors with providing false documents to an illegal immigrant so the foreigner could get a job at the huge aviation-maintenance company in western Greensboro.
The charges against Jorge Ruiz-Alonso, 60, of 7104 W. Friendly Ave., are the first hint that authorities might go beyond the arrests of 24 people believed to be illegal immigrants who were detained at TIMCO two weeks ago by holding accountable the companies that hired them.
Ruiz-Alonso was among the 24 detainees taken into custody in the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement sting at TIMCO on March 8. He is a Venezuelan who came into the United States for a one-year stay in 1993 and never left, according to the charges against him.
Like the other detainees, he faces deportation proceedings in addition to his criminal charges, which also include the illegal purchase of a 12-gauge shotgun.
But unlike many of the others charged, who were aircraft mechanics at TIMCO, Ruiz-Alonso, also known as Jorge Ruiz, was a coordinator with S.M.A.R.T. aviation company of Edgewater, Fla. His job involved finding temporary workers for the huge aviation-maintenance company at Piedmont Triad International Airport, which repairs and maintainsplanes for such companies as United Airlines.
Federal immigration agent D. Brent Perley said in a criminal complaint against Ruiz-Alonso that federal agents "received information from a cooperating citizen believed to be reliable" that the S.M.A.R.T. official hired the informant in October 2000, knowing that the informant was an illegal immigrant.
Ruiz-Alonso also gave the informant a counterfeit immigration document and a fake Social Security card so that the illegal immigrant could complete the federal government's I-9 form, which verifies a new hire's legal standing to work in this country, the complaint alleges.
Perley said in the criminal complaint that on March 8, immigration agents searched both Ruiz-Alonso's home and his S.M.A.R.T. office at the TIMCO complex.
"Your affiant located a copy of said fraudulent alien registration receipt card, A208115378, within the file records of S.M.A.R.T.," Perley said in the complaint.
Efforts to reach S.M.A.R.T. officials in Florida for comment were unsuccessful Saturday afternoon. On March 9, a company spokeswoman declined to comment on the federal enforcement action at TIMCO.
The firearms charge against Ruiz-Alonso stems from a law that bars illegal immigrants from buying guns in the United States. But according to the criminal complaint, Ruiz-Alonso filled out a federal firearms form at the Wal-Mart Superstore on West Wendover Avenue on May 10, claiming to be a citizen of "Puerto Rico/USA" and writing "no" on the line that asked whether the purchaser was "an alien illegally in the United States?"
Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or twireback@news-record.com