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AGO ordered to release confiscated garment items
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Posted on Aug 31 1999
Superior Court Associate Judge Timothy Bellas has ordered the Attorney General’s Office to release the garment items confiscated by government agents from a factory during a raid last year.
Bellas issued the judgment last week in favor of Man On Enterprises Inc., which the Department of Labor and Immigration had accused of using its business to violate immigration laws.
During the raid conducted on Oct. 21, 1998, government agents seized 46 sacks containing 5,500 garment products.
The garments were seized without a warrant.
AGO had filed with the court a petition seeking forfeiture of Man On’s properties on grounds that the garments were “used” in harboring and employing illegal aliens.
The court, however, was not convinced.
“Applying the word ‘use’ in accordance with grammar and common usage, and common sense,” Bellas wrote, “the court finds that Man On did not use the garments in the employment of illegal aliens.”
“Although the garments might be seen as a by-product of illegal employment, there is nothing to show that the finished products were somehow utilized to violate the law as would, for example, a vehicle used to transport illegal aliens to a workplace,” Bellas stated in his Aug. 24 order.
He added that no proof was presented in the court to indicate that the garments were used to “clandestinely shelter or conceal any alleged aliens from immigration authorities.”
The court, however, upheld the immigration officers’ authority to seize properties without a warrant.
“Although the legislature didn’t create a separate statute for warrantless seizures,” Bellas said, “it did incorporate the terms of the drug forfeiture statute into the immigration forfeiture statute which …expressly provides for warrantless seizures so long as probable cause exists.” (MCM)
