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United States District Court/Amicus
Eunice Lee, Jennifer Chang-Newell/ACLU-Immigrant Rights Project; Bassina Farber/Seton Hall Center for Social Justice; Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, Debra Torres, Janice Mac Avoy, Catherine Meza, Marli Reifman, Bezalel Stern/Fried Frank Cynthia Valenzuela Dixon/MALDEF
On October 1, 2008, the ACLU-NJ filed a friend-of-the-court brief in federal district court on behalf of numerous immigrant rights organizations in a case where an anti-immigrant organization filed a lawsuit against a landlord for "harboring" illegal immigrants. The case involves claims brought under the racketeering statute (RICO). The plaintiffs allege that the defendants were involved in racketeering activity by engaging in a scheme to profit from renting apartments to undocumented tenants in violation of the federal statute prohibiting "concealing, harboring or shielding from detection an alien [while] knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the alien is in the country illegally." The brief argued (1) that renting to undocumented tenants does not amount to "harboring," (2) that RICO was not intended for this kind of conduct (and that in any event, the plaintiffs have not plead the elements of a RICO claim), and (3) addressed the policy implications of the case at the national and local levels (esp. implications for access to housing and inevitable racial profiling). On April 9, 2009, the judge agreed with our arguments and dismissed Count I of the plaintiffs' complaint, holding that providing housing alone (i.e., renting for profit) does not amount to "harboring" or to "inducing" illegal immigration.
Current Status: The case is ongoing.
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