CALDWELL, Idaho — Like many communities, this fast-growing agricultural pocket of southwestern Idaho is paying a high tab for illegal immigration.
When an illegal worker gave birth to a premature baby, Canyon County wound up with a $174,000 hospital bill. County officials say the jail spent thousands to house another illegal immigrant at a motel, after his tuberculosis threatened to infect fellow inmates.
But where others have merely chafed at paying costs like these, officials in Canyon County are trying a novel approach: The all-Republican county commission has filed a racketeering lawsuit against four big businesses in the area, charging that they deliberately hire illegal workers.
The spectacle of the county's political leaders taking its businesses to court has touched off a bitter local debate. But it has also put Canyon County, a largely Republican community of about 160,000, at the forefront of an emerging national effort to use racketeering laws to crack down on illegal immigration by seeking damages from employers.
So far, a handful of workers and businesses around the country have filed civil lawsuits under the RICO statute, known formally as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The targets are companies that, the lawsuits say, have unfairly used illegal labor to cut wage levels or prices.
In Washington state, workers who filed a civil suit against their employer, a fruit company, won a $1.3-million settlement in January. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear another of the immigration-related RICO cases this year.
But Canyon County is the first municipality to bring a suit of this kind against employers. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal district court but has been appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. If it succeeds, it could touch off similar actions, says the county's lawyer, Howard Foster.
"There are other county officials who are looking at this, who have called me," said Foster, an advocate of tougher immigration controls, who is behind most of the other RICO lawsuits.
In Canyon County, where working farms sit cheek-by-jowl against new residential developments, locals have traditionally welcomed the Latino immigrants who moved in seasonally to take agricultural jobs. But since the early 1990s, many immigrants have been finding year-round work in other industries, leaving some long-time residents struggling to adjust to permanent neighbors with different customs.
