Los Angeles Center For Law And Justice

Additional help for Eastside residents battling housing evictions and consumer fraud is being provided at a new branch office of the nonprofit Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice. The East Los Angeles office, located in the Roybal Comprehensive Health Center at 245 S. Fetterly Ave., will be funded for the next two years by a grant from the Edward R. Roybal Foundation.

Additional help for Eastside residents battling housing evictions and consumer fraud is being provided at a new branch office of the nonprofit Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice. The East Los Angeles office, located in the Roybal Comprehensive Health Center at 245 S. Fetterly Ave., will be funded for the next two years by a grant from the Edward R. Roybal Foundation.

Founder James Gutierrez has stepped down as the head of Progreso Financiero , which makes small loans to immigrants by relying on their "moral collateral" and a secret scoring system for people with little or no credit histories. The Silicon Valley-based lender, backed by major private investment firms, is widely regarded as a leader in the tricky business of providing a lower-cost alternative to payday lenders. In an interview Monday, Gutierrez said the time had come after seven years: Progreso now employs 600 people and makes loans at more than 80 sites in California and Texas.

Attorneys for three illegal immigrants filed federal discrimination complaints Monday against Sears, Roebuck & Co., charging that the Latinas were wrongfully fired because they could not prove they were in the country legally. The women, Alicia Zamora Chacon, 30; Maria de Lourdes Placencia 20, and Yesenia Vargas, 18, all of East Los Angeles, said they are eligible for amnesty and claimed that they were singled out for criticism on the job merely because they were illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Federal authorities have issued a deportation warrant for Carmen Lima, a leader of two Los Angeles immigrants' rights groups, in what some Latino leaders term political harassment against the outspoken critic of Immigration and Naturalization Service policies. Two immigration officers, accompanied by five police officers and housing authority security officers, visited Lima's home Tuesday night at the Aliso Village public housing project in East Los Angeles.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. has offered to rehire three illegal immigrants who filed discrimination complaints after they were fired by the retailer because they could not prove that they were in this country legally, a spokesman said Tuesday. "They're welcome to work for us again," said spokesman Bill Rule, who said in a telephone interview from Sears' Chicago headquarters that the company has changed its policy to comply with recently released federal guidelines for the new immigration law.

Rosa Moreno, a 15-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador who came to the United States six years ago, says that her father, mother and brother all should easily qualify for amnesty under the new immigration law. But Rosa, 15, is crippled from polio.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner endorsed Assemblyman Richard Alatorre on Wednesday to be the next Los Angeles City Council representative from the city's Eastside. Reiner's endorsement follows one last week from the political arm of the American Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and is expected to be followed by endorsements from other prominent politicians, including Mayor Tom Bradley.

A federal judge in Los Angeles, in a major victory for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, has refused to bar INS agents from questioning suspected illegal aliens in public places, workplaces or in their homes. U.S. District Judge David W. Williams' ruling stems from a class-action suit filed in 1979 by a group of Orange County residents of Latino descent. The plaintiffs, all legal U.S.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service won a major victory in federal court Friday when a judge refused to bar INS agents from questioning suspected illegal aliens in public places, workplaces or in their homes. U.S. District Judge David W. Williams' ruling stems from a class-action suit filed in 1979 by a group of Orange County residents of Latino descent. The plaintiffs, who are all legal U.S.

A journalist who sued four Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, alleging that they beat and falsely arrested him in 1979 after he photographed them beating another man, was awarded more than $200,000 in damages Tuesday by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury. "I feel great now," said Roberto Rodriguez, 31. "After seven years (of waiting), I am exhausted. I felt like quitting a thousand times." Rodriguez, now the editor of Caminos, a national Latino magazine, filed his lawsuit in 1980.