meta Ex-dairy worker settles suit with attorney he claims tried to have him deported :: The Bullvine - The Dairy Information You Want To Know When You Need It

Ex-dairy worker settles suit with attorney he claims tried to have him deported


A former Northern California dairy worker has won a million-dollar settlement against his ex-employer’s attorney, who responded to a lawsuit the man filed against the dairy over wages by — according to the worker — contacting immigration officials to try to get him deported.

Jose Arias had already settled a retaliation suit against his former employer, Angelo Dairy of Acampo (San Joaquin County), when on Monday, lawyers for California Rural Legal Assistance and Legal Aid at Work announced the $1 million settlement of a suit against attorney Anthony Raimondo. The settlement followed a federal court’s decision to reinstate that case.

The case “ensures that employers can’t game the system by cheating employees and then turning around and threatening to have the employees deported when they stand up for their basic rights,” said Legal Aid attorney Christopher Ho.

Raimondo, who has represented dairies during 20 years of law practice in Fresno, denied retaliating against Arias and said his former insurance company had insisted on settling the case.

“I’m the only person in this case who didn’t break the law,” Raimondo said.

Arias, an undocumented immigrant, went to work for Angelo Dairy as a milker in 1995. The dairy was supposed to file documents with federal officials to verify his work authorization, but instead “wielded (federal immigration law) as a weapon to confine Arias in their employ,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2017 ruling allowing his suit to proceed.

When Arias told a company owner in 1997 that he had been offered a job with another dairy, the court said, the owner told him he would report the other dairy to immigration authorities if Arias left. Arias stayed but sued Angelo Dairy in 2006 claiming the company’s failure to pay overtime and provide meal and rest breaks, the court said. As the suit was about to go to trial in 2011, Raimondo, the dairy’s lawyer, contacted immigration agencies to derail it, the court said.

In one June 2011 email, the court said, Raimondo told an Immigration and Customs Enforcement auditor that Arias would be attending a deposition shortly, and “if there is an interest in apprehending him, please let me know.”

Arias settled the wage suit and dropped his claims, “due in substantial part to the threat of deportation,” the court said. It said Raimondo had contacted ICE at least five times about other employees, and had confirmed his practice in a June 2013 email to the Legal Services Corp., saying he had acted in the past to deport workers who had sued his clients.

Raimondo described the events differently Monday.

“The idea I was retaliating against Mr. Arias was ridiculous. I don’t even know Mr. Arias,” the attorney said. He said he had contacted officials for another reason: to accuse California Rural Legal Assistance of illegally using federal Legal Aid funds to represent undocumented immigrants.

The only offer he made to the ICE auditor, Raimondo said, was to cooperate in Arias’ arrest if the agency considered him a dangerous person who should be deported immediately. And he said the appeals court ruling reinstating the suit against him came “at a time when the Ninth Circuit is at open war with the White House over immigration.”

Blanca Bañuelos, a California Rural Legal Assistance attorney, said the Legal Services Corp., which oversees Legal Aid funding, has not found her organization violated any rules in representing immigrants. Raimondo, she said, “wants to distract from the issue in this case.”

Source: sfchronicle.com


Send this to a friend