Worker Fired for Turning In Illegal Immigrant Reinstated

An independent arbitrator has ordered county officials in Central California to reinstate a clerical worker who was fired for turning in an illegal immigrant--a suspected deadbeat dad--to U.S. immigration authorities.

The case is the first known instance in the nation in which a government employee had sought protection for informing on an illegal immigrant under 1996 federal laws that override “no-tell” rules--adopted by many cities with large immigrant populations, like Los Angeles and New York--that bar police and other workers from informing federal officials about suspected illegal immigrants.

The case featured a clash of two sometimes competing interests: confidentiality and immigration control.

Activists favoring reduced immigration hailed the decision as having “far-reaching” significance in protecting government workers who share information with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

But independent experts downplayed any broader significance. Unlike certain court decisions, arbitration rulings are not precedent-setting or binding in other cases, though other arbitrators may refer to them for guidance, noted David Feller, former president of the National Academy of Arbitrators.

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In the decision, the arbitrator directed the San Joaquin County district attorney’s office to reinstate Tamara L. Lowe to her position as a $26,000-a-year office assistant in the family support division. Lowe, 38, was fired a year ago for violating privacy rules by alerting the Border Patrol when an illegal immigrant--who was also a convicted heroin smuggler--arrived at her office for an appointment about support payments to his children.

“It is difficult for the average person to comprehend that the chief law enforcement office in the county instructs its employees to ignore criminal behavior they observe,” wrote veteran arbitrator Norman Brand, who ordered Lowe reinstated with full back pay and benefits.

Advocates for lower immigration levels embraced Lowe’s case and cast her as a kind of martyr--though Lowe herself was not active in immigration issues before being fired. Her newfound allies voice the hope that her case heralds a broad national shift in which police officers, social workers and other government employees routinely will turn in illegal immigrants for deportation one day.

“For too long, state agencies have served to obstruct and neglect their proper roles in assisting federal agencies that carry out immigration law enforcement,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which paid Lowe’s legal bills.

Immigrant advocates, meanwhile, lambasted the arbitrator’s decision as a step backward. Validating Lowe’s actions, critics said, will serve only to cause many frightened immigrants in California’s Central Valley and elsewhere to spurn contacts with police departments, hospitals, schools and other institutions.

“This is sending the wrong message to county employees,” said Jose Rodriguez, executive director of the Council for the Spanish Speaking, a private social service agency in Stockton.

For years, California Gov. Pete Wilson has backed the concept of encouraging state workers to turn in illegal immigrants. But any formal proposal to do so likely would trigger a flurry of lawsuits that certainly would outlast the lame-duck chief executive.

In fact, many cities with large immigrant populations have long had no-tell rules. In Los Angeles, trailblazing Special Order 40, adopted in 1979, generally bars police from quizzing people about their immigration status or turning over suspects accused of minor violations to the INS.

Such noncooperation schemes have enraged Republican lawmakers who have sought closer cooperation between the INS and local authorities. GOP activists took action as Congress revamped the nation’s welfare and immigration laws in 1996, at the crest of a tide of political sentiment weighing against noncitizens.

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Buried in both of the massive new laws were several innocuous-sounding paragraphs that expressly voided federal, state and local rules barring government agencies from cooperating with the INS. The provisions represent a kind of extension to the federal level of Proposition 187, which would have required that California educators, health professionals, police and other public workers turn in suspected illegal immigrants. A federal judge struck down most of the ballot measure as unconstitutional.

New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was so alarmed by the fine-print provisions in the 1996 laws that he went to court to block imposition of the contested sections, which he and others feared would deter law-abiding immigrants from seeking police protection, sending their children to school or requesting health care.

But a federal judge upheld the 1996 laws, citing a key fact: The provisions do not mandate that public workers turn in illegal immigrants but only allow employees to inform if they choose to do so.

Lowe opted to exercise that option in June 1997. Her low-level job in the family support division of the San Joaquin County district attorney’s office involved assisting more senior officers in tracking down fathers who refuse to provide mandated child support. She searched through motor vehicle records, credit reports and criminal histories found in law-enforcement databases.

By June 1997, Lowe had been on the job 2 1/2 years. That’s when she found herself on the tail of Miguel Angel Segovia, a 26-year-old Mexican national. County officials were seeking support payments for his two young children, who were being cared for by their mother.

Segovia was an illegal immigrant, who had been convicted in 1993 and placed on five years’ probation for smuggling heroin into a local jail, records showed. He had been subsequently deported, the arbitrator’s decision noted, but Segovia had since returned to California and was working “under the table.”

Lowe found Segovia and set up an appointment for him to come to her office. When he showed up, Segovia was promptly arrested by green-uniformed Border Patrol officers, whom Lowe had alerted.

The case soon caused an outcry in a community with a large population of Latino immigrants.

“There was a breach of confidentiality here,” an outraged San Joaquin County Supervisor Steve Gutierrez told the Record in Stockton.

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Lowe was fired July 16, 1997, satisfying her critics but enraging allies in the immigration-restriction movement. The arbitrator’s ruling reinstating her came more than a year later, on July 31.

The arbitrator ruled that the 1996 federal laws clearly protected Lowe’s decision to turn Segovia over to the INS.

But Brand seemed most struck by what he called the “deeply counter-intuitive” county policy barring “what would ordinarily be a precept of good citizenship: to report a known criminal to law enforcement.”

However, Lowe was slapped with a one-day suspension for insubordination, stemming from her overly aggressive pursuit of deadbeat parents without the knowledge of superiors.

Lowe, who has said that she was driven to bankruptcy by her firing, has yet to return to work, said Rick Oltman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.