By Tim Vandenack, Truth Staff
tvandenack@etruth.com
ELKHART -- When Jerry Sullivan calls, people listen. Sometimes they quake in their boots.
Recently, he contacted the higher-ups at an Elkhart County manufacturer, letting them know he had been tipped off that illegal immigrants were working there. It wasn't long before he sensed he had struck a nerve.
"Their voice sounded sort of nervous and everything," said Sullivan, who helps head a nine-month-old Elkhart County group called Citizens for Immigration Law Enforcement, or CILE. "I could just seem to sense that ... there was some truth to it."
Sometimes you've got to push the envelope to get things done, and in their battle against illegal immigration, Sullivan and other leaders in CILE are doing what they have to.
"We're not a head-hunting, hatchet group," Sullivan emphasizes.
It's not shy about applying pressure either, though. And in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, it's pushing for its vision of Elkhart County, one in which the manufacturing sector here would be powered only by U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. That, they say, is particularly relevant now, with unemployment skyrocketing and jobs becoming scarce.
Calling companies it suspects of hiring undocumented immigrants is but one of the group's tools. CILE leaders also keep tabs on the local legislative delegation to Indianapolis, making sure lawmakers don't forget they want new laws cracking down on firms that hire illegal immigrants. They even phone in information they gather on suspected employers of illegal aliens to a hotline managed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, hoping it might prompt a raid or two.
"It's got to start there, with the employer," Sullivan said. "You take the paychecks away from (illegal immigrants), they're not going to stay much longer."
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Attend a meeting of CILE and the passion, anger and frustration group members feel on the immigration issue comes through. The topic is particularly pertinent here with the spike in the immigrant Hispanic population, both legal and undocumented, and the group, which first organized last June, counts nearly 250 members.
At this gathering, last month, there are around 25 people, including Goshen City Council members Dixie Robinson and Chic Lantz. At the registration table sit stickers, there for the taking for a small donation, that state things like "Support the English language! In God we trust" and "English Only."
Laura Cozine, the Republican appointee to the Elkhart County Voter Registration Department, is the main speaker and she's discussing the voter registration process. Election officials, by law, can't ask for identification from those registering to vote, Cozine says, and it has made her wonder at times if illegal immigrants aren't slipping through the cracks.
Though identification must be presented at the polling place, ferreting out improper voters, her comments rile the audience. One man says he feels like blood is shooting out of his eyes.
"My question is, what are we going to do?" the man asks. "What are we going to do?"
CILE executive director Bob Schrameyer -- wearing a sweatshirt reading, "A nation without borders is not a nation" -- counsels contact with lawmakers. State Reps. Jackie Walorski and Tim Neese, both Elkhart Republicans, are on their side, he says.
Sullivan, CILE's assistant executive director, adds that the leaders of more and more Elkhart County companies are agreeing to take steps to get rid of undocumented workers who may be on the payroll. A recent guilty plea by Janco Industries president Douglas Jaques to federal charges for knowingly employing illegal workers, he says, "is putting a lot of fear in the manufacturers around Elkhart and Goshen."
Janco, a Mishawaka fiberglass tubing manufacturer, was the target of a 2007 raid by federal immigration authorities that resulted in the detention of 36 suspected undocumented immigrants.
Still, the crowd won't be mollified.
One woman warns that 40 to 45 percent of those collecting welfare in California are Hispanic.
"We're not going to be far behind," she says.
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Despite the passion, Sullivan and Schrameyer want it to be known that they're not anti-Hispanic or anti-immigrant. Yes, some of the people who've spoken out at CILE meetings may lean in that direction, but that's not what the group is about.
Their main gripe is that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from able-bodied Americans. Moreover, some of the new arrivals are playing the system, sapping health, education and other public benefits that ought to go to Americans.
With that in mind, Sullivan, director of purchasing for a trailer manufacturer, works the phone. He'll follow up on tips he receives about companies supposedly employing illegal aliens and call business contacts, chambers of commerce and anyone else who'll hear him out. He means no ill will and isn't in the business of making threats. But if his message -- delivered in his low-key, persistent way -- ruffles a few feathers, so be it.
Some are receptive. The owner of one Elkhart County company checked into allegations his firm employed undocumented immigrants, found it to be true and got back to Sullivan, telling him he was going to take care of the situation.
Others don't know quite what to think.
Sullivan once called the main office of a fast-food chain with the message that he understood it employed illegals at a location here, hoping to talk to someone who might be able to fix the problem. The woman who took the call wouldn't pass him up the chain of command. She wouldn't even identify herself. She just took a message and left it at that.
"She got very, very nervous," Sullivan said. "Her voice was quivering and she was nervous."