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Date Posted: 07:32:58 12/18/07 Tue
Author: rewhblcain
Subject: Questions on Illegal Immigrants Lead to Raid on Nonprofit’s Office

December 18, 2007
Questions on Illegal Immigrants Lead to Raid on Nonprofit’s Office
By GEORGIA KRAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/nyregion/18heat.html? _r=1&oref=slogin&ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print
NEW HAVEN — As Connecticut grapples with the remnants of a weekend storm and shivers in sub-freezing temperatures, a nonprofit group that helps many poor residents pay their heating bills is reeling after federal agents raided its offices on Thursday.
More than a dozen Kevlar-armored agents rushed into the Community Action Agency of New Haven, said Amos Smith, the organization’ s president and chief executive. The agents, from departments including Health and Human Services, had a warrant demanding all documents from 2003 onward, he said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Mr. Smith added. “Only in the movies.”
He said the agents asked staff members if they had been instructed to accept applications from illegal immigrants — who are not eligible for aid — or from friends of local politicians who did not meet eligibility requirements. The agents, who arrived in the afternoon, took as many as 90 boxes of documents and three computers from the organization’ s offices, and did not finish until 3 or 4 a.m. Friday morning.
While the agency was able to process applications on paper instead of on computers during the raid, Mr. Smith said some applications were lost, and he said he was worried about possible delays in assistance for some of the agency’s clients.
“Any paper left lying around was swept up,” he said. “We’re going to spend a lot of time figuring out what’s missing and figure out who those people are.”
The Community Action Agency has a long history of fiscal problems and was briefly taken over by the state in 2005. Mr. Smith, who arrived 16 months ago, acknowledged that there had been troubles in the past, but said that the present staff was “trying to get better.”
But an agency employee said illegal immigrants had been receiving energy assistance for many years, with a sharp increase in the past two years.
“That’s why they raided the offices on Thursday,” the employee said.
The employee had reported to state officials that illegal immigrants were receiving assistance, filing complaints last June with the office of the state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, who confirmed the complaint was received and said his office had received similar complaints.
The employee then contacted State Representative Vincent Candelora in June and contacted federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, in September.
Mr. Blumenthal said his office was providing “information and assistance” to Health and Human Services in its inquiry. Mr. Candelora, of North Branford, and State Senator Len Fasano, of North Haven, asked the State Department of Social Services for an audit of the agency in September. Mr. Smith said some illegal immigrants had received energy assistance because the computer system’s drop-down menu for Social Security numbers provided a made-up or temporary number if applicants did not recall their numbers. This system dated to 1982 and was designed so as not to penalize elderly people, for example, who forgot their numbers, Mr. Smith said. That allowed illegal immigrants to file applications.
But Tamika McKinnie, a former employee of the agency, said she and other workers were told to allow illegal immigrants to complete applications.
“If a person was not a U.S. citizen, you were told to gather as much information as you could,” she said. Ms. McKinnie said she was laid off last spring after more than three years.
At a joint legislative briefing on Oct. 9, James H. Gatling, president of the Connecticut Association for Community Action, a network of agencies involved in the heating aid program, said computer programmers had checked the statewide database for “pseudo” Social Security numbers and found 330. He added that the association helped about 100,000 people with their heating bills.
Mr. Smith said that his agency had recently changed its policy at the behest of state officials and that “people without a Social Security number now get processed manually.”
The raid, which was first reported by the online newspaper The New Haven Independent, came at a time of rising conflict over illegal immigration nationwide. Over the summer, New Haven introduced the Elm City Resident Card, a program that allowed illegal immigrants to obtain forms of identification from the city. Some critics said that the program provided sanctuary for those living here illegally.
As for the agents’ questions about friends of politicians receiving assistance from the program, Jessica Mayorga, a spokeswoman for Mayor John DeStefano Jr., said the mayor and the city did not have any “solid relationships” with the Community Action Agency and did not know why those questions were asked. Don White, a spokesman for Health and Human Services, confirmed the raid but would not provide further details.
The Community Action Agency and the other organizations take applications from poor people who need help playing their heating bills. The agencies then determine which applicants are eligible for the federally financed Connecticut Energy Assistance Program. Tax records show that in 2006, the New Haven agency helped 13,299 individuals in defraying heating costs.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell said in a press release that the raid would not interrupt the work of the agency. Michael P. Starkowski, the commissioner of social services, said three computers were sent to New Haven to replace those that had been seized, and that four people from a social services agency in Waterbury had been assigned to help at the office.
Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.

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