TIMCO Labor Contractor Charged with Providing False Documents

Greensboro, NC (AP)-- An official with one of TIMCO's labor contractors has been charged with providing false documents to an illegal immigrant so the foreigner could get a job at the aviation-maintenance company.

The charges against Jorge Ruiz-Alonso, 60, of Greensboro are the first hint that authorities might go beyond the arrests of 24 people believed to be illegal immigrants who were detained at TIMCO two weeks ago.

Ruiz-Alonso was among the 24 detainees taken into custody in the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement sting at TIMCO on March 8. He is a Venezuelan who came into the United States for a one-year stay in 1993 and never left, according to the charges against him.

Like the other detainees, he faces deportation proceedings in addition to his criminal charges, which also include the illegal purchase of a 12-gauge shotgun.

But Ruiz-Alonso also was a coordinator with S.M.A.R.T. aviation company of Edgewater, Fla. His job involved finding temporary workers for the huge aviation-maintenance company at Piedmont Triad International Airport, which repairs and maintains planes.

Federal immigration agent D. Brent Perley said in a criminal complaint against Ruiz-Alonso that federal agents ''received information from a cooperating citizen believed to be reliable'' that the S.M.A.R.T. official hired the informant in October 2000, knowing that the informant was an illegal immigrant.

Ruiz-Alonso also gave the informant a counterfeit immigration document and a fake Social Security card so that the illegal immigrant could complete the federal government's I-9 form, which verifies a new hire's legal standing to work in this country, the complaint alleges.