From Deseret News archives:

Romney's landscapers included illegals

Published: Friday, Dec. 1, 2006 8:26 p.m. MST
 |  E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - 
BOSTON — Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a 2008 GOP presidential aspirant and a critic of illegal immigration, apparently employed undocumented landscape workers at his home near Boston.

Responding to a report in Friday's Boston Globe, the governor's communications director said Friday that Romney was unaware that several of the landscapers who kept up his Belmont property were in this country illegally.

"Gov. Romney has no information or knowledge to corroborate the Globe's allegations," Eric Fehrnstrom said Friday. "He hired a legitimate lawn service company, and he knows the owner as a decent, hardworking person who is a legal resident."

As he explores a run for the presidency in 2008, Romney has made illegal immigration a priority issue, urging stiff penalties for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers.

The governor has endorsed a 700-mile fence to be built along the U.S. border with Mexico and has advocated that National Guard troops be stationed along the border until the fence is finished. After Romney declared his support for the fence on a Fox News television show last fall, host Bill O'Reilly christened the barrier "the Mitt Romney Memorial Wall."

Story continues below
After receiving a tip that illegal workers were tending the governor's 2 1/2-acre property, the Globe sent a team of reporters to Guatemala to interview four current and former employees of Community Lawn Service With a Heart. The small company — based in Chelsea, Mass. — had maintained Romney's grounds for a decade.

The company is owned by Ricardo Saenz, a legal immigrant from Colombia.

Only one of the landscapers interviewed by the Globe said he had proper documentation to work in the United States. Another told Globe reporters that he had paid smugglers about $5,000 to take him across the U.S.-Mexican border.

The Guatemalan laborers told the Globe that the governor sometimes greeted them by saying "Buenos dias."

The same landscaping service also maintained the nearby property of the governor's son Taggart, the Globe reported.

In California's 1994 Senate election, Republican congressman Michael Huffington was defeated after admitting that an illegal immigrant had worked as his children's nanny for five years.

Comments

You can be the first to comment on this story.

Related content
previousnext

Latest comments

STOP blaming the Democrats, BLAME THE REPUBLICANS FOR 8 YEARS DOING NOTHING...

The best way to break the law is to become someone who enforces the law.

It's a real shame so many folks have never gotten out and gotten to know the...

It's all talk... you do not have any evidence for your claims. You assume...

Maybe if you could bat .408 in the major leagues, you too would be paid a...

I prefer the “Wizard of Earthsea” quartet by Ursula Le Guin, an...

Water wars in Snake Valley

The bottom line question that no one can possibly answer is; what will be the...

It looks to me like special treatment.

Jazz will have a tough week, with what should be a easy win against the...

I am very excited for this game. As much as I want the Utes to win, it won't...

Advertisements
Advertisement