Contractor sentenced to 18 months
1 of 7 accused of hiring illegals
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By Paul A. Long
Post staff reporter

A contractor who admitted supplying illegal immigrant workers to the Northern Kentucky home building industry was sentenced Thursday to serve 18 months in federal prison.

After he was sentenced on the federal charges, Robert Pratt was immediately arrested by Boone County authorities on charges of fraud, saying he had underpaid unemployment taxes.

Pratt, who lives in Franklin, Tenn., was one of seven people sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Covington for knowingly hiring illegal workers. The other six - all of whom worked with or for Pratt, several of whom are family members - drew sentences ranging from probation and house arrest to 12 months and a day in prison.

Pratt, called the ringleader and mastermind of the ring, received the stiffest sentence. Still, his penalty was cut in half from what it could have been, because he has cooperated with authorities who continue to investigate what companies knew about the illegal immigrants working for them.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning told Pratt during the hearing that his role in organizing, paying, housing and transporting the illegal workers to their jobs called for a substantial sentence. Pratt not only used his cultural connections to Mexican workers to take advantage of them - he is bilingual and of Mexican descent - but he used his own children to set up and run some of his companies, Bunning said.

Pratt also betrayed his fellow countrymen in the United States by using the illegal immigrants, a cheap source of labor that denies better paying jobs to those here legally and puts honest businesses at a competitive disadvantage, said Bunning.

"You were the brain trust behind the conspiracy," Bunning said.

In May 2006, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided several Fischer Homes building sites in Boone County, rounding up nearly 100 people. Most were illegal immigrants from Mexico or Central America, but at least a dozen were contractors who provided workers for construction of the homes.

Also arrested were four supervisors from Fischer Homes. A fifth supervisor was subsequently indicted, but the charges against all five were eventually dropped after the key witnesses against them fled the country.

Fischer has not been charged, and its officials deny they knew of any illegal immigrants working for it.

But the investigation is continuing. Fischer was conspicuously not mentioned during Thursday's three-hour hearing, and when Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert McBride spoke about Pratt's specific cooperation, he did so privately with the judge.

In the other cases, McBride spoke openly about the cooperation of the witnesses and defendants.

During his hearing, Pratt alluded to other, unnamed companies that were "fully aware" he was hiring and employing illegal immigrants.

He said he is far from the only person who hires illegal immigrants. They are in restaurants, farms and fields, and throughout the construction and other industries, he said. He maintained that rather than taking advantage of the workers, he was helping people who were looking for good, honest work.

"I never intended to get anyone in trouble," he said. "I never thought it was that big a deal ... when I was doing it."

Two of the others sentenced Thursday, Pratt's son, Howard Pratt, and his daughter, Jacqueline Pratt-Medina, were the owners of companies Pratt actually ran, McBride said.

The son and daughter shied away from running the companies - Pratt-Medina because she had little knowledge of the business and did mostly clerical work, and Howard Pratt because he avoided most work and had a poor work ethic, McBride said.

Howard Pratt was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison. McBride said while he did little to run the company - his father eventually fired him - he was an American citizen who took advantage of those who were not. His cooperation in the investigation was minimal, McBride said.

His sister, on the other hand, received probation. While she also had a small role in running the company, she gave investigators information about how her father and brother flagrantly broke the law.

McBride attributed her cooperation to "her feelings of guilt ... and trying to make this right," he said.