greyhound playing la migra??? or perhaps the feds are threating to cause greyhound problems if they dont act like they are la migra? Original Article Greyhound staffers face job loss if entrants ride By Michael Marizco ARIZONA DAILY STAR Greyhound Lines Inc. has been threatening to fire employees who sell bus tickets to illegal immigrants under an internal policy made public earlier this month. The policy was adopted after a 2001 migrant-smuggling indictment of Golden State Transportation Co. that grew out of an investigation beginning in Douglas two years earlier. Eventually, the bus company admitted to moving more than 42,000 illegal border crossers from Tucson to Los Angeles. The "Transportation of Illegal Aliens" policy warns Greyhound's customer service employees to beware of people in large groups, moving in single file and traveling with little or no luggage. It says other telltale signs include people "trying to hide or stay out of plain view" or large groups led by a "guide" who holds everyone's tickets. The policy has been in place since 2002, including in Tucson, where there were 335,000 outbound passengers on Greyhound buses last year, said company spokeswoman Anna Folmnsbee. Whether Greyhound employees are actually reporting illegal entrants in Arizona is not known. Folmnsbee said it has "rarely, if ever," actually happened. One immigrant-rights group said several companies in Tucson have the same policy, while U.S. immigration agencies in Arizona say they have used tips from companies calling in illegal border crossers. "We have had information provided to us by employees of certain transportation companies," said Russell Ahr, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said the agency does not keep track of how many times that occurred. According to Greyhound, other signs of smugglers include: calling bus stations to ask if immigration authorities are present, loitering, repeatedly buying large numbers of tickets for other people and using phrases such as "These guys just crossed the line," "My cargo" and "I've got to move my people." "This is the anti-immigrant climate going everywhere," said Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Tucson-based Derechos Humanos. "Obviously Greyhound has decided to remove its own liability by putting it on their workers." She questioned the training that Greyhound workers would receive to ascertain whether to alert a supervisor. Answers to that question were vague. Folmnsbee said employees are trained to look for certain types of behavior but that the policy serves as a reminder that there are federal laws against knowingly transporting an illegal entrant. "We just remind our employees that there is such a law," Folmnsbee said. "This is just a customer-service training." The policy is the company's way to cover its bases after the 2001 indictment, she said. "What it's really doing is encouraging racial profiling," said Derechos Humanos organizer Kat Rodriguez. "Which is the same as having state workers trying to enforce immigration laws under Prop. 200. It's not their job, and it shouldn't be." The company is walking a fine line if it enforces the policy, said Denise Blommel, a labor and employment lawyer in Scottsdale. Because an illegal entry is a violation of law, it can be tantamount to refusing to allow someone with a gun board the bus. Or it could be construed as racial profiling, she said. If a Greyhound employee believes the policy violates anti-discrimination laws and complains, that worker is protected from being fired, she said. The Golden State case prompted another bus company, Sistema Internacional de Transporte de Autobuses Inc., a Greyhound subsidiary, to adopt the same policy. The company owned a 51 percent stake in Golden State, Al Penedo, its chief operating officer, said. Golden State filed for bankruptcy and pleaded guilty in 2004, paying a $3 million fine and forfeiting a downtown Phoenix terminal. The Golden State case is still held up in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said Mike Piccarreta, the lawyer representing Golden State's ex-president, Antonio Gonzalez. In June, the court upheld a Tucson judge's decision not to allow wiretap evidence collected at the corporate offices of Golden State. The government planted devices at Golden State Transportation Co.'s corporate offices in Los Angeles, seizing telephone conversations at that location that it sought to introduce as evidence. The United States filed for a rehearing. Piccarreta said he will file a response to that motion.