News : Peony owner appears in court today -- nearly two years after search warrant

A Hispanic man identified only as “Jose” in federal court documents boarded a bus in Chicago in November 2008. He rode that bus to Iowa City, where his new boss gave him a ride to his new job, and his new home. The very next day, officers from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Jose in Vinton. Jose’s short stay in Vinton is one of several intriguing stories contained in court filings that document the two-year saga involving Peony Family Restaurant owners Chan Duong and Phung (Polly) Long. Duong’s scheduled appearance in federal court on Wednesday, Nov. 10 to face charges of harboring illegal aliens came nearly two years after his case first became public. (Long, according to federal court documents has agreed to appear in court on Nov. 19, to plead guilty to conspiring with her husband to harbor illegal aliens. See that story HERE.) Duong is the owner of the Peony Chinese restaurants in Vinton and Toledo, where ICE officers executed search warrants on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008. That date was the first time that the Peony case become public. But for local and federal law enforcement officers, the investigation began at least four months earlier. Special Agent Christopher Cantrell outlined much of the history of the case in an affidavit attached to several federal civil and criminal cases involving Duong and Long. For Cantrell, the case began July 16, 2008, four months before ICE officers closed the restaurants during the lunch hour to execute a search warrant. On July 16, Vinton police went to the apartment above the restaurant to look for a man identified as “N.R-Y, an illegal alien employee of the Peony, who was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant.” While inside the apartment, officers had contact with three other individuals, G.T. M.G. and L.Y, who told them they were also Peony employees. It was after this encounter that local authorities contacted ICE. Cantrell conducted his first interviews on Aug. 5 and 12, 2008. In separate interviews, two Peony employees -- identified only as Subject 1 and Subject 2 -- told him they had been recruited to work in a Chinese restaurant by a woman in Chicago, and that they were hired without presenting identity or immigration documents. Those employees rode a bus together to Waterloo, where an Asian man picked them up to bring them to Vinton. The two both told Cantrell they were paid in cash, with the only deductions from their checks being the fee for the employment agency that sent them from Chicago and the price of food they ate at Peony’s. On Aug. 12, 2008, one of those employees gave Cantrell the bus tickets used to get to Waterloo Aug. 1. Cantrell continued his probe. On Sept. 1, he interviewed another Peony employee. Later that day, he was still in Vinton when a 911 call came from the apartment above the restaurant. Cantrell accompanied Vinton police officers who responded to the call. “While responding to the 911 call, I noticed the apartment was dirty and sparsely furnished. Multiple mattresses were on the floor in one bedroom. One room being used as a bedroom had a sheet for a door. All of these conditions are consistent with the living conditions I observed in other residents where illegal aliens reside,” Cantrell wrote. On Sept. 4, Cantrell interviewed the estranged wife of one of the employees, who told him her husband had been paid half his wages in cash, and half via check. She said that her husband, G.T., had only claimed $550 in income in 2007, although he worked at the restaurant the entire year. That amount, $550, matches the amount listed on Employer’s Contribution and Payroll reports filed by Duong. “It should be noted,” wrote Cantrell, “that N. R-Y, M.G and G.T were not listed on any of the 2006 Employee Contribution and Payroll Reports as employees of the Peony Chinese Restaurant.” The probe continued. Local officers conducted surveillance and observed multiple people who appeared to be Asian or Hispanic entering the apartment above the restaurant. On Nov. 16, 2008, Cantrell himself conducted surveillance. He reported seeing four people exit the restaurant through the front door and enter the door which leads to the apartment above the business. Two days later, ICE officers executed a search warrant at the restaurant as well as at Duong’s home in Vinton. A total of four suspected illegal aliens were taken into custody. One of them was Jose.