Owner of Mandarin restaurant to be deported after jail

Owner of Mandarin restaurant to be deported after jail
He employed illegal immigrants at Cilantro, a popular Jacksonville restaurant.
* By Paul Pinkham
* Story updated at 7:35 AM on Tuesday, Apr. 21, 2009

The co-owner of a popular Jacksonville restaurant received a three-month sentence Monday for harboring illegal aliens and faces certain deportation to his native India.

Sanjit Kumar Rajak, who was head chef and manager of Cilantro Indian Cuisine in Mandarin, will complete his prison sentence in about a week because he has been behind bars since his January arrest. He agreed to a $5,000 fine.

His lawyer, Shawn Arnold, said he expects deportation proceedings to begin immediately, a bitter end for a successful businessman who lived a rags-to-riches story. Arnold said Rajak won't be allowed to re-enter the United States for five to 10 years.

Rajak admitted hiring four illegal workers and leasing their Sunbeam Road apartment. He has no other criminal record.

"We don't see very many employers, as opposed to employees, prosecuted under the immigration laws," U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan said.

During the investigation, immigration authorities learned Rajak had entered the United States in 2002 with fraudulent documentation that he was a religious worker, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dale Campion said. That documentation allowed Rajak to remain in the country longer than the three days allowed by his foreign crew visa and made it easier to become a permanent resident, Campion said.

But Campion also noted Rajak has been "quite helpful" with investigations in at least two other jurisdictions, meriting a shorter sentence.

As his American fiancee wept in the back of the courtroom, Rajak told Corrigan about growing up in poverty and about finding cooking jobs in Bombay and then a cruise ship to support his family in India.

"A generation or two ago, he would have been celebrated, not in shackles," Arnold said.

Rajak testified that his father couldn't work after donating a kidney to Rajak's brother, who had cancer. So when his ship docked in Port Canaveral, he left and found higher-paying work at a Melbourne restaurant. He said he falsified the documents after a lawyer advised him his immigration chances would improve if he declared himself a religious worker.

"At that moment, I was thinking ... I had no other option," he told Corrigan. "My only intention was to work hard and support my family."

Within a year he was head chef, and when a colleague suggested opening a restaurant in Jacksonville, he went along. Cilantro opened to rave reviews in 2006, and a sister restaurant followed in Tampa. Arnold said Rajak earned about $72,000 last year and paid his taxes since opening the restaurant.

Rajak told Corrigan he hired aliens after poor response to advertisements for American workers. He said he leased the apartment because he didn't want them living on the streets. But Campion said Rajak gained an unfair advantage over competitors by hiring illegal workers.