Donna Perry, Republican candidate for state Senate in District 13 (Newport, Jamestown) says the arrest of dozens of illegal immigrants working at courthouses around the state demonstrates the need to strengthen the E-Verify system.

Perry, a Jamestown resident and executive director of the Rhode Island GOP, she says her opponent, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Teresa Paiva Weed, obstructed attempts to toughen E-Verify.

“The discovery and arrests… of the illegal workers in the courthouses is a vivid reminder of the need to strengthen the E-Verify program — and expand it — from government agencies and vendors to the entire public sector,” Perry said in a statement.

“This is becoming one of the state’s toughest challenges and we need leaders in the General Assembly who support background check systems like E-Verify and not public officials who want to stand in the way of E-Verify like my opponent did this year. Senator Teresa Paiva-Weed is firmly in the camp of certain public officials who don’t want to see background checks, don’t want to address illegal immigration at all.”

The 31 illegals arrested through a joint effort of the state police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency were working as employees of two maintenance companies that operate as private vendors supplying cleaning services to state buildings. Perry says the governor’s executive order, which requires legal status background checks of employees of vendors doing business with the state, would be enhanced by extending the policy to all private sector firms.

“There was a lot of bipartisan support in the legislature this past year for E-Verify to be extended to all private sector firms and many believed the time has come to take that step. But it failed to get to a final vote at the end of the session because Senator Paiva-Weed made sure it failed. She’s not part of the effort to find solutions; she’s part of the problem.”