NATIONAL CITY, Calif. (AP) -- Police say an ACORN worker caught on video giving advice about human smuggling to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute had reported the incident to police.
National City police said Monday that Juan Carlos Vera contacted his cousin, a police detective, to get advice on what to with information on possible human smuggling.
Vera was secretly filmed on Aug. 18 as part of a young couple's high-profile expose.
Police say he contacted law enforcement two days later. The detective consulted another police official who served on a federal human smuggling task force, who said he needed more details.
The ACORN employee responded several days later and explained that the information he received was not true and he had been duped.
Vera was fired on Thursday.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Call for Registration Audit
SAN DIEGO - San Diego County Republicans are organizing a large turnout for Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, in which a request will be made to audit voter registration cards submitted by ACORN, the nonprofit organization in trouble after controversial undercover videos were posted on the Internet.
Supervisors Bill Horn and Pam Slater-Price placed an item on the meeting agenda that, if approved, will authorize a forensic audit of thousands of voter registration cards and have the chief administrative office consult with the District Attorney about a possible criminal investigation of the group's activities.
Tony Krvaric, the chairman of the county Republican Party, sent an e-mail to supporters calling for them to attend the meeting.
Krvaric called ACORN "a corrupt organization that has been convicted" of voter registration fraud in other states.
ACORN turned in 26,000 voter registration cards in San Diego County, mostly from the South Bay, a number that's more than two-thirds of the group's entire statewide production, Krvaric said.
ACORN touts itself as an advocate for the poor, mainly in housing issues, but its voter registration drives have garnered most of the attention.
In an e-mailed statement, David Lagstein of the local ACORN office said his organization "did important work to help thousands of Latino, African American, low income and young voters apply to become registered voters last year. We ran a tight Quality Control program and communicated with election officials throughout. We turned in every application we collected and flagged anything that appeared to be an issue. No one has worked harder to get our citizens involved in voting."
There will always be some cases of missing information, bad handwriting or duplicate cards from people unsure if they were registered, he said.
"If there is to be an audit of ACORN's work, the same questions should be asked about voter registration cards sent in by mail, filled out at government offices, or collected by other groups," Lagstein said. "We are happy to work with election officials. However, no citizen should receive different treatment based on where they completed a legal voter registration application."
ACORN lost all federal funding last week thanks to a measure sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, and approved overwhelmingly by both chambers in the Democratic-controlled Congress.
ACORN officials have said they are revamping their employee training and plan to launch an independent review of the group's practices.
ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Last year, it came under fire after its employees submitted false registration forms during the presidential race. ACORN officials said a handful of employees did so in a bid to boost their pay.
Employee Fired
NATIONAL CITY - Republicans on Thursday asked for an audit of voter registration cards generated in San Diego County by a community organization caught on video giving advice to actors pretending to be a prostitute and pimp in National City.
A 37-second and 15-second video clip aired Wednesday night on Fox News as part of an expose on the nonprofit ACORN, which touts itself as an advocate for the poor. They showed the decoys asking an ACORN worker for advice on how to get 12 young girls across the border from Mexico to work as prostitutes in the United States.
The employee told them it's easier to smuggle the children through Tijuana than inland and asked the supposed prostitute how much she charged.
ACORN officials in San Diego have fired the employee caught on video.
Spokesman David Lagstein initially said Thursday that he believed his employee, Juan Carlos Vera, did his best to deal with a challenging situation and would not be disciplined, but three hours later Lagstein reversed that decision.
He said he reevaluated the videos posted online in which Vera was secretly filmed answering questions about smuggling people into the U.S. through Tijuana. Lagstein said after further discussion with supervisors and state ACORN officials he decided Vera's conduct was "unacceptable."
The videos, and others like them, were created by activist filmmaker James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles for BigGovernment.com, a new Web site launched by Andrew Breitbart, a conservative commentator for the Washington Times.
Similar undercover videos were taped at ACORN offices in Baltimore, Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., and San Bernardino. An ACORN employee in Baltimore told the decoys they could claim underage prostitutes from El Salvador as dependents on their tax forms.
The videos prompted Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party, to send letters Thursday to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Registrar of Voters Deborah Seiler requesting an audit of voter registration cards generated locally by ACORN.
"Recent news stories concerning activities of the ACORN organization in San Diego and elsewhere call into serious question the validity of voter registration activities by this group," Nehring wrote.
"Maintaining the integrity of the elections process demands that each registration card that was solicited or submitted by this organization be thoroughly examined and its validity verified," he said. "In addition, for any card that is deemed fraudulent, it should be determined whether any individual cast a ballot based on that registration card, and appropriate investigations should take place by law enforcement authorities."
According to the California Republican Party, ACORN submitted more than 24,000 voter registration cards in San Diego County last year.
Conservative news outlets have tried to link ACORN to President Barack Obama, who was once a community organizer, and claim the group was involved in widespread voter registration fraud leading up to Obama's election.
In the wake of the videos, ACORN fired some employees, and the U.S. Census Bureau decided Friday not to let the organization help with the upcoming census.
Republicans and conservative commentators have called for state and national investigations, and the Democratic-controlled Congress voted today 345-75 to deny all federal funds for ACORN. On Monday, the Senate voted 83-7 to cut off all housing and community grant funding to the group.
The funding cuts will not go into effect until the bills to which they are attached are approved by Congress and signed by the president.
ACORN officials said they are revamping their employee training and plan to launch an independent review of the group's practices.
ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Last year, it came under fire from Republicans after some of its employees submitted false voter registration forms during the presidential race.
ACORN officials said a handful of employees did so in a bid to boost their pay.
