Wednesday, September 28, 2005                 Bozeman, Montana Undocumented Mexican workers arrested in Big Sky Seventeen illegal aliens from Mexico were arrested in Big Sky Tuesday, according to an immigration official with the Department of Homeland Security in Helena. The aliens, all men, were in the process of being deported Wednesday and were on their way to a detention facility in Denver, where they will have an immigration hearing. All of them had been working in the construction trade in Big Sky, Monique Hirko, a federal official who interviewed the men, said. They had been earning salaries ranging from $8 to $22 an hour. Immigration enforcement agents went to Big Sky on Tuesday to investigate a tip that a landscaping company there was employing workers without proper documentation. However, none of those workers was on the job Tuesday. The agents then began to investigate other job sites near Big Sky's town center and on the property of Spanish Peaks resort, near that development's golf course. The men the agents arrested were working for four different employers. According to DHS, those companies are: D.P. Framing of Colorado, R. Davidson Masonry of Bozeman, McCasland Brothers Concrete of Texas, and the independent subcontractor Martin Valenzuela, who was working for Bar JP Inc., of Big Sky and Belgrade. Valenzuela is himself an illegal alien, Hirko said. No one from any of the four companies returned phone calls seeking comment by press time Wednesday. Peter Forsch, president of Spanish Peaks, said dozens of contractors employing dozens of subcontractors work on the development project, and that Spanish Peaks does not take responsibility for the employment practices of those businesses. "It is not something that we monitor," Forsch said. Some of the men who were arrested had purchased fake Social Security cards, while others had no forms of documentation, Hirko said. In addition to the 17 men who were arrested, a few workers managed to run from immigration officials, she said. An investigation into whether the business owners knowingly employed the illegal aliens is ongoing, she added. If they did, they could face criminal charges.