Minnick, Labrador battle over immigration

BOISE - A Democrat in a battle to keep his U.S. House seat picked a fight with his Republican challenger, only to watch his adopted teenage daughter get pulled into fray.

The campaign of Rep. Walt Minnick, who represents Idaho's 1st Congressional District, launched a TV ad Thursday targeting his GOP rival Raul Labrador, who is an immigration attorney. The 30-second spot tells viewers that illegal immigration is good business for Labrador because more than half his legal work is "helping illegal immigrants stay in the United States."

Labrador demanded Minnick yank the ad and called him a hypocrite, pointing out that in the 1990s he worked at the law firm that helped Minnick finalize the adoption of "his foreign born child."

"The level of hypocrisy he has stooped to is callous in the extreme," Labrador said in a statement.

Minnick and his wife have four children, including a daughter they adopted from China. His campaign declined to comment on Labrador's mention of their daughter.

With six weeks left before the general election, the TV spot highlights audio of Labrador referring to the broken immigration system as he jokingly says: "Now I like it because I make a good living because of it."

Labrador's full quote: "Our system is broken and this is where I work with the system all the time. I'm trying to get people to go through the legal immigration system. They have to pay me thousands of dollars just to bring somebody to the United States. That's ridiculous. Now I like it because I make a good living because of it."

The ad highlights Labrador's past role as head of a company that sold self-help kits on legal immigration to America, saying that he ran www.rapidimmigration.com with "easy to understand advice for illegal immigrants seeking amnesty."

"This is a disgusting, disgraceful, shameful ad that bald-faced lies and succeeds in only twisting and editing my words into quotes that are blatantly untrue," Labrador said.

Labrador was born in Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, and has said on the campaign trail that his role as a lawyer is to help his clients, including businesses, navigate complicated rules governing legal citizenship, residency and working.

In a memo this month, the Idaho Republican Party touted Labrador's ethnicity and expertise.

"His occupation and ethnicity makes him an ideal spokesman for the party on one of the hottest issues in America - immigration," said Phil Hardy, who is now Labrador's campaign spokesman.

Labrador invited scrutiny of his work, Minnick campaign manager John Foster said

"He takes advantage of a broken system and exploits loopholes in that system for his own personal gain," Foster said.