Michael Hethmon, longtime FAIR attorney, Charged with Child Sex Abuse

Michael Hethmon, a senior counsel for the legal arm of the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), has been charged with child sex abuse. Hethmon is also running for a Maryland delegate seat that would represent a part of Prince George’s County, Md.

According to WUSA9, court records show that the mother of the girl who reported the abuse is a nurse practitioner helping Hethmon care for his elderly father. Investigators claim Hethmon was with the 8-year-old outside a barn on his property when he offered to brush hay off her. The child alleged Hethmon put his hands inside her pants and touched her sexually. Hethmon then attempted to put the victim’s hand inside his pants, court records say.

He’s currently free on bail.

Hethmon has been instrumental to FAIR’s legal arm, Immigration Reform Law Institute, and its efforts to pass harsh anti-immigrant legislation in various states and localities. Hethmon has cynically said in the past that he didn’t care if these laws turned out to be unconstitutional or if fighting for them in the courts were to be financially disastrous for states and localities, which they have been.

“Sink or swim, these new laws are forcing Congress to confront the need for enforcement-based reform,” he wrote in a 2010 op-ed for CNN. More important is that they “provoke sustainable immigration reform.” At another time, Hethmon called the laws “field tests”—experiments aimed at testing the legality of various approaches to immigration.

Hethmon did not respond to requests for comment.