LOS ANGELES -- A Republican congressional candidate said Thursday that he was not personally involved in sending a letter warning Hispanic immigrants they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a mailing that prompted a state investigation.\n"I did not do this. I did not approve of any letter," Tan D. Nguyen, the GOP challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, told The Associated Press.\nThe investigation is focused on Nguyen's campaign, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to publicly discuss it. The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register also indicated the Nguyen's campaign was the target.\nNguyen said he believed an employee in his office might have used his voter data base to send out the letter without his knowledge. He said that employee has been "discharged."\nThe letter, written in Spanish and mailed last week to an estimated 14,000 Democratic voters in central Orange County, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."\nIn fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can legally vote.\nIt is illegal to threaten or intimidate voters, and the complaints about the letters that began surfacing this week prompted state and federal investigations.\n"I will do whatever I can do to encourage all citizens in this district to vote," Nguyen said. He said he was cooperating with authorities and promised more details of what happened during a news conference Friday.\nIn an interview Thursday morning, Sanchez told the AP she had never spoken to Nguyen because her campaign didn't see him as a threat to her re-election.\nShe said she didn't know who did it, but if it was Nguyen, it was especially troubling that the culprit might have been an immigrant. Nguyen immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam as a child. His campaign Web site says he opposes illegal immigration.\n"If it is in fact this guy, the most disgusting and saddest thing about it is that it comes from another immigrant," said Sanchez, who was born in the U.S. to Mexican parents. "These communities have spent years trying to get naturalized immigrants to vote."
\nThe owner of Huntington Beach-based Mailing Pros Inc. , Christopher West, told The Orange County Register that he was hired to do the mailings but didn't know what they said and didn't know any laws were being broken when the mailer was sent. He said he gave investigators the name of the person who hired him.\n"I'm the one that processed it, and I don't read Spanish," West said. "Until the investigator read it to me, I didn't know the content."\nScott Baugh, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, condemned the letter as "an obnoxious, grotesque piece of work."\n"Regardless of who did it -- Republican or Democrat -- if it's a crime, then whoever did it should be prosecuted," Baugh said.\nThe note's letterhead resembles that of an anti-illegal immigration group, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, but group leader Barbara Coe said she told investigators for the attorney general's office Wednesday that her group didn't authorize the letter and she didn't know who sent it.\n"The letterhead was altered, and I've never heard of any Sergio Ramirez," the name signed to the letter, Coe said.
