Mario Cantu

Mario Cantú was a San Antonio restaurateur and Chicano-movement activist who became, by his account, the first U.S. citizen convicted of harboring undocumented immigrants. Radicalized during a 1962 drug imprisonment, he turned his family's West Side restaurant into a hub of Chicano organizing and founded "Tu Casa," a group that helped Mexican immigrants obtain legal status, along with a committee against police brutality. His immigrant-aid work brought a federal prosecution for harboring undocumented workers; despite a Mario Cantú Defense Committee that drew prominent Chicano, political, and religious support, he was convicted and sentenced to five years' probation. In 1978, summoned to explain trips to Mexico the government deemed probation violations, Cantú chose self-exile instead — traveling to Paris for a year-long campaign denouncing U.S. human-rights abuses against Chicanos and Mexicans.

The September 24, 1976 report dates the three-count federal guilty verdict to September 9 and states that Cantu remained free on $5,000 bond pending sentencing, facing a possible fifteen-year maximum. Defense lawyer Pete Torres argued selective political prosecution after Cantu refused immigration officers entry to his restaurant without a warrant; both sides agreed he had not told workers to hide, disguise themselves or lie. The article reports Cantu peacefully picketing a San Antonio banquet against Mexican repression and being assaulted by President Luis Echeverria three days before a September 10 newspaper report. Cantu denied Mexican gun-running allegations and described them as intimidation. These allegations and the threatened maximum do not establish a new arrest, extradition or actual prison term. Source: https://themilitant.com/1976/4036/MIL4036.pdf#page=27