ROCK HILL - State legislators vowed Thursday that police would seize any video poker machines the Catawba Indian Nation plunks down on its reservation outside Rock Hill.

Speaking before television cameras, S.C. Sen. Wes Hayes, said sheriff's deputies would enforce the state's video poker ban at the reservation just as they would anywhere else in the county.

"Video poker is illegal," said Hayes, a Rock Hill Republican.

A tribe spokesman confirmed Thursday that the tribe is investigating parking arrangements and seeking a temporary building to house the machines. It held a job fair seeking workers in November.

The $3 billion-a-year video poker industry left South Carolina in 2000 when courts upheld the ban on the machines, which critics maligned as an addictive drain on players' wallets and the state's economy.

But the Catawbas threatened last month to resurrect the game if state officials blocked the tribe's plans for a second bingo parlor near Santee.

The tribe said it could offer video poker on the reservation even if it were illegal elsewhere under terms in a 1993 agreement that settled the tribe's land claim and gave it the right to open two bingo halls.

Tribal representatives said they are pushing for the second parlor now because revenues from their Rock Hill bingo operation dropped steeply after the state started a lottery in January 2002. The tribe said net revenue declined 54 percent last year and 57 percent this year.

The tribe hopes to build a second hall off Interstate 95 that would operate 24 hours a day and offer jackpots higher than the $100,000 allowed under the Catawbas' agreement with the state.

To accomplish that, the tribe is seeking an act of Congress making the Santee land part of its reservation, so the hall would come under federal regulation.

Gov. Mark Sanford has said he opposes the legislation because he fears the change would make it easier for the tribe to open a full casino.

The possibility of video poker reignited York County gambling opponents, who staged the news conference Thursday. They disputed the tribe's interpretation of the settlement and said they are ready to bring the tribe to court to keep the machines from returning to York County.

Critics of the tribe's plans included S.C. Baptist Convention President Wayne Dickard, who called video poker a "cancer that attacked our state."

State Rep. Becky Richardson, R-Fort Mill, pledged that "if this battle heats up, I'll heat up, too."

First Baptist Church Pastor Steve Hogg of Rock Hill recalled hearing about elderly people whose retirement savings disappeared into video poker machines, and about a man who lost his house and family because of the game.

"I used to hear those kinds of stories quite often," he said. "All those stories stopped when South Carolina banned video poker."

Hayes also blasted the tribe's Santee proposal, saying it would bring a type of bingo machine that is "basically a slot machine" to a state that doesn't want more gambling.

He said that while the Rock Hill parlor employs 50 workers, the Santee hall would have 1,000.

"This is a big-time casino operation, the likes of which we've never seen in South Carolina," he said.

After the news conference, a tribe spokesman handed out copies of a Nov. 25 letter from Catawba Chief Gilbert Blue to Sanford urging the governor to meet and discuss his position.

The letter says the tribe's first choice is Santee bingo, not York County video poker, but that financial difficulties are forcing the tribe to consider all its options.

In the letter, the tribe accuses the state of breaching the settlement agreement by starting up the lottery. The tribe says the lottery is direct competition responsible for its bingo losses in Rock Hill, and says the breach "if not remedied soon may bankrupt the tribe."

The tribe said its plans for Santee "will not involve Las Vegas-style casino gaming."