1282 workers arrested in meatpacking plant raids

Immigration News Briefs
Vol. 9, No. 43 - December 15, 2006

Special Issue: 1,282 Arrested in Meatpacking Raids

1. Mass Arrests in Six States
2. Singled Out by Skin Color
3. The Investigation
4. The Union's Response
5. Why Now?

Immigration News Briefs is a weekly supplement to Weekly News Update on the Americas, published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012; tel 212-674-9499; fax 212-674-9139; wnu@igc.org. INB is also distributed free via email; see below or contact nicajg@panix.com for info. You may reprint or distribute items from INB, but please credit us and tell people how to subscribe.

*1. Mass Arrests in Six States

On Dec. 12, some 1,000 US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out simultaneous dawn
raids at six meat processing plants in six states and arrested
a total of 1,282 immigrant workers, most of them Latin
American. (AP 12/12/06, 12/14/06; ICE News Release
12/13/06) The raids took place on a day celebrated by
Mexican Catholics as a day of action honoring the Virgin of
Guadalupe. Many of the arrested workers had attended an
early Mass before their shifts to celebrate the day. (Rocky
Mountain News (Denver) 12/13/06)

The sweep, which ICE dubbed "Operation Wagon Train,"
targeted plants owned by Swift & Co. in Greeley, Colorado;
Grand Island, Nebraska; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah;
Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minnesota. Five of
the six raided facilities are unionized; only the one in Hyrum
is not. (AP 12/12/06; ICE News Release 12/13/06)

ICE promoted the raids as a crackdown on identity theft,
alleging that workers had used the stolen identities of US
citizens and lawful residents to get jobs at Swift. Yet all
1,282 workers arrested were charged with administrative
immigration violations, and only 65 were also charged with
criminal violations including illegal re-entry after
deportation, identity theft or forgery. ICE declined to say
how many workers faced charges specifically relating to
identity theft. (Denver Post 12/14/06; ICE News Release
12/13/06) The arrested workers were from Mexico,
Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Laos, Sudan,
Ethiopia and other countries of origin which had not yet been
identified as ICE was still processing the detained workers.
The investigation is ongoing. (ICE News Release 12/13/06)

No civil or criminal charges have been filed against Swift or
any current employees. Swift had been participating since
1997 in the Basic Pilot worker authorization program, under
which businesses check the legal work status of new
employees against government databases. Swift said it
believes the raids "violate the agreements associated with the
company's participation over the past 10 years in the federal
government's Basic Pilot worker authorization program and
raise serious questions as to the government's possible
violation of individual workers' civil rights." (AP 12/12/06;
ICE News Release 12/13/06)

Swift & Company, founded in 1855, is the third largest fresh
meat processor in the US, behind Tyson Foods and Cargill
Meat Solutions, with sales of $9 billion a year. Once the
meat-processing business of agriculture giant ConAgra,
Swift is now indirectly owned through various holding
companies. (AP 12/12/06)

In Grand Island, Nebraska, Police Chief Steve Lamken
refused to allow his personnel to take part in the sweep.
"This is our community," Lamken said. "When this is all
over, we're still here taking care of our community. And if
I have a significant part of my population that's fearful and
won't call us, then that's not good for our community."
(Rocky Mountain News 12/13/06)

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who had reviewed
evidence beforehand, believed the Dec. 12 operation was
supposed to take place on Dec. 11, but speculated that ICE
officials put the operation off a day after learning that
Japanese officials were touring the Greeley plant on Dec. 11.
The foreign officials were there to review Swift's response
to having recently shipped beef to Japan without proper
documentation. (RMN 12/13/06)

*2. Singled Out by Skin Color

"Maria," an employee at the Hyrum plant who is a US-born
citizen, said she was singled out for questioning along with
other brown-skinned Latinos during the raid, while people
with lighter skin were plucked out of line and given blue
bracelets to indicate they were legal workers. "I was in the
line because of the color of my skin," she said. (Salt Lake
Tribune 12/13/06) Attorneys who spoke with witnesses to the
raid in Minnesota were also told that white workers who said
they were US citizens were directed away immediately,
while people with brown skin who said they were US
citizens were required to prove it. (Message from Minnesota
immigration attorneys 12/13/06, posted on Detention Watch
Network list)

Confianza, an association of Hispanic ministers, said in a
statement: "[i]t is deplorable that Americans who happen to
have brown skin and work at Swift were also 'rounded up
with the idea to sort it out later,' as one local community
leader described the situation." (RMN 12/13/06)

*3. The Investigation

In a federal investigation that began in February of this year,
ICE claims to have uncovered large numbers of unauthorized
immigrants who may have used the Social Security numbers
of lawful US citizens or residents to get jobs at Swift. "We
have been investigating a large identity theft scheme that has
victimized many US citizens and lawful residents," ICE
spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez said at the plant in Greeley.
"The significance is that we're serious about work site
enforcement and that those who steal identities of US citizens
will not escape enforcement," ICE chief Julie L. Myers told
reporters in Washington. (AP 12/12/06)

Sam Rovit, chief executive of Swift, said the company learned of the ICE investigation in March, when ICE subpoenaed information on all the employees working at Swift's Marshalltown plant. But Rovit said the company was "rebuffed repeatedly" in its offers to cooperate. "We have complied with every law that is out there on the books," Rovit said in an interview. (New York Times 12/13/06; RMN 12/13/06) "Current law limits an employer's ability to scrutinize the background and identity of new hires, and--as Swift learned first-hand--employers can, in fact, be punished for probing too deeply into applicants' backgrounds," the company said in a statement. In 2000, the Justice Department's Special Counsel for Unfair Immigration- Related Employment Practices filed a complaint against Swift, alleging that the company's Worthington, Minnesota plant engaged in a "pattern and practice" of discrimination by more heavily scrutinizing the documents of job applicants of were believed to look or sound "foreign." The department sought civil damages of $2.5 million. After two years, Swift settled the claim for about $200,000. (AP 12/12/06)

"At no time did the government, with us, try to communicate
the nature of their concerns," said Sean McHugh, Swift vice
president of investor relations. "We tried to reach out to
them and say, 'Look, if you're concerned, if you're trying
to identify or remove or arrest criminals, let us know and
we'll bring them to you.'" In September, the agency granted
Swift a meeting, "but details were few and far between,"
McHugh said. "By mid-November, ICE informed us they
intended, with or without our cooperation, to effectively shut
down six of our plants," McHugh said. (RMN 12/13/06)
Swift then fought unsuccessfully in a Texas court for a
preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement action.
(RMN 12/14/06) "The company ... did attempt to stop us
from doing these raids by going to court," said Chertoff.

Swift also conducted its own probe of suspect employees,
and more than 400 were fired, quit or fled, said Chertoff.
"We don't know where those 400 workers are," Chertoff
complained. (Denver Post 12/14/06) "We do wish they
would have talked to us before deciding to terminate those
individuals," ICE chief Myers said at a news conference.
"We regretted they took that action."

Swift said ICE gave the company the go-ahead to question
workers' documentation. "At no time has anyone from ICE
told any Swift official that they cannot take action against
employees who Swift determines, on its own, are
unauthorized," ICE Investigations Director Marcy Forman
wrote to company attorneys in an October letter supplied by
Swift. "We started interviewing people and said, 'Are you
really who you say you are?'" said Don Wiseman, general
counsel at Swift. "A whole bunch of them said, 'No, I'm
really not' and they voluntarily quit." Swift sent others to the
Social Security office to get letters verifying their status.
"Most of those people didn't come back, either," Wiseman
said. (RMN 12/14/06)

Myers and Chertoff said Swift generally cooperated in the
months leading up to raids. "We asked the company not to
reveal we were coming in advance," Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff said. (RMN 12/14/06)

*4. The Union's Response

On Dec. 13, officials of the United Food and Commercial
Workers Union (UFCW), which represents workers at five
of the six raided plants, filed a petition for a writ of habeas
corpus in Denver's US District Court, asserting that ICE had
violated the constitutional rights of the workers it detained.
The union sought to have the workers released or be able to
communicate with its attorneys. US District Judge John Kane
ordered ICE to respond by Dec. 18. (Denver Post 12/14/06)
The filing claims that those arrested are being denied access
to lawyers and that their whereabouts are unknown. (AP
12/14/06) "Our members are on buses and we don't know
where they are," said UFCW spokesperson Jill Cashen.
"Children have been left stranded. Parents have not been
given the opportunities to make arrangements. We are
struggling to reunite families." (Chicago Tribune 12/13/06)

"Essentially, the agents stormed the plants, many of them in
riot gear, in an effort designed to terrorize the work force,"
said Mark Lauritsen, director of a UFCW division.
Lauritsen, in a statement, described Swift workers as
"innocent victims in an immigration system that has been
hijacked by corporations for the purpose of importing an
exploitable work force." The union said it has advised all the
detained workers to exercise their right to have an attorney
and to remain silent until they confer with legal counsel.
(RMN 12/13/06)

*5. Why Now?

Labor analyst David Bacon said that with the latest raids,
"the administration is sending a message to employers, and
especially to unions: Support its program for immigration
reform, or face a new wave of raids." Bacon noted that in
the period leading up to the passage of the 1986 immigration
law (which included an amnesty), immigration agents used
high-profile workplace raids "to produce public support for
the employer sanctions provision later written into the 1986
immigration law." ("Justice Deported," David Bacon, The
American Prospect (web edition) 12/14/06)

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Dec.
13 that the raids were "a way of emphasizing the fact that
getting this issue of comprehensive immigration reform right
is ultimately going to save everybody a big headache."
Chertoff said the government hopes the Swift operation will
spur Congress to act on a comprehensive strategy for
immigration reform that includes a temporary-worker
program and safeguards against the use of forged or stolen
identities. Chertoff also said he hoped the raids would "be a
deterrent to illegal workers, [and] cause them to say that,
you know, this happened in Swift, it could easily happen
somewhere else,' Chertoff said. "In fact, I'm pretty much
going to guarantee we're going to keep bringing these
cases." (Denver Post 12/14/06)

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