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)

A pregnancy journal

Getting pregnant and then being pregnant has been an incredible journey. I have read and learnt a lot, visited quite a few doctors and now a midwife. I want to share what I have learnt, so that it can help other women challenge the norm and look within, for their own wisdom to come to the fore.

Getting pregnant was not as easy as I had expected. It was hard work to figure out when in my cycle I was fertile and then doing something about it. I read Toni Weschler’s wonderful book, Taking Charge of your Fertility. This book deals with natural birth control and pregnancy achievement. I learnt about checking cervical fluid, taking my temperature every morning and then recording the thermal shift that occurred to show that ovulation had happened. Also checking the cervical position that changes to a high, open and soft position to indicate fertility. I also bought a kit that you pee on in the morning and it tells you when you are about to be most fertile.
There is a great website called fertiltyfriend.com, where you can enter all the information and it presents it in a graph format, that allows charting your cycle.

Once the long awaited pregnancy happened, I started looking for a doctor that I could trust. Eight and half months later, I think I might have found someone! The two South Asian doctors that I visited, were very interested in my business. Apparently pregnancy is big business and doctors get paid $15,000 per patient. Usually the more complications and interventions earn the doctors more money. Also they are very scared of being sued, so they like a lot of testing done on patients. I am going to be over 35 at the time of giving birth, so my first doctor recommended genetic counseling, followed by C.V.S, Blood tests and Amniocentesis. I did not do either C.V.S. or Aminocentesis due to their invasiveness. The doctors were also against pregnant women, reading books. For me if a doctor tells me not to read about my condition, it makes me wonder what information the doctor is trying to conceal. Power is knowledge and the more knowledge one has, the more one can challenge wrong diagnosis and unnecessary interventions.

Naomi Wolf’s book Misconceptions was an eye opener about the American medical establishment, and how powerless pregnant women are made to feel by doctors and nurses in a hospital setting.

Ina May Gaskin’s book, Guide to Childbirth, was how I wanted my child to be born. She is a community midwife that has set up a farm, in Southern Tennessee, where women give birth vaginally. Birth is seen as ecstatic and strengthening. The women know that it is better to keep their senses alive if they are to experience the true wisdom and power that labor and birth have to offer.

“Birthing is so integral with life-so common-that choices surrounding it often get relegated to chance. We tend to go along with what everyone else is doing, assuming that must be for the best. Living in a technological society we tend to think that the best of everything is the most expensive kind available. This is generally true, whether we are taking about cell phones, cameras, cars or computers. When it comes to birth, it ain’t necessarily so.”

But my search continued I was in India during my second trimester and visited a doctor. She was OK. But after, I heard she had given an acquaintance an epistomy that required a long recovery time, i was not so keen. I visited a fancy hospital “the cradle” that looked like a five star hotel but lacked what I was looking for, which was a natural approach to childbirth. In Delhi, I found a book by Diane Smith, Birthing with Dignity. This book was a handbook for training community level midwives (Dais) and health workers, published by Jagori. Diane Smith is a midwife based in Canada. Smith talks about her experience.

“Talking with these women (Indian) about childbirth was an energizing initiation into my presentation of “natural childbirth”, a unique perspective that had emerged from the women’s movement in North America. In the course of the interaction I recognized that women want the opportunity to birth in peace, with the comfort of their traditional cultural wisdom, and be respected for their power in giving birth. It was also obvious that ..times are changing and medical institutions and professionals are beginning to assume superiority over traditional wisdom, the work of the Dai, and a women’s innate ability to give birth naturally.”

I know their can be a lot of problems during pregnancy, like a cervix that does not close, requiring a stitch to keep the baby in, or placenta previa or gestational diabetes or repeated miscarriages or just not being able to get pregnant, a.k.a. undiagnosed infertility. And I highly recommend medical interventions that can help resolve those issues. Also women without partners or lesbians and gays that want children, I would wish for all for them to take advantage of the best of medical treatments, like I.U.I or I.V.F or surrogate pregnancy or adoptions, to be able to give birth if they really want too. In my own case, if I need interventions, like pain medications or emergency c-section I am open to it as along as I, feel that it is necessary for having a healthy baby.

Ann Tyler’s book, Digging to America, is an interesting novel about Americans adopting Korean babies.

At the seventh month I asked my Ob-gyn if I should be taking Lamaze classes. She was dismissive and said it was a waste of money, since insurance did not cover it, and all her patients came asking her the same three questions. Doctor will you put me on an I.V., Yes of course she responded. Also the doctor would give her patients an enema before giving birth, so that they would not be embarrassed when shit came instead of the baby, and put eye drops into the baby's eyes to protect against infections within a mother's birth canal.

I decided to take a hospital visit to see what the maternity ward was like. At the visit we first visited a birthing center on the 11th floor, that was homely, comfortable with a double bed, large chairs for the family to sit on. And a Jacuzzi that made me want to jump right in. The birthing center was where, women that did not want pain medications like epidurals could give birth. There were only a couple of doctors and midwives who believed in the birthing center births. I took the list home and realized it was still not too late. We also saw the 12th floor which had the triage, where you first went and a nurse checked to see if you were dilated enough. If you were not you are sent home, if you are, you go to a labor and delivery room, after giving birth you go to a post-partum room to recover. There is a nursery where the mothers can send their newborns if they want to rest.

I called some of the midwives and doctors from the list of the birthing center and went and visited them. I decided on a practise that had a doctor and midwife. The midwife delivers in the birthing center. She asked me to take enriched Lamaze classes. I found the four classes quite useful, with a lot of information on what actually happens in the hospital, how to determine if it is time to go to the hospital, natural pain control, moving around during labor and breathing through contractions.

The goal of Lamaze is to remove the fear, tension and pain around childbirth. The idea is to use Psychophroplaxis as an aid to pain relief instead of medications.

1. Relax
2. Knowledge
3. Imagery
4. Postition
5. Concentration
6. Massage
7. Focal point
8. Breathing
9. Meditation

A baby is ready to come out between the 38th and 42nd week of pregnancy. You need to go to the hospital when you have five contractions, lasting for a minute, within an hour.

Lamaze institute for normal birth advocates the followers practices

1. Labor begins on its own
2. Freedom of movement throughout labor
3. Continuous labor support
4. No routine interventions
5. Non-supine (e.g. Upright or side-lying) positions for birth
6. No separation of mother and baby after birth

There are four stages of labor

Early Labor which can last for a few days to a few hours. The woman is relatively comfortable. Dilation is 3-4 centimeters. Pinkish vaginal discharge increases. Its best to stay home at this stage. Once the contractions became stronger so that you cannot talk yourself through them use relaxation and breathing exercises.

Active Labor contractions continue to became longer and stronger, until they are 3 minutes apart and last a minute or more. Time from two to six hours, cervix effaces and dilates to about 8 centimeters. Women get serious and focused.

Transition the cervix finishes dilating and begins to transition from opening to pushing. The phase lasts an hour with contractions powerful and efficient.

Birth or pushing- the baby makes its way down through the pelvis and the birth canal. This stage can last from 15 min to several hours. Most women get an urge to bear down. The urge to push gets stronger as the baby descends. Just before the baby is born you may feel a burning, stinging stretching sensation at the vaginal opening. A sign that you are almost there.

Signs of Labor

Obvious
1.water breaks, you need to call the care provider and let them know the time, amount, color and odor. It should be clear, with no odor. A smell is not good.
2. Bloody show
3. Mucous plug

Not so obvious signs are low backache, nausea, diarrhoea, excessive heat, excessive cold, nesting

Natural methods of inducing labor

1. Castor oil 2 tablespoons. It works as a laxative to get the systems going.
2. Acupressure- massage therapists know where on the foot they can massage so labor can be started.
3. Nipple stimulation
4. Sex

I will keep adding to this information as soon as I learn more. I hope it is helpful to all those that are pregnant or plan to became pregnant soon.

Sex Lit

Interesting article in Alternet about the proliferation of literature about strippers and colleges teaching Porn studies.

In this latter-day phase of stripper chic, academics such as Barton churn out doctoral dissertations about peep shows and shimmering poles. Middle-class 20-something smarties write memoirs about ditching drone jobs in cafes and offices for "the penis gallery," to quote prep-school grad Cody, whose Pussy Ranch blog led to a six-figure advance for Candy Girl, and who is now a millionaire screenwriter working on a project with Steven Spielberg. Ex-ballerina Barton toyed with but finally tossed the idea of "doing participant observation' by stripping, herself: "I had a 'good' body," reflects the author, who teaches at Kentucky's hilariously named but perfectly ordinary Morehead State. Married hipster Cody confides: "I desperately wanted to be a stripper."

Wine and Yoga anyone?

The NYT has an article on Yoga retreats combining wine drinking as part of them. I don't think it works for me, but i guess as long as people are moderate in drinking it is ok.

knowing the enemy: the anthropology of insurgency

George Packer has written an interesting article in the New Yorker on the role of social scientists to help redefine the war on terror.

David Kilcullen, an Australian who has a doctorate in political anthropology from the University of New South Wales, wrote on the Darul Islam conflict, a Muslim insurgency movement in Indonesia during the 1950's and 1960's. During his study he saw similar behavior and similar problems in an Islamic insurgency in West Java and a Christian separatist insurgency in East Timor. He felt the problem was not Islam but human social networks and the way that they operate. People get pulled into insurgency through friends, family and associates.

Kilcullen noted after watching Bin Laden tapes, that Bin Laden was creating an implicit association between himself and the Democratic party, for he believed that Bush’s strategy on the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance. “Al Qaeda’s core leadership had became a propaganda hub. If Bin laden didnt have access to global media, satellite communications, and the internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave.”

Countering counterinsurgency requires rethinking the current thinking about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kilcullen redefined the war on terror as a “global counterinsurgency”. Knowing the turf, which includes the people, topography, economy, history and culture of the area is essential.Also there is a need to “disaggregate insurgencies: finding ways to address local grievances in Pakistan’s tribal areas or along the Thai and Malay border, so they are not included onto the global jihad map.

Influencing perceptions is what wins or loses war these days. The international information environment is critical to the success of America’s mission. Montgomery McFate is an anthropologist and is helping the defense department understand the importance of a cultural knowledge.

She wrote in the Joint force Quarterly, “once the Sunni Bathists lost their prestigious jobs, were humiliated in the conflict, and got frozen out through Bathification, the tribal network became the backbone of the insurgency. The tribal insurgency is a direct result of our misunderstanding of Iraqi culture.” Also the U.S. lost their information battle because they focused on broadcast media, but this was not so useful as most Iraqi’s got their news from rumors in coffee shops.

A counter insurgency strategy according to Kilcullen consists of a resistance to the message, co-opt or assist people that have a counter message, and consider supporting or creating rival organizations. The key according to him is providing a social context for individuals to chose ways other than jihad.

The frightening development in this article is the inclusion of academics like anthropologists into serving the interests of the military. Cultural knowledge is crucial to understand the dynamics of how people and societies function. But to use that knowledge against the same people, that have trusted the anthropologist and given them information about themselves is unethical.

Jain Festival

Great photographs of a Jain festival in South India.

Isabel Allende on Augusto Pinochet

Isabel Allende writes in the Independent about the death of Augusto Pinochet of Chile. It seems she was related to him as well as Salvator Allende.