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Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:28 pm Post subject:
NCBR Article
Nation's legal-worker verification system flops
By Steve Porter
September 26, 2008 --
When it comes to verifying a worker's legal status to be hired for a job in the United States, one thing seems to be increasingly clear: the current system is not working.
Recent immigration raids conducted in Iowa and Mississippi - and the raid on the Swift slaughter-and-packing facility in Greeley in December 2006 - have shown that illegal workers are continuing to be hired under the federal government's E-Verify program that began 11 years ago as the Basic Pilot Program.
Nearly 400 immigrant workers were arrested in May at a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. Owners of Agriprocessors Inc. were charged earlier this month with more than 9,000 misdemeanors for allegedly employing 32 illegal-immigrant children under 18, including seven who were younger than 16. The charges allege the children were handling dangerous equipment and exposed to toxic chemicals.
"All of the named defendants possessed shared knowledge that Agriprocessors employed undocumented aliens," the arrest affidavit said, according to a story by the Associated Press.
Forgery encouraged
The Iowa Attorney General's office said the company encouraged job applicants to submit forged identification documents that contained false information about their resident status, age and identity, according to the report.
While Iowa does not allow the hiring of illegal workers, it is a state that does not require the use of the federal E-Verify program, and some might argue that if it did have E-Verify the situation might not have happened. Currently, E-Verify is largely a voluntary program that is supposed to match documents submitted by new hires against federal Social Security and other data bases.
But Mississippi is one of three states - along with Arizona and South Carolina - that requires employers to use E-Verify. Howard Industries, an electrical products manufacturer in Laurel, Miss., was raided in August by U.S. Immigration and Customs officials and 595 workers were arrested and charged with identity theft and fraudulent use of Social Security numbers.
Howard Industries had been using E-Verify for more than a year.
And Northern Colorado was hit with its own ICE raid in December 2006 when nearly 1,200 workers at the Swift plant in Greeley were arrested on identity theft charges. Swift was then using and continues to use E-Verify to check its new hires.
Colorado, like Iowa and most other states, has taken its own approach in trying to make sure employers don't hire illegal workers. In July 2006, Gov. Bill Owens signed House Bill 1017, which requires employers to comply with federal employment verification requirements or face fines of up to $25,000. However, the measure did not specify using the E-Verify program.
Illinois example
One state that has gone very much its own way is Illinois. In 2007, the Illinois legislature amended the state's Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act to prohibit employers from enrolling in Basic Pilot/E-Verify "until the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security databases are able to make a determination on 99 percent of the tentative non-confirmation notices issued to employers within three days."
The law was supposed to take effect on Jan. 1 of this year but the Department of Homeland Security filed a lawsuit against the state of Illinois to block it. The law is still on hold as legal proceedings go on.
"The status of the E-Verify case is presently stayed awaiting pending (federal) legislation," said Natalie Bauer, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Attorney General's office. "The state has agreed not to enforce that particular part of the law until there is a resolution of the case."
Supporters of the Illinois law were responding to criticisms of Basic Pilot/E-Verify that claim the system is seriously flawed because it sometimes fails to correctly match Social Security numbers or often isn't able to spot stolen numbers.
Those criticisms seem to be valid, given the large numbers of illegal workers who continue to find jobs in states and companies using the still-mostly-voluntary E-Verify system and even in states - like Mississippi - where it is mandatory.
Federal mandate
But still the federal government - through the Department of Homeland Security and the strong support of President George Bush - continues to push for increased use of E-Verify as the answer to the nation's illegal worker problem. Bush signed an executive order on June 6 requiring all federal contractors to use E-Verify.
In July, an amendment to the FY 2009 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill was added to extend E-Verify past its Nov. 30, 2008 expiration date. The program has not yet been officially renewed.
But Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security secretary, continues to claim that E-Verify is the best way to stem the flow of illegal workers - and possible terrorists - from illegally obtaining work in America and undermining the nation's immigration system and its homeland security.
"Congress has repeatedly acknowledged that rampant document and identity fraud has significantly undermined the existing system for stopping illegal workers from getting jobs, and E-Verify is the best available way for employers to ensure their workforce is legally authorized to work," Chertoff said in a press release.
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:02 am Post subject:
Activists push for amnesty in MS raid
Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 9/28/2008 3:00:00 AM
A Mississippi-based immigration reform activist says it's absurd that a group of illegal immigration supporters are staging a protest against recent federal immigration raids aimed at enforcing the rule of law.
On August 25, federal agents conducted a raid at the Howard Industries transformer plant in Laurel, Mississippi, where nearly 600 illegal aliens were detained, and some processed for removal from the U.S. The raid was the largest of its kind in U.S. history and created uproar among the pro-illegal alien advocates, who are staging a Sunday protest during a Hispanic festival in the Gulf Coast city of Biloxi.
Organizers claim the protest is part of a nationwide movement to take a stand in favor of "humane immigration reform," but Dr. Rodney Hunt of the Mississippi Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement believes what they want is amnesty.
"It's disingenuous to talk about immigration reform," Hunt contends. "True immigration reform, I think, is making sure our laws are a benefit to United States citizens -- and amnesty is a not a benefit to our citizens."
Hunt adds that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are protecting the rights of American citizens and legal residents when they conduct these raids. "It's against the law in the United States to have employment if you're not legally qualified to be employed here," he explains. "You have to have a legal work visa to have employment in the United States."
According to Hunt, the pro-illegal alien rally will ultimately fail. "A couple of years ago when they had the mass rallies demanding amnesty, I think it rallied the American citizens against the idea of amnesty," he says. "It brought it to the forefront, and it reminded them that these people came here illegally. It reminded them that they were not here to assimilate into our culture."
According to Hunt, the pro-illegal alien rally will ultimately fail. "A couple of years ago when they had the mass rallies demanding amnesty, I think it rallied the American citizens against the idea of amnesty," he says. "It brought it to the forefront, and it reminded them that these people came here illegally. It reminded them that they were not here to assimilate into our culture."
This voice of reason is SO refreshing! Just goes to show how weak our opposition is... _________________ It's immoral to vote for any candidate who is not going to uphold the fundamental tenets of our Constitution.
A variety of job opportunities are available at Howard Industries, from unskilled laborers to highly trained engineers. Some of the job opportunities that become available are:
Manufacturing Workers (All Divisions)
Electrical Engineers (Computer, Transformer, Ballast Divisions)
Mechanical Engineers (Transformer Division)
Truck Drivers (Transportation Division)
Hardware and Software Engineers (Computer Division)
Sales (Computer Division)
Technical Service (Computer Division)
Some of the many benefits currently offered by Howard Industries are:
Medical and Dental Insurance
Life and Disability Insurance
Paid Holidays
Paid Vacations
401k Retirement Plan
Howard Industries is an equal opportunity employer. Howard Industries complies with all Federal and State laws governing labor. The company has developed an Affirmative Action Program to ensure equal employment opportunity.
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:56 pm Post subject:
Statement of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on the Immigration Raid at Howard Industries
Posted : Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:02:22 GMT
Author : International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Category : Press Release
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LAUREL, Miss., Oct. 8 IBEW-Howard-statement
LAUREL, Miss., Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The massive August 25th raid by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Howard Industries in Laurel, Mississippi, removed nearly 500 immigrant workers from Howard Industries -- mostly from Mexico and Central America, all suspected of being undocumented -- to a detention center in Jena, La. As the elected bargaining representative of more than 2,000 workers at the company, the IBEW carefully reviewed the facts as best we can determine before issuing any public statement.
Our union first won a representation vote at Howard Industries in 1974 after a difficult organizing campaign. The company has never accepted the IBEW as a working partner, and the relationship has never been positive.
Since the beginning of August -- when our last collective bargaining agreement expired -- our union has been in negotiations with Howard Industries on a new agreement.
Long before the raid, some IBEW Local 1317 representatives at Howard Industries became aware that many Spanish-speaking workers were being paid wages far below the rates that were paid to our members under provisions of our labor agreement. And the numbers don't tell the story of people going to work every day but living in squalor. Our representatives filed grievances alleging that the company was undermining our labor agreement by assigning our work in its transformer operations to satellite facilities at a lower wage scale with lesser benefits.
Protecting wage standards is part and parcel of why workers, mostly African-American and white, at Howard Industries originally voted for the union. So was protecting safety on the job. In June, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it intended to fine the company $123,000 for 36 violations of health and safety regulations at one plant and another $41,000 at another.
In a right-to-work state, where union membership is voluntary, unions' sole method for maintaining bargaining strength is by constantly organizing to achieve majority status. So last year, knowing that contract negotiations were coming up, the IBEW assigned an organizer to reach out to Spanish-speaking workers about joining the IBEW. Hundreds did so with the understanding that becoming union members was the only way to win equitable pay and benefits with others in the plant. The IBEW believes that it is the employer's job to screen workers for legal immigration status. Once they are working in a bargaining unit, our duty is to represent them and work to sign them as members.
The vast majority of members who joined IBEW during our campaign are here legally. We are still trying to determine exactly how many of those detained are IBEW members.
The agency says that it knew about the presence of undocumented workers at Howard Industries two years ago. It is suspicious, then, that the raid took place as contract negotiations were drawing near, the perfect time to undercut the strength of the union. We also give credence to Mississippi State Rep. Jim Evans, who said that the raid was, in part, politically motivated, an election-year "attempt to drive a wedge between immigrants, African-Americans, whites and unions -- all those who want political change here."
Howard Industries is an influential employer in Mississippi. In 2002, the company received $31.5 million in subsidies to expand its operations. Despite these millions in subsidies, Howard maintained unsafe working conditions -- until being forced to change -- and deliberately pursued a policy of undercutting wage standards by hiring workers afraid to speak out because of their immigration status.
We are also aware of reports that information supplied by an unnamed "union member" led to the raid and that some workers cheered as the immigrants were taken into custody. We cannot confirm these as facts. What is clear, however, is that the mutual suspicion between native-born workers and immigrants is a tragic reminder that our immigration system is broken.
The IBEW has consistently supported an immigration policy based on respect for the law and the security of America's borders. We also deplore the cynical abuse of those who come to the United States, with or without documentation, by employers who exploit the fears and economic desperation of workers. Through substandard wages, unsafe working conditions and no benefits, employers reap the benefits of cheap labor while undercutting the standards of all workers. This drives a wedge between workers and limits their ability to stand together for change. Allowing such a system to continue is a stain on the American character that must be addressed by our national leaders.
The IBEW will continue to organize within workplaces where we have bargaining units, like Howard Industries, and at the operations of nonunion employers across the country.
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:19 pm Post subject:
After Raid, Laurel's Inter-Racial Bonds Still Strong
New America Media, News Feature, Marcelo Ballvé, Posted: Oct 13, 2008
Editor's Note: Nearly 600 people were detained in an immigration sweep in Laurel, Mississippi in August. New America Media's Marcelo Ballvé traveled to Laurel to find out how a small town has dealt with demographic change, and discovered proximity can give rise to both tensions and some surprising relationships.
LAUREL, Miss. -- Melvin Mack remembers the ugly days of Jim Crow when he witnessed the Ku Klux Klan march right past the downtown building where he now works as Laurel's first black mayor.
"At one time there was a lot of racism in and around the city of Laurel, a lot of shooting in black people's houses, a lot of cross burning, a lot of brutality," he says.
Mack, elected in 2005, is a symbol of Laurel's efforts to put this contentious history behind it. Of course, segregation's scars haven't healed completely. Poverty remains entrenched in the African-American community, pockets of prejudice persist. But Laurel has progressed enough so that when thousands of Latin American immigrants began arriving in the late 1990s, there was hardly any fuss at all.
Laurel Mayor Melvin Mack
"It didn't really raise any eyebrows," says Paul Barrett, publisher of The Review, a weekly newspaper in Laurel. "They were hard-working, they stayed to themselves."
The newcomers, mostly undocumented Mexicans and Panamanians, rented homes and trailers and renewed vacant storefronts and buildings with their restaurants, shops and churches. They found work in pine plantations, in wood and poultry-processing, and at Howard Industries, a homegrown billion-dollar electronics manufacturer that is the town's largest employer.
By all accounts, Laurel and surrounding Jones County had begun to piece together a civic coexistence, binding together black, white and immigrant.
Then, on Aug. 25, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rushed into a sprawling Howard Industries transformer plant just outside town, arresting 595 undocumented workers and exposing the extent to which local businesses had begun to tap immigrant labor. Some tensions that had built under the surface for a long while received a public airing -- especially worries about whether illegal immigrants were taking jobs from poor locals.
Not surprisingly, immigration restrictionists, lately on the rise in Mississippi, extolled the raid.
State Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Jones County Republican, had co-authored a strict law that passed earlier this year. Among other disincentives to illegal immigration, it made it a felony for an undocumented worker to take a job in Mississippi. Shortly after the raid, McDaniel appeared on local NBC affiliate WDAM-TV news. "There's no question in my mind that Americans will do those jobs," said McDaniel, who is white. "I think it's a good thing what the federal government did."
McDaniel cited high unemployment in Jones County as a reason for welcoming the raid, although Jones has the fourth lowest unemployment rate among Mississippi's 82 counties-- 6.5 percent, according to state government statistics from July.
The Howard Industries transformer plant
where the undocumented workers were detained.
The same news spot also showed scores of people, mostly African Americans, but whites, too, lined up at Howard Industries hiring offices. An anchor said that now, instead of illegal immigrants, "honest to goodness Americans" were seeking jobs. In on-air interviews, some applicants complained bitterly they'd formerly been shut out of Howard jobs because of an unstated preference for illegal immigrants who work for less wages.
But many in Laurel disputed that contention.
"The 'illegals are taking jobs away from American workers' chant doesn't ring true for me," wrote Barrett, the newspaper publisher, in an editorial. It may be true in a theoretical sense, but practically speaking, many of those doing the chanting aren't filling out the job applications."
According to several community leaders, Howard had been advertising jobs at all levels of pay for months, not only in local newspapers but also on a large billboard over Laurel's main drag, 16th Avenue, without achieving anything approaching what they described as a publicity-motivated post-raid response.
Rather than make it impossible for local workers to find jobs, what immigrants have done is removed some fluidity from the job market and made it more difficult for workers to exit and enter the labor force at will, switch jobs, and find work quickly, says Mack, the mayor.
"That did make people upset," he says, but he dismisses as "hot air" speculation of a deep rift dividing the black and Hispanic communities.
Other than occasional prickliness between races, the Aug. 25 raid laid bare what may turn out to be the newcomers' more lasting legacy: the surprisingly strong web of relationships that has woven immigrants deep into the town's fabric, and begun to change it.
Some signs of this interweaving are visible: the local Wal Mart stocks Jarritos-brand Mexican soft drinks and jars of mole sauce. Good old boys don't hesitate to recommend dinners at La Casita, one among the half-dozen or so Mexican restaurants that already outnumber barbecue spots. There's even a taco joint in Sawmill Square, the local mall.
Over at Tienda Las Americas, an Anglo customer comes in everyday to buy a Mexican brand of chocolate he's grown fond of.
Before the raid, the city sports complex hosted a 15-team soccer league, overwhelmingly composed of immigrants but with the participation of some locals.
The immigrant influx, more than just spurring economic renewal and injecting new diversity into Laurel, has clearly shaken up the town's old pattern of residential segregation. In recent years, white flight from Laurel to the surrounding county had turned Jones County into a demographic "donut," in the words of Barrett, the newspaper publisher.
Blacks concentrated in Laurel -- giving them a slight majority -- and whites bought up homes in the county's formerly rural areas.
The arriving immigrants, as many as 10,000 by some counts, moved into the vacuum left behind by whites. In Laurel, some immigrants moved into the historic district and its tree-canopied streets lined by Queen Anne, colonial revival and craftsman style homes built by early 20th Century lumber barons, mill owners and railroad entrepreneurs.
Local builders, sensing an opportunity, also erected new apartment residences for the newcomers, such as the sprawling La Joya Apartments, which locals dubbed "Hispanic City," located near the city's traditionally black south side. One defunct church near downtown Laurel, abandoned by its formerly white congregation, became Peniel Christian Church, with a mostly immigrant membership, but also including white and black worshippers, according to Pastor Roberto Velez.
Angelica Olmedo and
Magdelena Mina outside
the Catholic Church in Laurel
This year, Velez officiated at a marriage between a Hispanic immigrant woman and a Native American from the Choctaw Reservation in Sandersville, 11 miles to the north.
Trailer parks lining the access roads in and out of the city began to mix residents of all races.
Not surprisingly, among longtime Jones County residents, those who perhaps lived in closest contact with the newcomers were their landlords.
Harmon Sumrall, 65, the son of white sharecroppers, is now a property owner who rented out 10 rental homes, including apartments and trailers, to immigrant clients, who he says are the best tenants he's ever had.
Now, five of his units are empty. The tenants, even if they were not arrested, picked up and fled in fear afterward, leaving behind couches, frozen turkeys, kids' toys, cereal boxes, lawn ornaments and even DVD players.
"They were scared to death," says Sumrall, showing a reporter the inside of one abandoned trailer.
He's forgiven a month's rent to five immigrant households in the hopes that with a little help they might get on their feet and stay.
"I hate to say 'aliens', they're not aliens," he says. "They're immigrants. I mean we're all immigrants, we're all from somewhere .... If they get rid of all the illegal immigrants in Jones County, Jones County is going to suffer economically."
Sumrall's sympathy isn't just self-interest. He and his wife Frankie, 62, have developed real ties with immigrant families. They sheltered them at their house during Hurricane Katrina, which peeled trailers' roofs off, they've let tenants use their pool, and they've shared birthdays and barbecues.
Then there's what immigrants did for them. Sumrall was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 1996, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma last year. Tenants and former tenants helped with odd jobs, forgave Sumrall's lapses, and fetched glasses of water when they spotted him on his tractor-mower in the sun.
"They knew I was sick, and they were loyal, just good, loyal people," says Sumrall.
Bill Smith, 48, would agree. A year ago, he bought a motel and trailer park near to Sumrall's with money he made as a major distributor of immigrants' long distance phone cards.
Bill Smith at his mobile home park
outside Laurel, Miss.
In 2004, he married an undocumented Mexican woman. Now, they're parents to a two-year-old, Smith speaks fluent Spanish, and he's also helping tenants by offering free rent for a month, two if need be.
"We're like a family," he says. "I've been in business with the Hispanics for 10 years and I do anything I can for them. I think that's at least fair, to help them out."
No doubt, a good number of people in Jones County believe Howard Industries and the unauthorized workers got what they deserved.
But what surprised Jason Niblett, editor of the daily Laurel Leader-Call, was that he received so few letters or calls celebrating the raid or denouncing the company's hiring of illegal immigrants. Most letters of that nature came in from out of town.
He attributes this in part to the popularity of the Howard family in Laurel, thanks to their charity giving and sponsorship of local sports teams and education (CEO Michael Howard declined to give an interview for this article). But Niblett also perceives a general tendency among all groups to get along in this working-class town, where he's lived since 2001.
"Compared to when I lived in San Antonio, I think it's better here" in terms of the tolerance toward Hispanics and the lack of divisions between groups, he says.
National media fanned the idea of a racial divide in Laurel when it reported that black workers at Howard Industries had clapped and cheered during the ICE raid, as Hispanic colleagues were arrested and led away.
Former employees say the transformer plant was by no means a multiracial workers' utopia, but also was not irredeemably polarized along race lines, or over union membership. (Some media reports speculated there was tension because of immigrants' relatively low union adherence amid a dispute with management over wages and benefits).
"I saw those people making fun of us," says Angelica Olmedo Paz, a Mexican immigrant who was arrested in the raid. "But for everyone that clapped, there were people who let us know they were with us, who cried with us, who didn't want us to leave."
Immigrant workers interviewed said that as far as they knew they did not receive less pay or benefits than U.S. citizen workers. Olmedo, 32, says that in part immigrant workers succeeded at the plant due to their willingness to work jobs with high turnover.
Her role at the plant was to replace workers in the production line who were absent or quit. Not surprisingly, she often found herself completing the most unpleasant tasks, such as pumping a lubricating oil into the transformers, which once full, had to be covered and pushed forward on metal rollers. The oil often spilled.
"No one liked being there," she says. "It was heavy, dirty work. I was always there, filling in for an Afro- or an Anglo-American, who'd last three weeks, a month at most. They'd leave, and again, I'd have to return until someone else came in."
Cory Welch, 22, who is half black and half Filipino, quit his job at Howard four days before the raid and now works at an athletic shoe store at the local mall, where the flexible hours allow him to attend accounting classes at the University of Southern Mississippi. He says many black workers resented the immigrants, but that on an individual level, they established friendships with the newcomers. "Some of them gave love to this person or that person," he says.
Olmedo, a single mother, was among the 106 detained workers, mostly female, who were released with an ankle bracelet device, so they can care for their children as they await court dates.
In order to save money, since she can't work any longer, Olmedo moved with her 12-year-old son into a trailer rented by a family that wasn't caught in the raid. Two of her friends, in her same predicament, did the same, and now they share a single room.
She shows a visitor a greetings card ("We miss you," reads one line) sent to her by an African-American ex-colleague, as well as an envelope on which at least a dozen workers, of all three ethnicities, scrawled the amount they were contributing to a cash collection organized on her behalf.
Learning she'd be living in a friends' home, they also gave her a cell phone as a gift.
The women with ankle bracelets realize they'll most likely have to leave the country, either voluntarily or via deportation. But even with their departure and that of many friends, they doubt the raid at Howard Industries represents a final chapter in Jones County's Hispanic community.
A good number of immigrants will hang on, and so will their children, many U.S.-born, who are already making their way through Jones County's increasingly ethnically diverse schools.
At the Laurel School District spelling bee earlier this year, a black student won first place, a Hispanic student second, and a white student third.
Interesting article. Thanks for the follow ups on this. _________________ It's immoral to vote for any candidate who is not going to uphold the fundamental tenets of our Constitution.
I don’t believe the issue is Hispanics the problem is ILLEGALS, ILLEGAL EMPLOYERS, the CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, and other SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS. Since the ILLEGALS’ infamous L.A. march displaying their foreign flags demanding their rights United States citizens are distrustful of any organized protest by the ILLEGALS OR for the ILLEGALS demanding anything. The situation will remain this way until our National Borders are secured and our Immigration Laws are Enforced. Our Elitist Politicians at the demand of their Elitist Political Contributors, Chamber of Commerce, and other Special Interest Groups will not allow the problem to be solved for fear of losing a dollar.
Just follow the money my friend. The "political contributors" will get their "cheap labor" and not have to furnish any "benefits" because all the "benefits" for the ILLEGALS will be “socialized” from the taxpayers enforced and implemented by "our Elitist Politicians" and their "men"(see Johnny Satan) while the “profits” will be privatized by the Elitist Contributors and their Special Interest Groups!!
The point is not if they are “good or hardworking people”, the point being they are here illegally! They do drive down our wages and take from the United States treasury for the benefit of the very few (ILLEGAL EMPLOYERS see ROBERT CAMP of Houston whose ILLEGAL EMPLOYEE murdered a Policeman because he did not want to be deported AGAIN) who privatize the profits for themselves at the expense of the vast majority.
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 6:59 am Post subject:
After Mississippi Immigration Raid, Pastor Tries To Calm Chaos
New America Media, News feature, Marcelo Ballvé, Posted: Oct 17, 2008
Editor's note: Pastor Roberto Velez, like other clergy with a growing flock of undocumented immigrants, became de-facto leader of an emerging Hispanic community in Mississippi after immigration agents raided a local transformer plant, arresting 595 workers. New America Media's Marcelo Ballvé traveled to Laurel to uncover how a small town is dealing with the raid's aftermath.
LAUREL, Miss. -- After four years building up a bilingual Pentecostal ministry in this diverse, working-class town, Pastor Roberto Velez thought he might rest on his accomplishments.
But Velez's real trial by fire began Aug. 25. That morning, in a raid on a local transformer plant owned by local manufacturer Howard Industries, federal agents arrested 595 immigrants. Perhaps a dozen of them were members of Velez's Peniel Christian Church.
"It was terrible," he recalls. "I received calls starting at 8:10 a.m. I was having breakfast. They said, 'Pastor! Pastor! Immigration got into Howard.' I rushed over there."
Velez, a relative newcomer to Laurel, was suddenly thrust into a role he never expected to have: crisis management.
Outside the plant's perimeter, Velez waited with anxious immigrant families in a steady rain, comforting workers' children and wives. As blue-jacketed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents milled around, Velez buttonholed them, demanding information on detainees' fates.
From that day forward, he would tend non-stop to his panic-stricken flock-- and to any other families who walked through Peniel's doors, in want after their breadwinners ended up imprisoned.
Velez's role is reminiscent of those assumed by other clergy in towns upended by large-scale ICE raids this year.
In Postville, Iowa, an elderly Catholic nun and retired priest stepped up to the front-lines, after the May arrest of nearly 400 illegal immigrants at a local meatpacking plant created what they described as "a man-made" disaster. In Greenville, South Carolina, Episcopal and Catholic clergy teamed up to create a safety-net for hundreds of affected families, after a raid Oct. 7 at a poultry plant.
It was a spontaneous ecumenical response at the grassroots. Independent of top-down organization, and unconcerned about the controversy surrounding illegal immigration, individual clergy like Velez took the initiative.
Though their work was accompanied by that of organized immigrant advocates, pro-bono lawyers and faith-based charities, they were motivated solely by extraordinary circumstances and their pastoral vocations.
A bespectacled Vietnam veteran who is more than 6 feet tall, Velez had recruited a robust membership of some 80 worshippers, including recently arrived Panamanian, Mexican, and Guatemalan immigrants, as well as some longtime black and white residents.
He also parlayed his pastoral experience into a job as a badge-toting local police chaplain and interpreter. Born in Puerto Rico and raised both in Brooklyn and the island, Velez, who voted twice for President George W. Bush, moves effortlessly between Spanish and English.
After the raid, he found himself at the center of a crisis.
Velez became not only a shoulder to cry on, and the dispenser of checks underwriting families' grocery and utility bills, but also the organizer of a significant food drive, as well as an all-around advisor and translator.
One day, this sometimes gruff pastor drove 11 relatives of arrestees 200 miles to a privately run federal detention center in Jena, La. Hundreds of former Howard Industries workers were being held there, awaiting court dates. (Beginning in September, some of the workers being held in Jena began to be deported, leading their families to leave as well.)
At first, prison authorities did not want the pastor inside. ICE detention facilities are notoriously strict regarding visits. After a back-and-forth, however, they relented, and he spent three hours with prisoners and their relatives.
"Everyone began weeping," recalls the 58-year-old pastor. "It's one thing to speak with (imprisoned) relatives on the phone, but to see them in person, hold them, that's another thing."
Between the new troubles and usual pastoral duties at Peniel, Velez hardly finds time to sleep. It isn't uncommon for him to be surprised by a nap as he catches his breath in a leather armchair in the church lobby.
"Naturally, I can stretch my resources only to the point I can manage," he says, "but I haven't been afraid to put myself out there, I haven't been afraid to speak up."
Velez's role as a spokesperson was particularly important in post-raid Laurel. Fearful of being misrepresented, the local Catholic Church refused to speak to press as it moved to aid immigrants with food and support, although in other places, such as Postville, the Catholic parish served as a nerve center for media relations.
Velez was particularly well positioned to help the immigrants because of his pre-existing role as a one-person linchpin between Laurel, its civic institutions, and the immigrant community.
"I work with Pastor Velez a lot," says Laurel Mayor Melvin Mack.
In fact, the mayor's only complaint regarding Velez is that he sometimes is too ambitious as immigrants' advocate, as when he requested Mack to issue a city driver's permit to undocumented immigrants.
"If I could issue drivers' licenses I'd be working for the state," says Mack. "He means well, he's a good fellow, but there's only so much I can do."
One mid-September evening at Velez's handsome brick-walled, blue-windowed church, a handful of parishioners are absorbed in prayer, one of them nearly prone over the shallow steps to the altar, while Christian music plays over loudspeakers.
Meanwhile, in his office, the pastor counsels two immigrants in their twenties, who work at a local sawmill. Mixing scripture with stern admonitions about responsibility and discipline, Velez trains them in leadership once weekly. In turn, the men spread God's word and anti-drug messages in their neighborhoods.
Conversation moves quickly to the raid, and one student worries aloud about his family's future after his father's arrest.
"There's total uncertainty, because we don't know where all this is going to lead," says Allan, 24, a Panamanian who only gave his first name since he entered the country illegally.
"I don't know how, but one day God will straighten out the situation," replies Velez.
Within the church's nave, the worshipers have ended their prayers and mill among the shiny wood pews. Most have been touched in one way or another by the ICE raid.
"I feel comforted here, supported," says 37-year-old Leonidas Santiago, who adds that her husband is being held in Jena.
She was arrested in the raid, but like 105 other detainees was released with an ankle bracelet monitoring device so she could care for her children, which in her case include a two-year-old U.S. citizen.
Velez doesn't deny that providing aid to immigrants dovetails with his proselytizing. As he helps, he's possibly attracting new faithful to his church, which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God.
However, Velez, says he feels compelled to help the immigrants mainly because he had the "privilege and blessing" to be born a U.S. citizen in Puerto Rico.
"They don't have what I had," he says.
Velez agrees the immigrants broke the law by entering the country illegally, but notes both current presidential candidates advocate some form of immigration reform. He blames the flawed system, not desperate migrants, for the problem.
Some locals complain he's aiding illegal immigration, Velez says.
"I tell them no, I'm not aiding and abetting. You can come to my church, you won't find anybody refuged here. The people who are here aren't wanted by the authorities. I'm helping because it's humanitarian, anyone might do it. Why not me? They're my people."
Outside the plant's perimeter, Velez waited with anxious immigrant families in a steady rain, comforting workers' children and wives.
It should have been stated "Velez waited with the anxious ILLEGALS' families.."
The Elitist Politicians, their Elitist Contributors. Big Labor, Big Religion, Chamber of Commerce, Special Interest Groups, and former Elitist presidents of Third World Countries consider United States citizens only as “units of labor” and the sooner we become a Third World Country the better for their “bottom line”! Our Elitist politicians and their Elitist political contributors will not be happy until they transform the United States into a Third World Country for most of our citizens while furnishing the Chamber of Commerce and all their Elitist Special Interest Groups with their supply of “cheap labor”. The elitist politicians are providing “benefits” to the ILLEGALS on the backs of United States citizens through our assets such as the Education System, Social Security, and Health Care not to mention our National Security!
Of course the people in the article are sympathetic to the illegals, they PROFITED from them DUH! From the old man who rented 10 houses to them - to the guy who bought his trailer with the profits he made from selling phone cards to the illegals.
They came illegally, they know they did, they got caught, they need to take RESPONSIBILITY for their criminal actions and get out! I don't have any sympathy for sniveling, whining criminals - get out! _________________ "If you love our nation, STOP illegal immigration!"
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 9:05 pm Post subject:
January 17, 2009 << Previous Next >> Post a Comment
Iowa: New indictment names ex-CEO of Agriprocessors
Rubashkin charged with money laundering and violating order
By The Associated Press
Photo by: Arturo Fernandez
XMIT: IADES201
DES MOINES (AP) -- Former Iowa kosher slaughterhouse manager Sholom Rubashkin has been named in a new 99-count federal indictment.
Rubashkin already is being held on federal charges of bank fraud, harboring illegal immigrants, document fraud and identity theft. The new indictment adds charges of money laundering and violating an order from the U.S. secretary of agriculture.
The indictment, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids, also names Rubashkin's company, Agriprocessors, and three co-defendants -- Brent Beebe, Hosam Amara and Zeev Levi -- who worked at the plant in Postville.
Rubashkin's attorney, Guy Cook, of Des Moines, said Friday that Rubashkin denies all charges contained in the indictment.
Charges against Rubashkin and others have followed a May 12 immigration raid at the plant that resulted in the arrest of 389 people. In addition to the federal charges against Rubashkin, Agriprocessors and top managers have been accused of violating state and federal laws dealing with child labor, wage requirements and safety rules. The Advertisement
company filed for bankruptcy protection and has been appointed a third-party overseer.
The indictment filed Thursday alleges that Rubashkin and the others conspired to hire illegal immigrants to work at the plant and helped them obtain false identification to hide their illegal work status.
Rubashkin and the others also are accused paying undocumented workers off the books and in cash to conceal their work at Agriprocessors. And in some cases, they were charged with placing workers on the payroll of a separate company, identified in court records as "H.E.," to hide the fact the workers were employed at Agriprocessors.
Rubashkin separately with the company is charged with 14 counts of bank fraud and 41 counts of false statements and reports to a bank.
He also was charged with 10 counts of money laundering, in which he is accused of conducting financial transactions involving proceeds from unlawful activity, knowing that the transactions were designed to conceal the source of the proceeds.
The charges allege the children were handling dangerous equipment and exposed to toxic chemicals.
While I feel bad for the under-aged illegals in servitude, what toxic chemicals? Are these approved or ignored by the FDA and other agencies with the responsibility of making sure we are not poisoned by simply going to the grocery store?
The sustenance of life of everyone in this country, legal or illegal, has been undermined by the bowing to the greed for profit by corporations.
Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:26 am Post subject: Former slaughterhouse CEO granted new bail hearing
Former slaughterhouse CEO granted new bail hearing
By NIGEL DUARA
Jan. 18, 2009, 6:57PM
IOWA CITY, Iowa — The former chief executive officer of the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant was granted a new hearing over whether he should remained jail as he awaits a trial on charges stemming from a large immigration raid.
Chief U.S. District Court judge Linda Reade said in an order last week she will hear testimony and consider written evidence at the new bail hearing Thursday for former Agriprocessors CEO Sholom Rubashkin.
He originally faced 12 counts of bank fraud, harboring illegal immigrants, document fraud and identity theft. He and three other men were named in a 99-count indictment last Thursday that added charges of money laundering and violating orders from the U.S. agriculture secretary.
The Postville plant was raided May 12 by immigration officials, leading to the arrests of 389 people.
Rubashkin has pleaded not guilty and is being held at the Dubuque County Jail. An earlier request to be released was rejected our of fears that he might flee to Israel.
Prosecutors also have alleged Rubashkin tried to tamper with evidence after earlier being released from jail on Oct. 30. He was returned to jail after being arrested on bank fraud allegations.
U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Bob Teig said the order for the new bail hearing was "not unexpected," but declined to comment further.
Rubashkin attorney Guy Cook said Saturday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that Rubashkin's defense team would be presenting witnesses to back up claims that Rubashkin was not a flight risk.
His defense also said the invocation of an Israeli emigration law, called the Law of Return, improperly clouded evidence against Rubashkin at an earlier bail hearing.
Along with the federal charges against Rubashkin, Agriprocessors and top managers have been accused of violating state and federal laws dealing with child labor, wage requirements and safety rules. The company has filed for bankruptcy protection.
If convicted, Rubashkin faces up to 30 years in prison and a minimum fine of $1 million on each of the bank fraud counts, the most serious of the charges.
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:19 am Post subject:
Rubashkin, Wecht cases put flight risk argument on trial, lawyers say
by Toby Tabachnick
Staff Writer1 hr 21 mins ago | 19 views | 0 | 0 | | A federal judge’s decision to deny bail to Agriprocessors’ former plant manager, Sholom Rubashkin, based in part on the finding that Rubashkin is a flight risk to Israel, may sound familiar to the Pittsburgh Jewish community. It was that same argument which was raised, but quickly dropped, by U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan in the trial of former Allegheny County Coroner, Dr. Cyril Wecht.
The argument is based on Israel’s “law of return,” which grants automatic citizenship to all Jews, and the idea that a Jewish criminal defendant could flee to Israel for protection, and then stay there indefinitely because of his dual citizenship. The United States would then be at the mercy of Israel to extradite the defendant back to American soil.
“It’s a specious argument, and absurd in my opinion,” said Wecht. “It’s clear to me, especially as an attorney, that it’s a lame excuse. Israel is not going to harbor a criminal just because he’s a Jew.”
Wecht said that if a Jewish defendant did try to find safe haven in Israel, “the Feds would get in touch with Israel before that person even arrived. Israel would not tell the United States of America to bug off.”
No other ethnic groups are subject to the same type of scrutiny when it comes to being a flight risk, Wecht said, pointing out that Italian Americans have not been denied bail based on the possibility that they could flee to Italy, and that African Americans are not deemed flight risks to their “home of origin in Africa.”
Calling the flight risk to Israel argument “blatantly anti-Semitic,” Wecht said that in his case, he was particularly appalled that such an accusation came from a U.S. Attorney.
“When this comes from a U.S. Attorney, it is a microscopic embodiment of the United States government. That’s the issue here.”
Bail can be denied in a criminal case if a judge finds either that a defendant poses a threat to the community, or is a flight risk, said Mark Rush, one of Wecht’s attorneys.
“It is a problem if the risk of flight is based on
one’s ethnicity,” Rush added.
“One would hope the court [in the Agriprocessors case] based its determination on something other than his [Rubashkin] being Jewish.”
Indeed, prosecutors had cited additional evidence supporting their flight risk argument against Rubashkin, including the discovery of a travel bag with thousands of dollars in cash, and travel documents for family members at Rubashkin’s home at the time of his arrest. They also noted that two other former Agriprocessors workers suspected of crimes are believed to have fled to Israel.
Many Jewish groups are concerned that the prosecutors’ invocation of the law of return as a basis for denying Rubashkin bail could set a dangerous precedent for all Jewish defendants.
A court considers a variety of factors when evaluating whether a particular defendant is a flight risk, and the law of return would only come into play if there was other evidence indicating one is likely to flee, said John Burkoff, professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, and author of 19 books and over 60 articles in the areas of criminal justice and legal ethics.
“This argument certainly could not be used against all Jews,” Burkoff said. “The fact that someone is Jewish and could gain citizenship in Israel should be relevant, but that alone will never be enough.
“What the prosecution has to show is a genuine risk of flight,” Burkoff continued. “The law of return can be relevant, but it is not dispositive. There must be something to convince the judge that this defendant was a genuine flight risk.”
Burkoff added, “The issue is not just could someone go to Israel to stay, but that they are likely to do that.”
Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 9823 Location: Santa Clarita Ca
Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:22 am Post subject:
Orthodox Rabbis Rally Around Rubashkin as He Sits in Jail
By Nathaniel Popper
Wed. Jan 21, 2009
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During past presidential transitions, when pardons were in the air, many Orthodox Jewish activists set their sights on securing a pardon for Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned since 1987 on charges of spying for Israel. This year, though, members of the Orthodox community had another jailed cause célèbre to focus on: Sholom Rubashkin.
Rubashkin, former CEO of the kosher meat company Agriprocessors, has been confined to a five-person Iowa jail cell since November, awaiting trial on charges of bank fraud and helping workers at his plant to falsify their immigration status.
Tales of the working conditions at the slaughterhouse that Rubashkin ran in Postville, Iowa, have earned him widespread criticism, including that of members of the Orthodox community. In recent months, however, people from a wide range of Orthodox groups have gone to great lengths to rally behind Rubashkin, who has been denied bail pending trial as an alleged flight risk. According to his lawyer, more than 30 people have offered to put up their homes as collateral if Rubashkin is released on bail. Multiple groups have been formed to raise money for Rubashkin’s legal costs. And a delegation of rabbis representing a cross-section of the Orthodox community traveled to Iowa to visit Rubashkin in jail and make a plea for his release.
“This is very unusual,” said Guy Cook, Rubashkin’s Des Moines-based lawyer. Cook, who has been in private practice for nearly 30 years, said he had never seen another client receive the sort of support that Rubashkin has been given.
“This is a community that really feels an obligation to defend one of their own,” Cook added.
Support for Rubashkin does not come only from the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community that Rubashkin grew up in. Among Rubashkin’s visitors have been leading rabbis representing the centrist Rabbinical Council of America, the country’s largest Orthodox rabbinical association, as well as the Orthodox Union, the main umbrella body for Modern Orthodox synagogues and the largest certifier of kosher food. Rabbi Moshe Elefant, who visited the jail as a representative of the O.U., said he was there not to say whether Rubashkin was guilty or innocent, but merely to support a fellow Jew.
“We were there to give him support as a Jew who is incarcerated,” Elefant told the Forward. “People I speak with don’t understand why the government is taking such a tough stand on him.”
Those who have visited him say that Rubashkin is confined to a cell with four other men in the Dubuque Law Enforcement Center. Rubashkin told the rabbis that he spends most of his days praying and studying Jewish texts. While the rabbis say that his wife has been able to bring him kosher food, he has been unable to visit with some of his 10 children, including an autistic son who has become a part of the legal wrangling in his case.
Rubashkin has a lengthy legal fight ahead of him. On January 15, federal prosecutors handed down a new 99-count indictment against Rubashkin and a few supervisors who worked under him at the Postville slaughterhouse. That slaughterhouse was the subject of a massive immigration raid in May 2008 in which nearly 400 workers were arrested. Rubashkin’s trial is set to begin this coming September. One rabbi who has been raising money for the case said that he had heard that Rubashkin’s legal fees will likely total between $2 million and $5 million.
For now, the immediate rallying cry has been the court’s decision to keep Rubashkin in jail rather than release him on bail. The prosecutors initially argued that if the judge allowed Rubashkin to be released, he might flee to Israel, where he would be granted immediate citizenship due to Israel’s Law of Return. Another defendant in the case, Hasam Amara, has already fled to Israel, according to the new indictment.
But the reference to the Law of Return has inflamed many of the activists on Rubashkin’s behalf.
“He’s sitting in there only because he’s Jewish,” said Rabbi Shimon Hecht, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi from Brooklyn who was in the delegation visiting Rubashkin in jail.
Several non-Orthodox Jewish organizations have written briefs supporting Rubashkin on this point, arguing that if courts used the Law of Return in this way it could lead them to deny any Jewish person bail.
But the magistrate judge overseeing the case has rejected Rubashkin’s appeals and said that his lawyers have put too much emphasis on the reference to the Law of Return. The magistrate judge, Jon Scoles, wrote that the primary reason Rubashkin was kept in jail was the thousands of dollars in cash and precious coins that government officials say they found at his home when he was arrested in November.
Rubashkin’s lawyers are disputing exactly what those officials found, but the rabbis supporting Rubashkin are hoping that by speaking up for him, they can convince the judge that Rubashkin would never flee. “The bottom line is if you look across the country, there are people who have done a heck of a lot worse things and have gone out on bail,” said Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice-president of the National Council of Young Israel, who organized the delegation of rabbis that visited Rubashkin. “Sholom Rubashkin has no funds. His family is here. He’s not going to run.”
While his Orthodox supporters say that Rubashkin has been treated unfairly, several people involved in the Agriprocessors case say that he has received far better treatment than many others caught up in the company’s problems. After the government’s raid of Agriprocessors in May, most of the 400 non-Jewish workers who were arrested were given six-month jail terms after hasty trials in which each public defender was representing nearly 20 workers.
Jewish Community Action, a social action group in nearby Minnesota, helped raise funds to assist the immigrant workers and their families. The executive director of that organization, Vic Rosenthal, said that during the drive to give the immigrant workers support, he never heard any interest from the same Orthodox leaders who are throwing their weight behind Rubashkin today.
“Had the Orthodox community, which had such an interest in Agriprocessors, been willing to say, ‘We’ll make lawyers or resources available for these workers,’ that would have sent a real message,” Rosenthal said.
As it is, Rosenthal said, the different handling of Rubashkin and the immigrant workers has been a “perversion of American justice.”
“You have one person who has resources and access to good attorneys, and who will get his day in court. And you have another group of people that gets railroaded through the legal system,” Rosenthal said.
Most of the Orthodox rabbis who are supporting Rubashkin and spoke to the Forward said that they had never considered providing support to the immigrant workers last year. But Rabbi Shea Hecht, a Chabad rabbi who helped establish a committee that seeks to spread awareness of Rubashkin’s case — and that has already given money for his legal defense — said he wished he had done more in the raid’s immediate aftermath.
“If I would have done more in May — to help the company and the 400 Guatemalans — maybe we wouldn’t be here now needing to form this committee,” Hecht said.
LAUREL, Miss. (AP) -- The work has always been stupefying and hard. Hour after hour standing on the line, soldering or welding or drilling in screws.
Even in today's nightmare economy, most people wouldn't want this daily grind that steals the soul in 12-hour shifts paying as little as $280 a week, before taxes.
But such labor prospers here in mostly rural Jones County, home to Laurel, where the area's biggest employer, Howard Industries, maintains a sprawling factory that builds electrical transformers and other big equipment behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
Assembly lines like these offer tenuous lifelines to those desperate enough to toil on them. And sometimes, competition for these jobs pits have-nots against have-nots.
For a long time, Howard workers were poor blacks and whites in this town of 18,000, where an estimated 30 percent of the population lives in poverty.
But in the past few years, immigrants poured across the Mexican border, eagerly applying for work on the Howard line and not complaining about long hours or menial labor.
A festering resentment began to take root in the hearts of some black and white residents, producing an odd alliance in a place that has seen decades of racism. Now, even the Ku Klux Klan has turned its hatred against Hispanics.
Many blacks and whites claimed Hispanics were taking over their city and taking away jobs by not complaining about safety issues in a factory that faced $193,000 in fines last year from federal inspectors citing dangerous working conditions.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency swept in last summer and staged the largest single workplace raid. When nearly 600 Hispanics were herded past black and white Howard employees, jeers and applause and wide grins erupted.
"Bye-bye," some trilled in falsetto, fingers wagging. "Go back where you came from."
The assembly line rattles on. But now mostly blacks work it, with a smattering of whites, for the same wages paid to Hispanics. The plant, which has been working without a union contract since August, is mired in bitter negotiations over higher pay and safety issues.
------
Workplace raids reached an all-time high in 2008 with 6,287 arrests -- a tenfold rise since 2003. After the 9-11 attacks, in the name of national security, the Bush administration announced it wanted to detain, and then deport, every illegal immigrant in America. Such a drastic change in immigration policy was necessary to safeguard the country against terrorists, said the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
But swooping down on low-paying jobs has yet to produce terrorism suspects. Asked if any of the raids had produced terror-related arrests, ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez replied, "Not to my knowledge."
Such raids have netted sweatshop workers in Massachusetts, kosher slaughterhouse employees in Iowa and federal courthouse janitors in Rhode Island.
But the biggest roundup -- 592 people arrested, mostly for the crime of illegally entering this country -- was here in Laurel.
Since then, 414 Hispanics have been deported; 23 have left voluntarily and 27 were released on bond pending immigration hearings. One remains incarcerated at a federal detention center in Jena, La. Nine were charged with identity theft for using false identification.
More than 100, mostly women with children, were released pending the outcome of their cases. They wade through a long, confusing current of immigration hearings that will determine their futures. Many fear venturing out, lest they receive withering glances in the Wal-Mart aimed at the electronic monitoring devices on their ankles.
Immigrant groups, religious leaders, and various Democrats have expressed hope that the raids will be curtailed under President Barack Obama. The immigrants in Laurel know this, and they hope Obama's promise of change applies to them.
"We just want to work," says Ismael Cabrera, a 37-year-old father of two, who paid a smuggler $2,000 to walk him across the desert into Arizona, then paid $1,000 more to get a ride to Laurel, where he first worked in a chicken slaughterhouse.
"It's not that we took the jobs from other people," he says in Spanish. "It's that they don't want to work them."
He waits on a deportation hearing and weeps at the prospect of going back to his hometown near Mexico City, where he made little money. His son, Cesar, has few memories of that place. He left when he was 6.
Now a sweet-faced boy of 13, Cesar respectfully interprets for his father in perfect English delivered with a Mississippi drawl.
Cesar is asked how he feels about going back to Mexico.
His gaze drops to his feet. His eyes brim with tears. He wipes his nose with the back of his wrist, sitting in Pentecostal church his family attends. "Bad," he manages to get out. "It would feel bad."
Cabrera wipes his own face with the sleeve of his shirt.
"Sometimes I ask myself if it was worth it to come here," he says in a voice just above a whisper.
------
Local 1317 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers had been making a special effort to sign up Hispanics, estimated by the union to be about 40 percent to 60 percent of the Howard work force. It had signed up about 150 before the raid, said the local's president, Clarence Larkin, who is African-American.
Those new members are now gone, and with them, Larkin said, went a budding sense of solidarity.
The turnover rate for non-Hispanics is 40 percent, he said. There was very little turnover among Hispanic workers, which deepened the divide between the groups.
"As long as you can keep people at odds with each other, that drives out the union," Larkin said. "It's divide and conquer. To be successful, you have to be united. And this made the union weaker."
ICE spokeswoman Gonzalez said the raid came after a union member called two years ago to complain about undocumented workers at the plant.
------
Blacks in Mississippi know plenty about exploitation. Laurel itself had long been Klan territory, where hooded, robed men marched proudly down the main thoroughfare before the civil rights movement.
White Knights Imperial Wizard Sam H. Bowers, suspected in hundreds of attacks including the infamous "Mississippi Burning" murders of three voter registration workers, lived in Laurel.
These days, hate has a new target.
"Time for Mexico and Mexicans to get the hell out!!!" blasts a recruiting message on a Klan Web site. In rallies staged in recent years in Laurel, Tupelo and other Mississippi cities, Klan members gathered to accuse Hispanic immigrants of being child molesters, job stealers and destroyers of the American way of life.
Last year, Mississippi passed the most restrictive law in the nation against undocumented workers, making it a felony for an illegal immigrant to hold a job.
Republicans and Democrats have campaigned on anti-immigration platforms. In 2007, the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance sent a protest letter to national Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, saying Democratic candidates "are peddling racist lies against immigrants that violate the core of the party's progressive agenda. We do not need politicians whose only concern is getting elected."
------
More than 20 percent of Mississippi residents live in poverty -- the highest rate in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Added to those rolls since the raid: Cabrera, his son Cesar and many others.
One is a woman named Mary, who didn't want her last name used because she said she has cut a deal with federal prosecutors investigating whether Howard Industries knowingly hired illegal immigrants using false identification. "The investigation is ongoing," said ICE's Gonzalez.
A spokeswoman for the company, which has not been formally accused of wrongdoing, declined comment. Previously, Howard officials have said they never knowingly hired an undocumented worker.
Mary was a solderer on the line for $11 an hour. The burning light and noxious fumes seared her eyes until she wept. She can no longer read up close and she can't afford glasses. She hopes federal investigators will help her get a work visa to replace the fake ID she bought here.
Cabrera, now scraping by doing odd jobs like cutting grass, also purchased forged ID cards.
Sometimes the Social Security numbers are real and belong to real people.
But Laurel's factory raid targeted only illegal immigrants, not the people who sell them bogus documents costing anywhere from $60 to $200 a piece.
------
Cabrera doesn't know what will happen to him, or what he will do if deportation is ruled his fate.
Angelica Olmedo, a 32-year-old single mother, has already decided what to do. She will volunteer for deportation to Vera Cruz, where her parents grow sugar cane.
Her 13-year-old son, who was 5 when she paid for him to be smuggled to Mississippi, will return with her. After she was swept up in the Howard raid, she was released on "humanitarian" grounds because she was a single mom.
She was outfitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and told not to leave the state. "I feel like a dog," she said, sitting in the doublewide trailer she shares with her sister, her brother-in-law, their two daughters and her son. "They told me I have charge it every two hours, and I said, 'What am I? A cell phone?"'
It took about two months for Olmedo to realize that apparently no one was monitoring the devices. In time, the clumsy plastic device slipped off her foot. No one from ICE has said a word to her since.
"It's to shame me," she said. "That's all it was, to shame me. To make me look like a criminal. But I am not a criminal, I was only working."
People stared and pointed when she went out in public.
Yet Olmedo has met kindness from some former co-workers. "I had friends. African-American and white. They come and ask if I need money for food. I don't take it. They brought shoes."
------
At Howard Industries, where the day crew is just getting off, a freezing rain pelts workers walking to their cars, heads bowed to shield their faces.
They are mostly black and mostly male. Some carry the stooped shoulders of the bone-weary. Others bound toward the employee parking lot with the glee of the newly freed.
Larry Jones, 24, sits in his car with the heater blasting, sucking the life out of a Swisher Sweets cigarillo. He has been on the job as a coil winder for two months.
He makes $8.20 an hour. And he is thankful for the raid.
"Now they got to hire us. The illegals will work for less than we will, and they'll work more. They were getting jobs everywhere."
He added: "I know they got to work, but it's rough over here, too."
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