Thread: IA: Experts see charges for plant's managers

Experts see charges for plant's managers
By JENNIFER JACOBS • jejacobs@dmreg.com • May 15, 2008

Waterloo, Ia. - Federal authorities are tight-lipped about whether managers at the Postville meat processing plant could face charges for employing or mistreating immigrants who were in the United States illegally.

But immigration experts who closely follow raids across the country say they think charges will come soon.

"The raid is usually another step in the investigation of management," said Lori Chesser, a Des Moines immigration lawyer who is on the American Immigration Lawyers Association's Interior Enforcement Committee and a liaison committee for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.


ICE officials usually seek to gain information in raids that can be used to charge management, Chesser said.

If immigrants cooperate with investigators, they can get a visa in certain circumstances or reduced charges in a plea agreement, she said. Management is usually not charged during the raid, she said.

On Monday, federal immigration officials arrested 390 people during a raid at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation's largest kosher meat processing plant. Arrest warrants were issued for a total of 697 people who work at the plant, according to court documents.

A list of people detained in the raid

The raid was the largest in U.S. history, according to federal prosecutors.

Staff with the U.S. attorney's office in Cedar Rapids have refused to say whether they intend to charge members of the Rubashkin family or other Agriprocessors managers. Workers told federal agents that Aaron Rubashkin, who lives in New York, is the owner, and that day-to-day operations are led by Heseshy and Sholom Rubashkin.

But in an affidavit written before the raid, special agents say they have gathered evidence over the past two years that Agriprocessors harbored and hired illegal immigrants, both felonies.

"This affidavit sets forth some, but not all, of the information ICE and other law enforcement officers possess concerning potential violations of the above-referenced statutes and potentially other criminal laws," wrote David Hoagland, an ICE senior special agent.

An affidavit is a summary of evidence authorities use to prove probable cause for a search warrant.

A spokesman for Agriprocessors, Jim Fallon of Kansas City, said Wednesday that the company is cooperating with federal officials in their investigation. He declined to comment on possible corporate responsibility for immigration violations because the investigation is still under way.

In the past couple years, the federal government has intensified its enforcement efforts against managers, human resources staff and chief executives, said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Federal officials have levied stiff personal fines and have gone after company assets, Butterfield said.

In 2002, 25 employers were arrested on charges of unlawfully employing undocumented workers. Criminal fines totaled $600,000 in 2003.

In 2007, 863 employers were arrested on criminal charges and 4,077 on administrative charges, according to ICE statistics. Over $30 million in fines and other payments were secured.

For example, California fencing contractor Mel Kay was charged for knowingly hiring illegal workers, fined $5 million and sentenced in March 2007 to a six-month prison term that was reduced to home confinement.

Some of the federal statutes that can be used to bring charges against management include harboring, or knowingly hiring, 10 or more undocumented immigrants during a 12-month period. Obstruction of justice is sometimes used, as well as conspiracy to violate immigration law, lawyers said.

Charges can also be brought if there were violations of labor, safety or health laws.

But there's still a disconnect between what government officials say and what they do, said Angela Maria Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center at the American Immigration Law Foundation.

Of the workplace arrests in 2007, 98 percent were workers and 2 percent were employers, Kelley said.

"The truth is that our government could go after employers for wage and hour violations and a host of other labor violations, but the bull's-eye remains on the immigrant workers," Kelley said.

On Tuesday, two busloads of workers arrived at Agriprocessors to replace workers who have been detained or who fled after the raid, according to Violeta Aleman, a quality-control inspector who works for an outside contractor.

Aleman said that she saw the new workers Wednesday and that they were working in the beef and poultry sections of the plant.

Register staff writers William Petroski, Cynthia Reynaud, Nigel Duara and Grant Schulte contributed to this report.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/p ... /805150406

2 busloads of workers arrived to replace the IA's ...now isn't that interesting?
Americans will work at those plants b/c that's what Americans do...not too proud for an honest day's work for an honest days PAY.

If immigrants cooperate with investigators, they can get a visa in certain circumstances or reduced charges in a plea agreement, she said. Management is usually not charged during the raid, she said.

Management should be charged. However, the IA's will lie to get that visa and should not be used. Instead use the legal immigrant and IA's who orginially blew the whistle on the plant.[/b]