Thread: Immigration Raids Lead U.S. to a Moral, Legal Crisis

Immigration Raids Lead U.S. to a Moral, Legal Crisis

Eastern Group Publications, Commentary, Raquel Aldana, Posted: Jun 19, 2008

Postville, Iowa has been turned into a ghost town. Nearly a third of its residents, mostly undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico, sit in jail convicted of identity crimes or awaiting deportation. Hundreds more hide in fear. Their children, too scared to go to school, have left the town’s classrooms nearly empty. For this, Postville should thank their local police, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and a failed immigration policy.

Aided by local law enforcement, ICE arrested 389 workers during the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history at the Postville meatpacking plant, the area’s major employer. In an unprecedented move, ICE criminally charged 302 of these workers with aggravated ID theft and/or using false social security numbers. Within days, ICE resolved their fate: 297 men and women pled guilty and were sentenced to prison and subsequent deportation. Only a few await criminal trials or immigration hearings.

Postville is one of the latest in a series of immigration raids that have intensified in the past three years. These raids are leading our nation to a moral, legal and humanitarian crisis.

ICE’s heavy-handed enforcement against undocumented workers in the wake of failed immigration reform is shameful. Under current immigration laws, no more than 10,000 of the backlogged visas for unskilled workers and 66,000 temporary visas for seasonal workers are available each year. In contrast, an estimated 2,000 persons cross the Southwest border into the U.S. daily and an estimated 12 million undocumented persons live in the United States.

Global economic realities push willing workers out of their nations, where they have no means to earn even a subsistence living and pull them into low-wage jobs in the United States, where the lack of labor protection leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. U.S. employers and we as consumers benefit from their cheap labor, but these workers and their families bear the brunt of a broken immigration system.

Few employers face civil and criminal sanctions for violating immigration and labor laws. So far, no one from Postville plant has been charged despite overwhelming evidence that the company helped workers procure false documents, paid substandard wages, failed to pay overtime, and seriously mistreated its workers. All the while, Congress continues to kill proposals granting even temporary legal status to agricultural workers, while doling out large subsidies to U.S. farmers without regard to their effect on future migration of rural workers from developing nations into the United States.

Legally speaking, ICE and federal prosecutors overstepped their powers when they criminally charged the workers. Congress specifically exempted from prosecution workers who use false Social Security numbers to engage in otherwise lawful conduct, such as to procure jobs.

This unprecedented criminalization of undocumented workers also has not been accompanied by a comparable infusion of constitutional guarantees in the handling of these cases. ICE conducted the investigation leading to the Postville raid with easy access to immigration databases and employee documents. ICE then executed the raid with easily-procured administrative, not criminal, warrants.

Thus, the protection of stricter Fourth Amendment search and seizure, Fifth Amendment due process, and Sixth Amendment right to counsel constitutional guarantees available to most criminal defendants were unavailable to these workers. Nearly all waived any rights they might have had under extreme prosecutorial pressure. The uncharacteristic speed and efficiency of the Postville raid left workers without adequate opportunity to consult with defense counsel, and none or few had access to immigration lawyers to learn about the immigration consequences of their pleas.

The involvement of local law enforcement in these raids is also worrisome. Distrust of police keeps many immigrants from reporting crime. This increases their vulnerability as victims. Moreover, the drain on limited resources from these additional responsibilities on local police takes away from their primary duties as community caretakers.

The courts must be vigilant in protecting the rights of workers and their families and insist on stricter constitutional guarantees when criminal charges are involved.

These raids should be halted immediately. The prospect of future raids should certainly create a sense of urgency for the United States to adopt immigration policies that allows employers to hire migrant workers, and include strong labor protections that offer a path to legalization for workers and their families. If workers are legal, we are all better off.

Aldana is a board member of the Society of American Law Teachers and a professor of law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Law.

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_art ... fd6040b38e

If workers are legal, we are all better off.

If all criminals are pardoned, will we be better off?

Congress specifically exempted from prosecution workers who use false Social Security numbers to engage in otherwise lawful conduct, such as to procure jobs.


Say What ?

"These raids should be halted immediately. The prospect of future raids should certainly create a sense of urgency for the United States to adopt immigration policies that allows employers to hire migrant workers, and include strong labor protections that offer a path to legalization for workers and their families. If workers are legal, we are all better off. "

These raids should NOT be halted but increased. The urgency in the US should be to protect it's citizens from Illegal aliens. Protect American jobs and their very lives from the swarms of Illegals. There should NEVER be a path to citizenship for those who have broken the laws of the US by Ilegally crossing the border, stealing IDs and Illegally taking American jobs.
NO Amnesty...NO Path to citizenship EVER!
Sorry guys, I just had to vent!!!!

I think the case precedent on whether the US Cionstitution protects illegal aliens is US vs Fong Yue Ting. It says that illegal aliens do not have Constitutional protection.

In this, the author is right: "So far, no one from (the) Postville (sic) plant has been charged despite overwhelming evidence that the company helped workers procure documentation, etc.....", and this unfortunately this has been true of all of these recent raids, including the several ones at Swift - only workers have been charged. Five supervisors just have been arrested at a South Carolina meat packing plant and charged with "knowlingly hiring illegal aliens", but this seems to be because they were illegal aliens themselves!

I went to the website of the Department of Homeland Security to email to thank them for their excellent new enforcement policies, but also to ask why no managers and/or owners were being charged along with the workers. The Immigration and Reform Act of 1982 (IRCA) makes knowingly hiring an illegal alien a crime. However, I could find no email contact form at the DHS site. Unfortunately, arresting only workers brings support to the arguments of the pro-illegal alien and Open Borders lobby, who can then write eternal articles such as this lamenting that only workers and their families are being punished by these raids. Considering that no one is more "pro" giving the government of Mexico everything it wants than this Administration, it is my sad assumption that this "selective" form of enforcement has been intentional to build domestic support for more foreign legal guest worker programs. Unfortunately for us, we are told that most of these "arrested workers" will be back in the United States at work at their old jobs only weeks after being deported to their home countries!

Does ALIPAC have a plan to petition our government officials about why no one above the worker level is being charged in these DHS/ICE "sweeps"? Or perhaps it is thought that this will come later, because gaining evidence to proscecute at a higher level requires more time?

Originally Posted by Texas2step

Does ALIPAC have a plan to petition our government officials about why no one above the worker level is being charged in these DHS/ICE "sweeps"? Or perhaps it is thought that this will come later, because gaining evidence to proscecute at a higher level requires more time?

It takes time to prosecute and bring a conviction. However, some are being charged, fined and convicted. Search our archives.

Also, the law states that the employer must knowingly be hiring illegals to be in violation of the law. In many cases, they don't know until the fed. gov. informs them with no-match letters. Therefore, they did not knowingly hire. Also, you can not takedown the owner of a company for the actions of one human resources clerk and that is the reason investigations are conducted.

Lastly, some companies are cooperating with law enforcement to take down ID theft rings so they will not be prosecuted for assisting.

Dixie

Originally Posted by Shad

There should NEVER be a path to citizenship for those who have broken the laws of the US by Ilegally crossing the border, stealing IDs and Illegally taking American jobs.

Agreed. If we reward this behavior/illegality (again), history has proven we will just see more of it. We were lied to in 1986 for that mass amnesty, and will not be fooled again.

Dixie: thank you for answers.