Updated: 1:09 p.m.

Text size: Federal officials defend documents used after raid
By AMY LORENTZEN | Associated Press Writer
1:09 PM CDT, August 2, 2008
DES MOINES, Iowa - The U.S. attorneys office and a federal judge are defending the use of documents, including scripts, that were given to attorneys as well as workers arrested in an Immigration raid at an Iowa meatpacking plant.

Chief Magistrate Judge Paul A. Zoss for the Northern District of Iowa led the hearings in Waterloo after the raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville on May 12. He said he doesn't understand the American Civil Liberties Union's recent criticism of materials provided at the hearings.

"In our district, we have always made available to the lawyers 'scripts' for our routine hearings in criminal cases," he said in a statement provided to The Associated Press. "This practice has not been limited to Immigration cases, but has been used in all cases."

Zoss said the "manual" handed out after the Postville raids was "a compendium of these scripts and some of the commonly used district forms."



"It was not a 'defense manual"' he said.

The ACLU charged that the packets show a disregard for due process and proof that the U.S. attorney's office put pressure on workers to quickly plead guilty. The ACLU obtained the documents from public defenders in Iowa.

"Whether or not they are guilty requires much more careful analysis of the law in each individual case than these documents show existed," Lucas Guttentag, the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project Director, said earlier this week.

He said the documents showed the U.S. Attorney's office was emphasizing speed in handling the cases.

"This is part of a larger pattern to achieve quick guilty pleas at the expense of fairness and justice," Guttentag said.

Bob Teig, assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, defended the use of the documents and said the ACLU's comments this week were based on a "lack of accurate information and a misunderstanding of the criminal law process."

"The documents helped ensure fairness, understanding, and constitutional rights were of paramount importance throughout the proceedings," Teig said in a statement. "They did nothing to push people into pleading guilty; quite the opposite is true."

Agents arrested 389 workers in the raid at Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant. Officials said it was the largest Immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.

Trials were quickly held about 70 miles away at a fairgrounds in Waterloo, where most pleaded guilty within a week. They are serving sentences in federal prisons outside Iowa before being deported.

The documents at the center of the debate were provided by the ACLU. They include a step-by-step script for hearings, with suggested wording by judges, lawyers and the immigrants charged. The packets include waivers -- printed in English and Spanish -- that bar workers from pursuing further legal claims or procedures. Others waive the legal right to a grand jury to determine criminal charges.

One waiver read, "I have been advised that I have the right to insist that any felony charge brought against me in federal court first be presented to a U.S. Grand Jury ... I would like to waive that right, and agree to be prosecuted under information filed against me in this case by the United States Attorney."

Zoss said the scripts are intended as an outline of what will take place during proceedings, but added that he and other court officers often go "off script" as individual circumstances dictate.

"By making them available to the lawyers in advance, I feel the lawyers and their clients can better prepare for hearings, and defendants are in a better position to understand their rights," he said.

Teig said the Agriprocessors workers who pleaded guilty were not "duped or railroaded."

"They pled guilty because of the law and the evidence and the fact that, as they admitted, they were guilty," he said.

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