Thread: Update on ID Theft and Raids

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/us/13 ... ref=slogin

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: December 13, 2006
In simultaneous dawn raids, federal immigration agents swept into six Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states yesterday, rounding up hundreds of immigrant workers in what the agents described as a vast criminal investigation of identity theft.
More than 1,000 agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement appeared at 6 a.m. at the Swift plants with warrants to search for illegal immigrants. Inside, agents separated American citizens from immigrants, interviewing all the foreign workers and taking hundreds away in buses to immigration detention centers.
In a new enforcement tactic, federal officials said they planned to bring criminal charges against some of the immigrants accused of using stolen identities. They said the raids were tied to complaints from United States citizens who discovered that their names were being used by Swift plant workers.
“There are several hundred Americans who were victimized,” said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the immigration agency, known as I.C.E.
Other immigrants who are found to be living illegally in the United States will be deported, Mr. Raimondi said.
The raids brought protests from Swift, the only business singled out, and from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which organizes employees at five of the six plants.
Sam Rovit, chief executive of Swift, said the company learned of the I.C.E. investigation in March, but had been “rebuffed repeatedly” when it offered to cooperate. Mr. Rovit said the company had participated since 1997 in a federal program known as Basic Pilot, which allows employers to use a federal database to verify documents presented by job-seekers.
“We have complied with every law that is out there on the books,” Mr. Rovit said in an interview.
The six plants employ more than 10,000 people, Swift executives said.
Mr. Rovit said the company had been careful to avoid inquiring too deeply into backgrounds of job applicants. He said the Justice Department sued Swift in 2001 charging that it discriminated against immigrant workers. The case was settled for $200,000, a company statement said.
Illegal immigrants frequently use false Social Security cards or residency documents known as green cards when they apply for jobs. I.C.E. officials said the operation focused on immigrants who had obtained documents with identity information corresponding to that of United States citizens, in some cases by buying them from underground organizations that traffic in false documents.
Officials at the union called the operation a “wholesale roundup” and said they would seek injunctions on behalf of the detained workers.
“Worksite raids are not an effective form of immigration reform,” said Jill Cashen, a spokeswoman for the union. “They terrorize workers and destroy families.”
The immigration agency raided plants in Hyrum, Utah; Greeley, Colo.; Cactus, Tex.; Grand Island, Neb.; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn.

The raids brought protests from Swift, the only business singled out, and from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which organizes employees at five of the six plants.

What make this guy think Swift was singled out? An operation of this magnitude probably took a lot of planning and manpower. Hopefully there will be raids on other plants in the very near future that would make this individuals complaint a moot point.

According to a writer in the comments section of the NTV ABC station in Nebraska Ice did go to other places in Grand Island. It seems no one carried the story.

Amy I hope that you did not misunderstand what I was trying to say. I know that we pay tons of money on taxes for school systems to help spanish speaking children, it is not just spanish people they were after today it was everyone with fake papers. If we did that we would be sitting in JAIL for years. Also I am white I was born in Nebraska and I have seen what illegal aliens have been doing to our cities. Rapes murders and ect... I am not a law breaker either. My kids know they live in a safe loving home. Ntv also forgot to mention that swift was not the only place Ice was today they should do some more checking because I have heard they have gone to some other well known companys around Grand Island..

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