Thread: ICE accuses Swift & Co. of skirting deportations

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 43,00.html
ICE accuses Swift & Co. of skirting deportations
But firm has letter from feds allowing firings before raid

By M.E. Sprengelmeyer And Joanne Kelley, Rocky Mountain News
December 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - Federal immigration officials on Wednesday claimed that Swift & Co. allowed hundreds of illegal employees to avoid deportation by firing them before Tuesday's massive raid.
But Swift disagreed, saying immigration officials gave permission to the meatpacking company to question employees, some of whom then quit when confronted about their documentation.

The dispute came to a head Wednesday, one day after immigration raids at six Swift & Co. plants netted 1,282 suspects.

Federal immigration officials claimed the meat processor fired the employees without their permission after Swift learned of the federal probe.

"We do wish they would have talked to us before deciding to terminate those individuals," Julie Myers, assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said at a news conference.

"We regretted they took that action."

But Swift executives said the workers - all of whom worked in the Marshalltown, Iowa, pork plant - quit as soon as the company began questioning them about their status.

Company officials said they talked to workers whom they believed immigration agents found suspicious.

"We started interviewing people and said, 'Are you really who you say you are?' " said Don Wiseman, general counsel at Swift.

"A whole bunch of them said, 'No, I'm really not' and they voluntarily quit. They self-admitted their status."

Swift sent others to the Social Security office to get letters verifying their status. "Most of those people didn't come back, either," Wiseman said.

Greeley-based Swift said Myers and her agency gave the company the go-ahead to question workers' documentation, even following up with a letter confirming that the company could take its own action if it determined it had unauthorized workers in its plants.

"I feel compelled to write you to clarify a point," ICE Investigations Director Marcy Forman wrote to company attorneys in an October letter supplied by Swift. "At no time has anyone from ICE told any Swift official that they cannot take action against employees who Swift determines, on its own, are unauthorized."

Once Swift officials knew that a massive, nationwide raid was imminent, it fought unsuccessfully in a Texas court in late November for a preliminary injunction blocking the action.

"We asked the company not to reveal we were coming in advance," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

65 criminal arrests

Myers and Chertoff said Swift, one of the country's biggest meat processors, generally cooperated in the months leading up to raids Tuesday on six plants around the country, including one in Greeley, and others in Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa and Utah.

The investigation centered on Swift employees who might be using names and the matching Social Security numbers that were not their own.

According to figures released Wednesday morning, the vast majority of Tuesday's arrests were for administrative immigration violations. There were 65 criminal arrests nationwide.

Fewer than 5 percent of the 1,282 arrests were for identity-theft-related charges.

Union officials who represent the Greeley plant workers went to court Wednesday in Denver in an attempt to find out where its members had been detained and why they had been taken.

"We want to be able to get in and talk to them," said Ernest L. Duran Jr., president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7.

"We have not talked to the detainees."

Duran, who is an attorney, blasted the federal government for "terrorizing" more than 13,000 workers when it reportedly only had identity-theft cases involving about 170 people.

Duran said many of the employees were rounded up in the plant cafeteria, where officials told U.S. citizens to stand on one side of the room and the rest of the workers to stand on the other side.

Pilot program defended

In recent years, Swift has participated in a pilot project designed to help employers verify the immigration status of employees.

Chertoff said that program still is valuable to catch one type of fraud, when employees are using fictitious names or Social Security numbers.

Still, Chertoff said the case showed the program's limitations because, so far, Congress has not authorized the Social Security Administration to be notified and to cross-reference numbers to determine if those are in use by workers in multiple locations, or even multiple states.

Chertoff defended the pilot project, comparing it to a polio vaccine that can prevent one illness but be ineffective against others.

"This is a very, very important tool," he said. "But it is not a magic bullet for every type of problem . . . You've got to use multiple types of vaccines to prevent multiple types of problems."

Chertoff said the investigation focused on identity theft because of a disturbing shift in the way some illegal immigrants apparently try to stay in the country.

Rather than creating false Social Security numbers or bogus documents, increasing numbers of people using real names and numbers stolen from other people have been detected by investigators around the country.

"People whose identities were stolen suffered very real consequences in their lives," Chertoff said.

The Federal Trade Commission, which oversees a program meant to combat identity theft, has received reports of innocent people being arrested for offenses committed by others in their names.

FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras said that in one case, an identity-theft victim was sued for child support, even though he has never been a father.

"These were not victimless crimes," Chertoff said.

'It needs to be solved'

Chertoff, whose department was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said that employer enforcement investigations would continue around the country, in this and other industries.

Still, he echoed what Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar said on Tuesday - that the case illustrates why the country needs a more comprehensive immigration reform package, including a guest-worker plan.

"It needs to be solved, and it won't be solved with a piecemeal approach," he said of the immigration issue.

Colorado passed a spate of tough, new immigration laws this year, one of which will take effect Jan. 1.

House Bill 1017 requires that employers take extra steps to verify the legal status of new hires. And state officials have advised companies to use the same screening system that failed to weed out many unauthorized workers at Swift.

The bill's main sponsor acknowledged the shortcomings.

"It puts a lot of responsibility on the employer," said Rep. Judy Solano.

"(But) really, the federal government has to do something. That's the bottom line."

Mixed messages

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff's comments in a Wednesday news conference and an October letter to Swift from ICE's Director of Investigations Marcy Forman differ on whether the feds were OK with the meat processor's recent move to release 400 workers with questionable immigration statuses. The company says it received ICE's approval to take their own actions against workers they determined to be unauthorized. Swift questioned 700 workers and 400 admitted that they used fake names and voluntarily quit.

• What Chertoff said: "Over 400 workers were terminated, quit or did not show up. ICE wasn't notified and we don't know where those 400 workers are. . . . We asked the company not to do that. We asked the company not to reveal that we were going to be coming in in advance because common sense tells you, if you do that, everybody who is illegal is going to flee."

• What Forman's Oct. 26 letter said: "I feel compelled to write you to clarify a point. . . . Specifically, at no time has anyone from ICE told any Swift official that they cannot take action against employees who Swift determines, on its own, are unauthorized to work in the United States."

Chertoff

"Loose lips sink ships". Quit telling the companies ICE is coming!

Companies do this to you all the time. Haven't you learned your lesson yet?

The employer cleans house before you get there so he doesn't get caught hiring illegal aliens.

Unless this is a big scam on the American public and no one really gets in trouble but a few illegals that didn't believe you were really coming. The company gets a pass, the illegals get a pass and you fake out the public going through the motions.

Dixie

This is probably not the best thread to bring up this discussion, but I guess it will do. If you will remember, I pointed out that a large part of the reason for the federal government allowing all the illegals to enter the country is monetary. Specifically, the debt ceiling is predicated on a combination of real assets, potential tax revenues, and human chattel of the federal government. If the government suddenly needs a significant boost in the debt ceiling, as was the case after 9/11 for the funding of the War on Terror, the only one of those things that can be quickly increased is human chattel.

There are two primary means for the government to increase its stake in human chattel. The first is by issuing federal franchise numbers (SSNs, TINs and ITINs), thereby converting the persons and their earning potential into federal assets as subsidiaries/franchises of the federal entity. Another way that it can generate revenue is by selling bonds. Believe it or not, bonds on federal prisoners are monetized and traded.

Now, consider the following: If an illegal alien chooses to steal someone else's SSN rather than obtaining his own ITIN, the federal government has gained no financial advantage from that person. On the other hand, if that person is arrested for indentity theft and incarcerate with a substantial bond, the government can now trade the bond.

I suggest that the government has now realized that a large percentage of the illegals are being a burden without providing the federal entity with the desired benefit (becoming a monetized asset to create a higher debt ceiling). The simplest way to convert such a person to a cash asset is to incarcerate and bond him. That's why the administration has suddenly decided to get tough on identity theft. Sure, the cost of incarceration is high, but the need to keep prisoners locked up can always be parlayed into a tax increase that the rabble will accept, and there is still a net financial gain at any rate.

If you want to figure out what's going on and why, follow the money trail.

• What Forman's Oct. 26 letter said: "I feel compelled to write you to clarify a point. . . . Specifically, at no time has anyone from ICE told any Swift official that they cannot take action against employees who Swift determines, on its own, are unauthorized to work in the United States."

Isn't this Forman lady the individual that was recently awarded a $45,000 bonus by ICE? She is obviously the reason many illegal immigrants were forwarned and fled apprehension.

Hmmm.........ICE rewards this kind of behavior?

Question for CG.

Aren't the illegals using stolen SS numbers to work at Swift still contributing to the debt ceiling? They do have federal and state taxes taken out of their paychecks, right?

Originally Posted by greyparrot

Question for CG.

Aren't the illegals using stolen SS numbers to work at Swift still contributing to the debt ceiling? They do have federal and state taxes taken out of their paychecks, right?

I don't think you understand. Collected taxes are a drop in the bucket compared with the monetized value of a federal franchisee. FICA is sand down a rathole, given that it funds a system that is already seriously in arrears. The so-called "income tax" is not part of the actual tax base, but is rather the service on a 75-year-old bankruptcy. Consider also that those illegals add more to the debt on average than they contribute to its reduction. The only way in which they can contribute to debt ceiling increase is to be monetized or bonded.