Thread: Update: Hundreds of arrests predicted at Iowa ICE raid

Plant owners: NY workers were in US illegally

By CLARK KAUFFMAN • ckauffma@dmreg.com • May 14, 2008

The owners of the Postville meatpacking plant where 390 workers were arrested Monday admitted in court last year that many of the workers in its New York distribution center were in the United States illegally.

That admission is getting new attention in the wake of the raid this week that rounded up 40 percent of the Iowa plant's 968 workers.

Agriprocessors Inc. made the statement about its New York workers in an effort to block those workers from joining a union.


Developing: A list of people detained in the raid

The company contended that many of the employees at the Brooklyn distribution center had improperly voted in favor of union representation and were not protected by the National Labor Relations Act because they were undocumented immigrants.

The company contended that the votes of those people should be thrown out in part because of the "recent policy changes and debate over the burden of illegal immigration in this country."

The company also contended that because undocumented immigrants have no legitimate expectation of continued future employment, their interests were different from that of the company's workers who are in the United States legally.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected those arguments and validated the union vote of the workers.

The court said in its ruling, "Their votes are just as valid as legal workers."

The ruling added, "While undocumented aliens may face penalties for violating immigration laws, they receive the same wages and benefits as legal workers, face the same working conditions, answer to the same supervisors and possess the same skills and duties."

Court records indicate that after the workers voted in 2005 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Agriprocessors put the Social Security numbers of all voting employees into a federal database and discovered that most of the Social Security numbers were either nonexistent or belonged to other people.

The company then fired the workers and sought to invalidate their vote to join the union. An administrative law judge rejected the company's arguments.

The National Labor Relations Board ordered the company to bargain with the union.

One member of the labor board noted that "the average person" might find it strange that employers would have to bargain with illegal workers.

But in upholding the administrative law judge's ruling, the appeals court said that even as Congress took action to bar companies from hiring undocumented immigrants, it also extended employment-law protections to those same workers.

In a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh said an illegal immigrant should not be considered an employee under federal labor laws "for the simple reason that, ever since 1986, an illegal immigrant worker is not a lawful 'employee' in the United States."

In the past, the courts have noted that when legal and illegal workers enjoy the same protections, employers have less incentive to recruit and hire the workers who enter the United States without permission.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/p ... /805140358

Agriprocessors safety problems
By CLARK KAUFFMAN • ckauffma@dmreg.com • May 14, 2008

Agriprocessors Inc. has a history of noncompliance with state and federal regulations related to food safety, pollution and workplace safety at its Postville facility, government records show. Here are some actions government regulators have taken in the past 2years:

FEBRUARY 2006: U.S. Department of Labor fines the company $2,000 for a serious workplace-safety violation. The fine is later reduced to $1,000. Two weeks later, the plant is fined $2,500 for a serious worker-safety violation involving machinery. That fine is later reduced to $1,250.

MARCH 2006: Agriprocessors is cited for worker-safety violations related to respiratory protection. No fine is imposed.

AUGUST 2006: The company agrees to pay $603,086 to settle a complaint by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Federal prosecutors had accused the owners of discharging pollutants into Postville's city water treatment system.

SEPTEMBER 2006: The U.S. Department of Agriculture issues a "letter of warning" to the plant, based on failure to meet minimum requirements for sanitary conditions. Rodents had been seen in offices, and other unsanitary conditions were noted outside the plant. The letter noted multiple instances of unsanitary conditions that had gone uncorrected over the previous 90 days.

DECEMBER 2006: USDA inspectors find fecal contamination of chickens being processed. In one case, an inspector has to intervene three times to correct the problem. A day later, an inspector finds that about half the chickens he observes being processed are contaminated with feces and bile. A week later, inspectors note that at least 70 percent of the chickens are contaminated with feces. Two days later, inspectors report finding two pallets of beef that had "a rancid smell and (were) slimy to the touch." Hydraulic oil is seen dripping from an overhead motor onto raw chickens being processed. A few days later, inspectors see the same problem.

JANUARY 2007: USDA inspectors find "a large amount of fecal and bile contamination" on chickens being processed. Three areas are deemed "out of compliance, with fecal material sprayed everywhere around them." An inspector halts the meat-processing line and raises the issue with a worker who wanted to restart the line without taking corrective action.

JANUARY 2007: The USDA announces that Agriprocessors is recalling 2,700 pounds of frankfurters because of possible underprocessing.

JULY 2007: The USDA announces that Agriprocessors is recalling 35,860 pounds of frozen beef and chicken products because they may contain egg albumen, a known allergen, which is not declared on the label.

MARCH 2008: The Iowa Division of Labor Services cites Agriprocessors for 39 violations of workplace safety rules and proposes a $182,000 fine. The sanctions are based on inspections that took place in October 2007 and February 2008. Inspectors say the violations relate to hazardous chemicals and inadequate emergency response plans. Federal officials put the case "on hold," according to Kerry Koonce of Iowa Workforce Development. As of Tuesday, the matter remained unresolved.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/p ... /805140365

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Article published: May 14, 2008
Immigrant hearings over for the day

WATERLOO Initial court appearances have been completed for nearly 100 immigrants arrested in Monday's raid at AgriProcessors in Postville.

They face felony charges of false representation using social security numbers and aggrevated identity theft. The court recessed around noon, and continued at 4 p.m. this afternoon, on a dance floor inside the Electric Park Ballroom on the National Cattle Congress grounds.

"We're staffed until midnight," Chief Judge Linda Reade said. "We'll do whatever the work requires."

As of noon, 125 immigrants had been formally charged. Bob Teig, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, said that number is expected to climb as more immigrants are identified.

Ten immigrants had court appearances Tuesday afternoon, and the rest began this morning when 10 women were ushered into the makeshift courtroom.

Most of the immigrants wore navy blue government-issued sweatshirts and bluejeans. Some wore bright yellow work boots. They sat side by side on the dance floor, which is near a bar and neon signs that weren't in use.

Eight of the men charged are represented by Chris Clausen, a lawyer from Marshalltown whom the federal courts assigned to them. Clausen said he met his clients briefly, minutes before the court appearance.

"Typically, you get to meet with your clients beforehand, but due to logistical reasons, we weren't allowed to do that," said Clausen, who is with the firm Boliver, Clausen and Bidwell. "They've just got an awful lot of people here, and getting people into different rooms can be difficult."

Clausen did not get a chance to ask how his clients were coping with the situation, but planned to do so this afternoon.

"I'm sure they're scared," Clausen said. "I'd be scared if it were me, even if this was happening in my home country."

Two men who were supposed to be in Clausen's group were juveniles and did not attend the appearance.

After speaking with some of his clients this afternoon, Clausen said all the conditions appear satisfactory, based on what he has observed.

"Nobody complained about anything, and they were fed while we were there," Clausen said. "The meal looked good."

Reade and Magistrate Judges Jon Stuart Scoles and Paul Zoss are rotating on the bench today, adressing the immigrants in groups of 10 to conserve time.

After the court appearances, Reade said U.S. Marshals would transport the immigrants to federally certified jails in Eastern Iowa. She declined to identify which ones.

A total of 390 workers were arrested in Monday's raid, which was the largest single site operation in U.S. history. The large majority are men, and they are being held on the NCC grounds.

Initial court appearances that don't happen tonight will be completed Thursday, Teig said.

Reade said two other district courtrooms are available on the NCC site for sentencings, which would take place next week if any immigrants plead guilty.

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Update: Initial court appearances finished for detainees
BY GRANT SCHULTE • gschulte@dmreg.com • May 15, 2008

Waterloo, Ia. -- Initial appearances for the immigrant workers charged with felony identity theft and other fraud-related charges ended late this morning with a tearful plea from a Ukrainian woman who spoke little English.

The woman, Svitlana Yudina, told a federal magistrate that she came to Iowa because her daughter — who still lives in Ukraine — suffered from a severe but unknown illness.

“She lost every hair on her head,â€

Mexican consulate representative works with detainees
By CYNTHIA REYNAUD • creynaud@dmreg.com • May 14, 2008

Iowa is not new territory for Edgar Rebollar, an official with the Omaha Mexican Consulate's protection department, but that doesn't make the job any easier, he said.

"It's a hard, hard job because you deal with these people who are in a desperate situation. Whose life is falling apart," he said.


Rebollar was one of three representatives sent to Waterloo on Monday to provide assistance to detained Mexican nationals who had worked at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville. The group,Â* made up of two officials and one trainee,Â* came to make sure about 60 detained Mexicans received proper treatment and allowance of their rights.

The process is not new to Rebollar, who began working at the Omaha consulate in 2006. He has helped after several raids, including one in Marshalltown in December 2006.

This raid, though, was the biggest he's seen.

TV cameras, helicopters and high security welcomed Rebollar when he arrived in Waterloo at 7 p.m. Monday. He was required to obtain a security badge and had escorts throughout his stay.

His first priority was to address the detainees' concerns, which included cold accommodations and no access to phones.

Although the accommodations got Rebollar's mark of approval, he noted "it was much better at Camp Dodge."

Detainees have been placed on cots throughout Waterloo's Cattle Congress and given one blanket apiece. Many are still dressed in their work clothes, Â* rubber boots and short-sleeved shirts.

For 24 hours, Rebollar interviewed the frightened and concerned detainees about their treatment, spoke with them about their legal rights and offered assistance to get them back to Mexico.

"Most of them, they want to go back to Mexico and never come back because they don't want to be in prison, live in a situation like this, with all the fear," he said. "Most of them are willing to go back to Mexico forever and never come back."

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/p ... S/80514029

"Most of them, they want to go back to Mexico and never come back because they don't want to be in prison, live in a situation like this, with all the fear," he said. "Most of them are willing to go back to Mexico forever and never come back."

Yeah, and I've got some nice swamp land smack in the middle of the Mojave for sale

Biggest immig raid ever much worse than you think
May 18th, 2008

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 390 illegal immigrants May 13, 2008 in the largest single-site immigration raid in US history. The raid took place at Agriprocessors, Inc., the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, located in the tiny town of Postville, Iowa.

Federal officials have declined to comment about possible charges against the owners of Agriprocessors, and jaded Americans can be forgiven for assuming the employer will receive a slap on the wrist, if it receives any penalty at all.

But before you shrug and move on, it’s worth noting that the feds aren’t following the typical routine around the Postville raid. There may yet be some arrests higher up the ladder in the offing, with serious felony charges to follow.

As well there should be. The 390 detainees who were working in Agriprocessors’ slaughterhouse are the vanilla surface of a much darker story underneath. It’s a deeply troubling story that demands the owners of Agriprocessors, among others, be prosecuted under the full weight of the law.

If this story doesn’t end with major prison sentences handed down, there is, as they say, no justice.


An astonishing criminal enterprise
I first picked up the Agriprocessors story in May, 2004. It began far from Iowa’s cornfields with the arrival at San Francisco’s international airport on Cathay Pacific Airlines Flight CX872 of a Chinese national named Hu Yao Bin with his wife and two children.

The paperwork Mr. Hu presented to immigration inspectors at the airport was all in order. It showed that a US employer named Aaron Rubashkin, president of Agriprocessors, Inc. of Postville, Iowa, had petitioned successfully for the visa that Mr. Hu and his family now presented to inspectors—an EW-3 visa, which covers those coming to the United States to perform unskilled labor.

It should have been another rubber stamp entry. But no sooner had Mr. Hu and his family been cleared to enter the United States, permanently, than Mr. Hu blundered badly. He asked the inspecting officer to forward his Legal Permanent Resident card to his intended address in San Francisco’s Chinatown—not to the kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa that was to be his place of employment.

Oops. That’s one heck of a commute. Mr. Hu was promptly referred to a second agent for questioning. He confessed everything in the second interview. In a sworn statement, Mr. Hu said that his friend, Mr. Hu Shu Bin, had obtained the immigrant visa from the American consulate in Guangzhou, China, for which he had paid his friend US$30,000—the standard fee "snakeheads" charge to bring Chinese nationals into the United States.

In the statement, Mr. Hu Yao Bin stated that Mr. Hu Shu Bin had arranged for the family to immigrate through an American lawyer named Christopher A. Teras.

Mr Teras has processed hundreds of these cases, Mr Hu told the agent.

When the interview was over, Mr. Hu received a "deferred inspection". He was released with a request that he reappear voluntarily at a later date.

After Mr. Hu and his family left to start their new lives as Americans, an ICE agent telephoned Agriprocessors. It happened to be a Jewish holiday, so the plant was closed. A security guard named Warren Timmerman was on duty, however, and he showed no reluctance to talk to to the agent.

He told the agent that, yes, "hundreds of Chinese" immigrants come to Postville to work at the slaughterhouse for a couple of weeks in order to fulfill their visa requirement, then disappear.

Interesting.

The agent then called Mr. Hu’s attorney, Christopher Teras, a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn whose office in Washington, DC, as it turned out, was just five blocks from my own. A "Ms. Kim-attorney secretary", answered the telephone at the law firm. She too was very forthcoming. In a heavy Asian accent, she told the agent that $30,000 was a typical fee for someone like Mr. Hu, and that, yes, the firm "has successed for hundreds of such".

A brief explanation of how the labor certification process works
Mr. Hu and his family entered on an immigrant visa after the filing of an EW-3 petition by an American employer for an unskilled worker. This is also called a "labor certification". To secure a labor certification, an employer seeking to import a foriegn worker has to demonstrate it cannot find an American to do the job the employer wants filled. In this case, Agriprocessors had to demonstrate that it could not find an American to pack kosher meat.

The employer demonstrates it can’t find any Americans to fill a position by advertising for a worker in a local newspaper’s help wanted section. In the ad, the employer must describe the job and offer the "prevailing wage" rate. The prevailing wage is determined by the Department of Labor (DOL).

If the ad is unsuccessful, it is considered proof there are no Americans available to do the job, which the allows the employer to file the EW-3 petition with the DOL for the certification that will allow it to import a foreigner.

When the DOL approves the EW-3 petition for foreign unskilled labor, the sponsoring employer receives an approval letter, and the prospective immigrant or his attorney files an I-140 visa petition, which is the foundation for permanent residency.

When the I-140 is approved, the alien or his attorney receives a green card. However, thanks to a decision in a famous lawsuit we’ll get to in a bit, the visa is transferable from one prospective immigrant to another. This transferability allows for all sorts of mischief. In the present case, the visa was transferred to Mr. Hu Yao Bin on the street outside the American consulate in Guangzhou for $30,000.

The labor pool in Postville
The visa transferred to Hu Yao Bin in Guangdong Province for $30,000 was issued on the strength of Agriprocessors having proved to the DOL that it was unable to fill a position at its plant in Postville, Iowa. Because no Iowan was available to take the job, the meat-packing plant found it necessary to send all the way to China for a meat-cutter.

Under those conditions, one would suppose Postville enjoyed an extremely tight labor market, with labor priced through the roof. But Census Bureau data show the opposite to be the case.

Of the 2,273 people who live in Postville, one in eight (12.7 per cent) lives in poverty—including one in eight children. And even though the little town plays host to Agriprocessors, Inc., Iowa’s seventh largest employer, the per capita income in Postville is only $14,264—less than half the transfer fee Mr. Hu paid in China for the visa that would allow him to uproot his family and travel all the way to Iowa to take the job that had gone begging among the locals.

Something is clearly amiss. While the working conditions at Agriprocessors are reportedly abusive and deplorable, and not only for the employees, how could it be that in a town with so many living in poverty, no one would take a job that was so attractive to someone on the other side of the world he was willing to pay a fee exceeding two years at the average local American salary just to get the position?

The answer, of course, is that Mr. Hu never intended to take the job for which he was issued a visa, any more than Agriprocessors intended to find an American worker through its placement of the help wanted ad in the local paper.

The key is in the wage set by the DOL. At the time Mr. Hu Yao Bin’s unskilled labor visa was petitioned for, the wage set by the DOL (since raised) for a meat cutter in Allamakee County, Iowa, where Postville is located,was $6.50 per hour.

That hourly wage translates into a yearly salary of just $13,000—substantially lower than the already low per capita income in town, and 25 per cent below the poverty line for a family of four living in Iowa at that time.

No wonder no American was available to take the job.

Just think for a minute about that real world consequences of this legal fraud—this modern scam. Imagine a guy trying to support a wife and two kids and just barely staying afloat, financially. With his family hovering at the brink of poverty, he wants to change jobs so that he can provide a better future for his kids. But, if he wants the slaughterhouse job Agriprocessors is advertising, at the rate set by his own government, he would have to accept a 25 per cent pay cut.

If there is anybody to whom society should be giving a hand up, in my view, it is that struggling guy with a family to support. But, instead of helping him, his government helps the employer avoid having to offer higher wages to him by giving the employer the right to import a cheaper human from abroad. The government helps ensure that the prevailing wage will never rise, and the struggling guy is cut off at the knees.

Wrong, but perfectly legal. Or is it?
If a foreign national enters the United States under the conditions just described, he has entered legally.

But wait. Legally? If Agriprocessors is cutting its struggling neighbors off at the knees legally, then why were those 390 mostly Guatemalans detained as illegal aliens in Postville last week?

In general, these Central Americans will have entered the country illegally, and none of them will have paid a smuggler anywhere near $30,000 to be smuggled in. They are on the lowest economic rung of all. In fact if you’re a Guatemalan illegal alien, you can forget about that princely $6.50 per hour Agriprocessors advertises for the Americans. At Agriprocessors, according to the charges in a lawsuit reported by the Cedar Rapids (IA) Gazette, "Immigrants were paid $5 an hour and after three or four months, bumped up to $6."

Agriprocessors, you see, has two lucrative and pernicious schemes going. One scheme involves driving wages down to bare subsistence by hiring desperately poor illegal immigrants to work in its slaughterhouse—the criminal enterprise that made the news last week. The other involves fraudently claiming that the United States has run out of native-born meat-cutters and then, with the help of American Immigration Lawyers Association member Christopher Teras, securing work visas for foreigners worth $30,000 each on the street in Guangzhou.

If it is the pattern and practice of Mr. Rubashkin, the sponsoring employer, Mr. Teras, the immigration lawyer, and Mr. Hu Shu Bin, almost certainly the agent of the sponsoring employer, to sponsor employees who consistently leave after two weeks, or who never show up in Postville at all, it militates against a finding that there ever was any intent to employ the alien for a reasonable period of time. The employer’s defense of employment intent is removed. He is indictable. He and all parties are amenable to being charged with conspiracy, racketeering, labor certification fraud, money laundering, making false statements, and, perhaps, tax evasion. [ US Code ]

Unquestionably profitable
The Department of Homeland Security severely restricts the public’s access to information it possesses about, for example, the number of visa applications a particular attorney has executed (why?). Therefore, it is difficult to say how much profit the Teras-Postville scheme generated.

However, Mr. Timmerman, Ms. Kim, and Mr. Hu all claimed, according to the charging document in the Hu case, that the Teras-Postville scheme generated "hundreds" of such cases.

Let’s say the Teras-Postville scheme collaborated on 200 such visas. At $30,000 per person, 200 such entries would have generated $6 million.

But hundreds of such cases? Isn’t it a little hard to believe such a large scale fraud involving so many people could go undetected for years?

The famous case against an immigration lawyer named Samuel Kooritzky is instructive. While in that case labor certifications were being filed for nonexistent businesses, or for business that actually existed, but without the business’s knowledge that the certifications were being filed, the Kooritzky case shows how the scheme operates, and on what potential scale. A DOL special agent testified at Kooritzky’s trial in December, 2002, that the immigration lawyer "filed 2,200 phony labor applications last year alone." Kooritzky v. Herman DC U.S. Court of Appeals, 1999

From an article by Tom Jackman, who covered the Kooritzky case for the Washington Post:

"There’s every reason to believe this is going on all over the country," said Ben Ferro, a former INS district director in Baltimore. Ferro said the INS doesn’t have enough agents to track internal visa schemes, particularly with increased border scrutiny and other changes in priorities since Sept. 11. "There are many, many areas of immigration law that, because INS doesn’t have the ability or willingness to monitor and stamp them out, it goes unchecked," he said. "And when these things are found, they’re usually only prosecuted when they reach the kinds of numbers you’re talking about here."

Kooritzky was convicted of filing thousands of petitions and led away from the courtroom in handcuffs to serve time in prison. But there is more to the Kooritzky case.

In 1991, the DOL published an "interim final rule", which terminated the right of employers to substitute one immigrant applicant for another in the labor certification process. petitioning process for a foreign worker, it would no longer be able to substitute in another worker midway through the process. The rule change would have made it much harder to sell labor visas on the street outside the American consulate in Guangzhou.

Kooritzky sued the Secretary of Labor, arguing that the rule had been published unfairly. The district court ruled in DOL’s favor, but the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed, concluding that DOL had promulgated its rule without adequate notice and comment. Kooritzky v. Reich, 17 F.3d 1509 (D.C. Cir. 1994).

The ability to substitute in any prospective foreign worker makes it much easier for immigration lawyers to engage in wholesale visa fraud, as Kooritzky himself did with a vengeance, as it turns out, but Kooritzkt wasn’t satisfied with his victory. After prevailing on the merits, Kooritzky sought to recover attorney fees from the DOL—even though he had represented himself in the suit. He even sought to recover attorney fees for other immigration lawyers who, he claimed, had helped him on the case, even though no other attorneys had entered an appearance on Kooritzky’s behalf during the merits phase of the case.

The DOL declined to pay Kooritzky Kooritzky’s attorney fees, so, on March 1, 1995, Kooritzky moved for an award of attorney fees of $427,662 in district court. The district court awarded Kooritzky and his co-counsel a portion of that amount. Both sides appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which eventually denied Kooritzky any fees at all. Arguing the appeal for Kooritzky was one the immigration lawyers Kooritzky claimed had served as co-counsel in the original suit against the DOL. That attorney was Mr. Christopher Teras, the Washington, DC attorney for Hu Yao Bin, the imported meat-cutter for Agriprocessors of Postville, Iowa.

The tentacles unexamined obstruct justice
I received the information about the Hu Yao Bin case back in 2004 from an ICE agent who told me, "You know, Craig, this stuff goes on all the time. It’s like we are waterboys for the snakeheads, performing our part by stamping these visas approved. It’s wrong, but it just seems to go on forever. We mostly get used to it, but sometimes it really bothers me."

He asked me to do what I could to bring attention to the case so that it didn’t just disappear.

I passed the information on to a member of the Iowa congressional delegation, who duly called the special investigations unit in San Francisco, which wondered why he was calling. The visa was perfectly legal, he was told, and so he let the matter drop.

I sent the story to several newspapers, but only the Omaha World Herald ran a small bit, if I remember correctly.

One reporter I contacted was Tom Jackman of the Washington Post, who had covered the Kooritsky trial in 2002. When I described the documents I had in my possession, he became very excited. I’m on deadline now, he said, but as soon as I file this, I’ll call my editor to get the go ahead, and then get back to you.

I didn’t hear back from him, so I called him again. He was apologetic, and said his editor had nixed the story.

The same thing has happened to me three times. Three times I have contacted a Washington Post reporter with a story, the reporter would be excited about the information initially, but then end up telling me his or her editor had killed the story. The other two times involved an aspect of the Jack Abramoff case, her coverage for which the reporter I talked to won a Pulitzer, and the manifestly corrupt activities of Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah (during the investigation of whom I first came across the name, Christopher Teras, a Cannon contributor).

So, to the agent who asked me to help bring attention to this case: I’m sorry to have failed you; you see what we are up against.

But perhaps I didn’t fail completely. I also forwarded the information to the ICE office in Iowa that led the arrests last week in Postville. If the arrests are limited to Guatemalans, to the people on the very bottom rung of the ladder, I’ll know I have truly failed, and so will our society have failed. I hold out hope that more arrests are coming.

The heart of the problem
The biggest obstacle I see to cleaning up our nation’s immigration mess—bigger than the American Immigration Lawyers Assn and the greed of its members, bigger than subversive editors, bigger than contemptible employers—is the governmental corruption that seems to have this country by the throat.

One form of that corruption is campaign contributions—a practice that is destroying our democracy and simply has to stop. From 2000 to 2004, Agriprocessors contributed $2,000 to Congressman Noach Dear of Brooklyn, $2,500 to Congressman Jim Nussle of Iowa, $2,000 to the National Republican Congressional Cmte, and $14,000 to Senator Arlen Specter. Each of these recipients during this time period actively worked against the wishes and well-being of the American people on the immigration issue in Washington.

From 2000 to 2004, Agriprocessors also gave $3,550 to the Republican Party of Iowa, which repeatedly acquiesced in the betrayal of Iowans on the immigration issue during Governor Tom Vilsack’s administration, and $5,500 to Stan Thompson, an Iowa Republican who challenged Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell in Iowa’s 3rd congressional district in 2002 and again in 2004.

How is Stan Thompson on immigration? When ProjectUSA put up billboards in Des Moines during the 2004 campaign advertising the fact that, in Washington, Rep. Boswell supported amnesty for illegal aliens, the immigration issue exploded into the race. Rep. Boswell was left hurling invective and fuming, but ineffectively, since our billboards were accurate. Enter challenger Stan Thompson. Thompson not only failed to capitalize on the gift he’d been handed, but neutered our campaign by publicly condemning our completely accurate billboard campaign and calling on us to take down the boards! To whose interests was Stan Thompson hewing? The voters’ of Iowa? The struggling guy’s in Postville with a wife and two kids to support? Or the interests of Agriprocessors, his campaign donor?


http://projectusa.org/2008/05/18/bigges ... /#more-143

BB this article deserves its own thread. This is EXPLOSIVE.


The heart of the problem
The biggest obstacle I see to cleaning up our nation’s immigration mess—bigger than the American Immigration Lawyers Assn and the greed of its members, bigger than subversive editors, bigger than contemptible employers—is the governmental corruption that seems to have this country by the throat.

One form of that corruption is campaign contributions—a practice that is destroying our democracy and simply has to stop. From 2000 to 2004, Agriprocessors contributed $2,000 to Congressman Noach Dear of Brooklyn, $2,500 to Congressman Jim Nussle of Iowa, $2,000 to the National Republican Congressional Cmte, and $14,000 to Senator Arlen Specter. Each of these recipients during this time period actively worked against the wishes and well-being of the American people on the immigration issue in Washington.

Unfortunately, the corruption is on both sides of the isle.

I've copied and printed this. Specters's name is in it. Use this article when we call his office this week.

butterbean and Gogo,

This story does deserve it's own thread. I was going to post it because somehow I missed it with all of the news reports posted on the Postville raid.
I just did a search to see if it was a duplicate post and was ready to post it when the last one I read was the duplicate.

This is explosive, there is so much more than just the raid, it is the corruption that exists. I especially liked the part with Sen. Specters name in it, what a corrupt jerk he is.

I caught it at http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=12312