Is Chertoff finally getting serious about enforcing immigration laws?:>ICE Arrests 1200 Illegal Aliens
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — More than 1,200 people were arrested for alleged immigration violations in Tuesday's six-state raid on meat processing plants and about 65 of them face criminal charges, including identity theft, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today.
Federal officials said Operation Wagon Train netted 1,282 individuals, the largest such crackdown on illegal immigration at a single worksite.
"This is not only a case about illegal immigration, which is bad enough," Chertoff said at a news conference in Washington. "It's a case about identity theft and violation of the privacy rights and the economic rights of innocent Americans."
He said the cases involved the identify theft of hundreds of people.
"These individuals suffered very real consequences in their lives," he said. "These are not victimless crimes."
The target of the raids, Swift & Co., one of the world's largest meat processors, shut down nearly all its U.S. operations after the crackdown.
The crackdown, involving 1,000 federal agents, occurred at Swift's headquarters in Greeley, Colo., and its plants in Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn. Chertoff said the raids capped a 10-month investigation.
Swift, which has not been charged, denied knowledge of the alleged scheme.
"Swift has never condoned the employment of unauthorized workers, nor have we ever knowingly hired such individuals," Swift President and CEO Sam Rovit said in a statement.
The raids come eight months after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 1,187 illegal workers at plants operated by IFCO Systems, a company that makes pallets.
"When businesses are built upon systematic violation of the law or others go to systematically violate the law in order to either bring in illegal migrants or to allow them to find jobs, that is a problem that we have to attack," the secretary said.
Chertoff called the trafficking of false and stolen documents a serious national security issue because terrorists can use such phony papers to try to get on airplanes.
Hours before the raids, Weld County, Colo., District Attorney Ken Buck's office filed 25 arrest warrants at the request of U.S. agents.
The arrest affidavits say about 30 Swift employees used false information to get jobs at the Greeley facility, which has about 2,700 workers.
One of those using a false ID was identified in court papers as Otilio Torres Rivera. The Social Security number and North Carolina ID he offered as proof of legal residence belonged to a man who had died in February 2005, court papers allege. The dead man's sister had filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission after a Social Security Administration report wrongly said her late brother was employed at Swift. Court papers did not specify how the dead man's ID was stolen.
In Greeley, about 75 workers' family members and protesters gathered outside the plant, complaining that ICE agents were cruel to arrest workers just before Christmas, Police Chief Jerry Garner said.
Swift said it would reopen its plants after ICE ends its operation, but that production would depend on the number of workers arrested or detained. The plants raided handle all of Swift's domestic beef processing and 77% of its pork processing.
The United Food and Commercial International Workers union said it would ask federal judges in all six states to halt the raids. Union spokeswoman Jill Cashen said attorneys were gathering details before filing the requests.
Swift uses a government pilot program to confirm whether Social Security numbers are valid. Company officials have raised questions about the program's ability to detect when two people are using the same number.
Chertoff said the program, called Basic Pilot, mainly weeds out phony names and Social Security numbers, and is "not a magic bullet for every kind of problem."
He said the more sophisticated problem is the theft of legitimate matching names and numbers that are then used to get work.
Julie Myers, the assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), called identity theft the largest and fastest growing crime in America.
"This case illustrates that illegal immigration may be a driving force behind this growth," Myers said.
Advocates of stricter immigration control praised the raids, pointing out they targeted people suspected of committing other crimes in addition to entering the nation illegally.
"I'm glad that ICE enforcing our immigration laws in light of the illegal immigration crisis we face across the country," Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said in a statement.< |
