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Illegal Workers Arrested In 6-State ID Theft Sweep
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In 1998, similar raids at 40 meatpacking plants in and around Nebraska found that nearly 20 percent of workers had invalid documents. The vast majority disappeared before questioning.
Worker advocates condemned yesterday's raids, which came without warning. They advised detainees to remain silent and contact attorneys.
"These actions today by ICE are an affront to decency," said Mark Lauritsen, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which sought an injunction in court to halt the raids and planned protests around the country. Federal agents essentially stormed plants "in an effort designed to terrorize" workers, he said.
In Grand Island, as many as 250 workers from a shift of more than 600 were detained as two buses and 10 ICE vans sat outside the plant gates, said Mike Mary, spokesman for UFCW 22 Local. From Worthington, Swift workers were bused to South Dakota, said UFCW spokeswoman Jill Cashen.
"This is not a systematic way to address the deep problems plaguing the immigration system," Cashen said.
In an interview, Swift's president and chief executive, Sam Rovit, also criticized the arrests. He said that his firm's practices are similar to those of its competitors and that "everyone in the whole agriculture sector should be worried."
"Swift has played by the rules and relied in good faith on a program explicitly held out by the president of the United States as an effective tool to help employers comply with applicable immigration laws," said Rovit, whose company reported $9.4 billion in sales in 2006. "Swift believes that today's actions by the government . . . raise serious questions as to the government's possible violation of individual workers' civil rights."
Rovit cited promises made by the government to protect employers who voluntarily submit information about workers to a federal program called Basic Pilot, which confirms the authenticity of Social Security numbers against federal databases. Swift has run all new U.S. hires through the program since 1997.
Studies show that Basic Pilot suffers from data errors, has an unacceptably high false-alarm rate and cannot detect fraudulent use of borrowed or stolen Social Security numbers. Congress is hoping to expand the program as part of beefed-up enforcement.
