Thursday, October 30, 2008

Postville Update: Rubashkin, Agriprocessor Owner´s Son, FINALLY Arrested!

Sholom Rubashkin has finally been arrested. As I have long reported, the owners themselves have been involved in providing the workers false documents in order to work in unsafe conditions at the Agriprocessors plant. It is about time the Employers who solicit, hire, provide false documents and exploit workers from war torn countries like Guatemala are finally made to face justice! The workers were hauled off to cattle barns. At least this owner gets to go to a clean jail for humans.
AP Reports:
Agents arrest former Agriprocessors manager
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A former manager of a kosher slaughterhouse found to have employed hundreds of illegal immigrants was arrested Thursday by authorities who allege he helped many of the workers get fake documents. Prosecutors said Sholom Rubashkin, 49-year-old son of Agriprocessors owner Abraham Aaron Rubashkin, is charged with conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants for financial gain, aiding and abetting document fraud and aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft. Immigration agents said in a federal affidavit that one witness said Sholom Rubashkin gave him $4,500 to buy identification documents for illegal-immigrant workers. Another allegedly said that Rubashkin saw nothing wrong with hiring a group of workers who had new-looking resident alien cards and may have been fired from the Agriprocessors plant in Postville just two days earlier. Agents raided the plant May 12, arresting 389 people in what officials said at the time was the largest single-site immigration bust in U.S. history. State prosecutors allege that more than 30 of the workers were children. Agents also seized dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards during the raid, according to the affidavit. Rubashkin, arrested in Thursday morning, was scheduled to make an initial appearance in federal court in Cedar Rapids later Thursday. Telephone messages left for Agriprocessors officials and Rubashkin's lawyer weren't returned. The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment on the case Thursday, and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman did not return calls seeking comment. The affidavit said an unnamed witness, a former supervisor in the beef kill area, told investigators he or she met with Rubashkin in a barn area of the plant the week before the raid. The witness told Rubashkin that $4,500 was needed to help employees fired from the witness' department because they had bad papers. Rubashkin apparently asked if the money had to be in cash and the next morning agreed to loan it. Later in the day another employee gave the witness the cash in $100 bills. That witness said he or she then gave up to $200 each to employees to purchase new identification documents. The new documents were obtained and given to plant foremen to give to up to 40 employees a day before the raid, according to the affidavit. Earlier this week, Laura Althouse, a human resources employee with Agriprocessors, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants for financial gain and aggravated identity theft. Trial is scheduled for Nov. 17 for another human resources worker, Karina Freund. Two of the plant's meatpacking supervisors also faced federal immigration charges. In September, the owner and managers of the plant, including Sholom Rubashkin, were charged with 9,311 misdemeanors alleging they illegally hired minors and let children younger than 16 handle dangerous equipment. The complaint filed by the Iowa attorney general's office said the violations involved 32 illegal-immigrant children younger than 18, including seven who were not yet 16. On Wednesday, Agriprocessors was fined nearly $10 million by Iowa Labor Commissioner Dave Neil over accusations that it violated state wage laws. The company has 30 days to appeal.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

punish the employer and deport the illegals. this is how it should be.

Anonymous said...

I agree. ALL guilty parties should be punished. I am glad to see the employer and HR people being punished to.

The reason that a cattle barn type of building was used for the illegals was only because of the huge number of them that had to be processed and it was on Agriprocessor's premises. They were only held there for that reason and that reason only and only a day or so. Let's not make an issue out something that has no bearing on this issue. It was a matter of necessity and convenience and nothing more.

Dee said...

Anon, You sound like our old friend Pat.

Dee said...

I am curious about who took a plea deal and provided evidence-testimony on Rubashkin.

Dee said...

Quite honestly, the cattle barn injustice is still an open sore in this discussion.
There was no need to haul the workers to a cattle barn. There was no need to rush them through the courts and to prison within days.
This is the only place in the country that this happened, to this scale.
It was wrong. The lawyers said it was wrong. Many in the justice system said it was wrong.
The Raid happened in May. It took until yesterday for the real culprit to be arrested. (6 months)

Anonymous said...

For the third time, my name isn't Pat.

I already explained to you why the cattle barn was used out of necessity and convenience and yet you still persist. There was no justice or injustice that was performed there, it was merely a processing place nearby. It could have been a high school gymnasium if it had been closer. It was all about having a large enough facility to process them all in. Do you get it now?

Rush them through the courts and then to prison? They weren't sent to prisons. They were detention centers meant to hold illegal aliens. What was wrong about it? I don't care what any crooked lawyers have to say. Immigration lawyers have a vested interest in this issue. They couldn't be biased, now could they? Naw!

Investigations take a while to complete while they gather evidence. That can take months and in this case it did. What you should be happy about is that justice was served and the guilty are being punished. You sure do like to rant on and on, don't you? I have noticed how sympathetic you are to illegal aliens. It is very troubling.

Dee said...

Anon,
Here is what you are missing.
Your OPINION is the Cattle Barn injustice made no difference.

I adamently disagree.
Many lawyers and citizens around the country agree with me. This was a marked injustice against the workers. This should NOT have happened. This has been reported widely.

To say your one opinion that it doesnt matter is highly egotistical of you and, very wrong!

Dee said...

As I have reported, the crony owned private prisons are deplorable places. Often entire families are held in cells that are vermin ridden, dirty and worse than many citizen prisons.

You obviously dont care about that.

There are MANY that disagree and there are many reports that provide documentation to these heinous conditions.

It is also well reported that many of these crony owned prisons, like the GEO Group are large RNC donors. We know why they are filled to capacity. Payback before the end of the Bush administration.

Dee said...

You have stated YOU DONT CARE what legitimate legal resources say about the abomidable conditions in the crony owned centers nor the heinous conditions the detainees are made to suffer.

You just dont care.
Therefore you do not listen.
Therefore any discussion is moot.



Anonymous said...I don't care what any crooked lawyers have to say. Immigration lawyers have a vested interest in this issue. They couldn't be biased, now could they? Naw!

Anonymous said...

How did you manage to twist this conversation from processing the illegals in a cattle barn, their appearance in court and then sent to a detention center specifically for holding illegal aliens to the conditions of these centers and your assumption that I wouldn't care if they were unliveable? Your mention of lawyers didn't say anything about that. You are either very clever or deceptive and you sure like to put words in other's mouths, don't you? Rant on, I am done here.

Anonymous said...

take these poor people out of these deplorable conditions and deport them to their wonderful homelands. punish the employer so they never think of hiring illegal aliens again.

Anonymous said...

take these poor people out of these deplorable conditions and deport them to their wonderful homelands. punish the employer so they never think of hiring illegal aliens again.

Anonymous said...

"Sholom Rubashkin has finally been arrested. As I have long reported, the owners themselves have been involved in providing the workers false documents in order to work in unsafe conditions at the Agriprocessors plant."


Sholom is not an owner, he was the CEO and the owners son. The owner, Aaron Rubashkin, will probably never have any charges against him personally. The $10M in fines is against the Company, an Incorporation, and not against Aaron Rubashkin himself.

It's nice to see the efforts of the investigation finally coming to fruition. Hopefully this will be the beginning to the end of hiring "Illegal Aliens" and the exploitation of these workers. Let all who see this beware the same fate may become you.

Dee said...

Anon, (Pat)
I see you wrote 3 more comments after you said this.

LOL


Anonymous said...
Rant on, I am done here.

October 30, 2008 9:13 PM

Dee said...

Liquid,
I agree. It is about time he is coming to justice.
I too want to see the end to exploitive employers and the illegal hiring practices etc.

What I want to see is an end to the Backlog, the end to the quid pro quo of green card distribution, and a start to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.



Liquidmicro said...
It's nice to see the efforts of the investigation finally coming to fruition. Hopefully this will be the beginning to the end of hiring "Illegal Aliens" and the exploitation of these workers. Let all who see this beware the same fate may become you.

Anonymous said...

http://www.catholicvote.com/

O/T but I urge you to watch it. Thank you.

Dee said...

Anon,
Your url reminds me of the telemarketers who called to solicit funds for the Policemans Ball or the City Fire Fund. yikes.

Catholicvote.com is PAC. It is a conservative right wing PAC with some catholic members. Its actual name is Fidelis.

What does this have to do with the topic Postville-Rubashkin??

LMJ said...

I think it's funny that Pat just cannot resist leaving comments but very child-like refuses to use his known signature "Patriot", he must belive he's making a statement towards Dee who never said anything wrong in the first place, it not like hordes of ANTI's haven't said worse to her yet she's winning and fighting the good fight

For the longest time ANTI's claimed Dee had no supports and claimed that I was Dee's made-up person for her blog, just like those knuckle-head* ANTI's to go spouting something like that, very telling...

*sorry, i couldn't help using the Charles Barkley name-call that Frank Caliendo likes saying

Dee said...

LMJ,
Pat just cannot help himself!
LOL
So Funny!!!!



LMJ said...
I think it's funny that Pat just cannot resist leaving comments but very child-like refuses to use his known signature "Patriot"

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