Iowa's Rep Steve King Endorses the Deplorable Postville ICE Raids!

In a December 2008 op-ed in the Des Moines Register, Rep Steve King praised the immigration raid in Postville, calling it a "step in the right direction." King also likened the immigrants to livestock.

Many of my long time readers will remember the numerous articles I posted following the events of Postville's despicable and inhumane ICE Raids where human beings were abused and treated like cattle. These raids, which occurred during George Bush's Republican administration, were intended as a pilot operation to serve as a model for future raids. They were also meant to instill fear among the Latino Immigrant communities.

ICE leaders who testified before Congress said these raids were humane. They LIED. A Video report has been released which documents statements from the local residents of Postville and many of the ICE mistreated workers. As one Postville resident said, "All they wanted was a better life. And instead, all we have left in Postville is DEVASTATION and FEAR!"
The FACTS about the RAID:

Citizen Children Suffering in Guatemala:

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.

Postville: Angry At ICE and Realing from the Devastation the ICE Raid Caused! Part 2: Postville: Nobody Can Tell Me to Shut Up!!

ICE Raids, the Band-Aids meant to soothe the anger of the ANTI Immigration Reform zealots and to fill the crony owned Detention Centers. Supporters of the ICE raids believe these raids help create jobs for American Citizens. They believe the small towns will return to their visions of Mayberry, a lily-white fairy tale that was not real to begin with. Instead, these raids create devastation for the workers and for the towns. A primary example: The Town of Postville, Iowa:

The citizens of Postville are angry at ICE and the mess they made when ICE raided their town in May, 2008. According to Mayor Bob Penrod, the town has been turned "topsy turvy" since hundreds of heavily armed federal immigration agents storm-swooped in a few months ago and raided its main employer, Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant. "It makes a person feel kind of angry," Penrod says. "It's been nothing but a freaky nightmare since May."

At the time, the Postville raid was the largest workforce raid in U.S. history -- the start of a series of large raids across the country. Helicopters buzzed the town, an airplane circled it and agents canvassed the area. Another 300 undocumented workers who weren't at the plant at the time of the raid soon split town with their spouses and children, officials say. In essence, the town lost nearly a third of its residents in a matter of days. "When you have a raid like that, it's just beyond your recognition," Penrod says. "It was nothing like you ever dream of. Believe me. To me, they took a problem that needed a 22-caliber bullet and they dropped a nuclear bomb on us," says Aaron Goldsmith, a Hasidic Jew and former Postville city councilman. "They made a poster child out of Postville." Goldsmith says he believes immigration policy should be dealt with. But if federal officials wanted to correct the immigration situation in Postville, he says, they should've done it step-by-step, not with brute force. "They turned people into cattle," he says. "If they wanted to stop this problem, if they wanted to scare everybody away, all they had to do is go into Los Angeles, California and they could've taken out 1 million people in a day. But they don't because there's too much political clout. "So they go to a place where there's no political backbone. They go to a place where the government's willing to throw us to the dogs."
Down a picturesque tree-lined street off Lawler Street sits St. Bridget's Catholic Church whose pastor, Father Lloyd Paul Ouderkirk, is both soft-spoken and outspoken. It is his church that became a refuge for the town's immigrants the day of the raid and the weeks afterward. "They had attacked this town with a military-style raid -- brought in 900 immigration police to arrest 389 people. I mean, what is that other than a military raid on this town?" he says. Ouderkirk scans his church now, the sun beaming through stained-glass windows. "Can you just imagine all these pews here full of people, sleeping 300-400 people a night?"

Postville residents who spoke say those at Agriprocessors need to be punished if the allegations they face are true. But residents also say the debate over illegal immigration is far more complex than the rhetoric often heard over AM radio or cable TV. They say the Latino residents were productive members of the community who paid taxes, even if under false pretenses, and had been here for years, and that Agriprocessors is key to the survival of the town and region.

"If I had to say anything to anybody about the whole deal: Don't let it go so long that it becomes a huge problem," says Brian Gravel, the principal of Postville High School. But he adds, "Picking on a town of 2,500 people in northeast Iowa is not my idea of a naturalization or immigration policy. You can corner this one plant with federal agents and deport people. That's one way to do it, but that's a good way to ruin towns -- ruin a small northeast Iowa place."
Since that day in May, the Latino population has dwindled, replaced with the homeless, legal immigrants, refugees and legal visitors from countries including Somalia, the Pacific Islands, Russia, and many middle Eastern, non-Christian countries.
The vice president of Palau has journeyed thousands of miles to Postville and offered about 160 of his countrymen for the open jobs at Agriprocessors. Residents of the island nation can legally live and work indefinitely in the United States under a special arrangement with the U.S. government. Some from the Pacific island, where the average temperature year-round is 82 degrees, have already begun arriving. The rest will be coming soon, just in time for the frigid Iowa winter where temperatures dip below zero. Another 125 Somali Muslims, legally classified as refugees, have already moved in. Many have come via the Minneapolis area, as well as Illinois and Texas.
"All of the Somalis came here to work at the plant," says Abdi Hasan, who came to the United States from Somalia five months ago. "I came to look for a job here." He says they've been welcomed by the locals -- "no problems, no mistreatment, no nothing." Hasan gets paid $10 an hour at the "kill house" at Agriprocessors, he says. His only complaint: Not being allowed to say Muslim prayers while at work. "They don't allow it," he says. "That's a problem at times."
Mayor Penrod stands on the sidewalk outside his office. He looks out over Lawler Street, where big rigs rumble and cars freely move about. "What do I love about my city? I love the progress we've made," he says. But now, he says, "Everything is tension based. You can just sense the friction," he says. "I hope I'm wrong."

PART 2: "NOBODY CAN TELL ME TO SHUT UP!

"Nobody can tell me to shut up," says Rev. Lloyd Paul Ouderkirk, the pastor of St. Bridget's Catholic Church in the tiny town of Postville, Iowa. Ouderkirk is outraged at the way federal agents swooped into town and rounded up nearly 400 illegal immigrants on May 12 in a raid on the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors. He's angry at the bosses of the plant who are accused of mistreating workers, including children, and using a workforce that the government contends was 75 percent illegal immigrants. And he's upset that Iowa Gov. Chet Culver and other top state officials haven't set foot in Postville since the raid left the town of 2,400 "bleeding to death." "I think every elected politician -- no exceptions -- should bow their heads in shame," Ouderkirk says. "Upset?! Yeah, I'm upset. I mean give me a break ... If the elected politicians couldn't do any better than this to come up with a good, just immigration law, they should hang their heads in shame."

Ouderkirk isn't the only one complaining. Mayor Bob Penrod said his town has been turned "topsy turvy" since the raid. He too wondered why he hasn't heard from the governor. "Basically all we wanted was some advice on how to deal with some of the situations that keep arising," Penrod says.

"This is no way as a democracy to treat people. I don't care if they are legal or illegal. You don't tear families apart like this," Ouderkirk says. "The women and children we're taking care of right now are no more criminal than people driving down the street breaking the speed limit"...Ouderkirk says he'll keep speaking his mind. He invites vocal opponents of illegal immigration to come to his church and "walk in the shoes" of the immigrants he's helping. He says he's "gotten hate letters like you wouldn't believe. If people have a right to spout off like that, then I have a right to speak in defense of these poor people," he says. "This is a free country. I have a right to speak what I believe in, and I have a right to speak up for poor people whose voice is being denied."

Reference:

CNN.com Mayor: Feds turned my town 'topsy turvy'

CNN.com "Nobody can tell me to shut up!"

Postville Update: ACLU Uncovers PROOF of Justice Denied in Speedy Cattle Barn Trials!

The truth has come to light and is now before a Congressional Hearing! The ACLU has uncovered the Government "manual" distributed to Iowa defense lawyers to commit their swift cattle barn injustice in Postville. Workers were hauled to Cattle Barns. The judge and the prosecutor agreed to the prescripted hearings and preordained guilty pleas. Lawyers were handed the scripts and told to support dozens of clients, with little to no preparation but the scripts. End Result: Guilty Verdicts and Injustice for All!

The New York Times reports: (summary)

The legal blueprint for those extraordinarily swift proceedings (in Postville) has come to light, and it is raising questions about the close collaboration in the months before the raid between the federal court in Iowa and the prosecutors who pressed the charges. The blueprint is a 117-page compendium of scripts, laying out step by step the hearings that would come after the raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out at a single workplace. The documents suggest that the court had endorsed the prosecutors’ drive to obtain the guilty pleas even before the hearings began. The scripts included a model of the guilty pleas that prosecutors planned to offer as well as statements to be made by the judges when they accepted the pleas and handed down sentences. “This was the Postville prosecution guilty-plea machine,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the A.C.L.U. “The entire process seemed to presume and be designed for fast-track guilty pleas.”
One defense lawyer who received the scripts from prosecutors on the day of the raid said he became convinced that the hearings had been organized to produce guilty pleas for the prosecution. As a result, the lawyer, Rockne Cole, declined to represent any of the arrested immigrants and “walked out in disgust,” he wrote in a letter to a Congressional subcommittee that is scrutinizing the raid and the legal proceedings that followed. Mr. Cole wrote that he was most dismayed to see that the scripts specified the particular plea agreements that would be offered to the defendants. “What I found most astonishing,” he wrote, “is that apparently Chief Judge Reade had already ratified these deals prior to one lawyer even talking to his or her client.” The hearings were conducted in emergency courtrooms set up in the National Cattle Congress, a fairground in Waterloo. Magistrate judges took guilty pleas from immigrants in groups of 10, then the immigrants were immediately sentenced, five at a time. Only a handful of the workers, mostly illegal immigrants from Guatemala, had prior criminal records. The scripts specified that prosecutors would offer a particular type of plea agreement that leaves no discretion to judges to raise or lower sentences. Some defense and immigration lawyers said the inclusion of these plea agreements was a sign of overly close cooperation between the court and prosecutors. “Here you have a court communicating with one side and not the other about substantive issues,” said Robert R. Rigg, a Drake University law professor who is president of the Iowa Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The court had bound itself to the agreement before the plea was accepted.” Professor Rigg and other legal scholars said such plea agreements were generally negotiated between prosecutors and defense lawyers after a defendant was charged, and were later approved by the judge. The rule governing the plea bargaining says, “The court must not participate in these agreements.”

EPITOME OF EVIL: Agriprocessors Continues to Pursue Latino Workers (Legal or illegal) Rather than Improve Working Conditions and Pay Livable Wages

Agriprocessors the most egregious corporation in US History is continuing to seek Latino Workers, legal or illegal, rather than improve their deplorable, unsafe working conditions or pay livable wages to Local Workers. The Rubashkins have a history rife with crime. From abusing workers, violating Child Labor Laws, illegally working children 11 hours a day with no overtime pay to providing illegal workers False Green Cards, this Company and all like them must be stopped and the owners responsible imprisoned. They have destroyed a nice town, exploited countless workers and stood as a model of unpunished corruption for others to follow. When will the Government and Law Enforcement finally put these heinous employers behind bars? Or do those GOP donations really afford them the opportunity to avoid prosecution for their crimes?

The Iowa Indepedent Reports:

Ryan Regenold, a spokesman for Des Moines-based Jacobson Companies, said his staffing company was relying on two Texas agencies, one in Amarillo and another in McAllen, for recruiting in that state. “I represent Jacobson Staffing, and we were brought here on June 2 to basically bring in an entire new community — at least that’s how it seems,” Regenold said. “There are two outside-sourced agencies that Agri is using that were bringing the people from Texas. As I’m sure most have already heard, they are coming in from Amarillo and McAllen (TX-MX border town). To shore up that, we are screening those people a little bit better, we will be starting to have them drug-screened and background-checked prior to their coming to Postville. The wave of people that you might have seen in the past, those causing the police chief to do a little bit of extra paperwork on his weekends, hopefully will begin to stop.”...One of the firms being utilized by Jacobson is Bravo Labor Agency in McAllen, Texas. Although the company’s Web site has been taken off-line, a May 30 cached version of the page indicates that the firm began in 1987. One of the specialties highlighted by the firm is its ability to “lower overhead, with inexpensive labor from South Texas and Mexico.” ...

The “bad apples” aren’t the first to come to Postville for work at Agriprocessors only to seek exit shortly after their arrival. Labor Ready, a multinational staffing firm with a branch in Waterloo, Iowa cited health and safety concerns as the reason it pulled roughly 150 workers out of the Agriprocessors plant 10 days after they started employment there. Another group of workers from the company’s Nebraska plant opted to return west, claiming the working conditions in Postville to be far inferior to their original location.

---------------------------

Agriprocessors and the Rubashkins make me angry! Why is it that rather than improve their working conditions and pay livable wages, they seek Latino workers in Texas, legal or illegal? The answers are clear. 1. GREED, 2. they have no regard for the workers they deem inferior and 3. they know their GOP Cronies will allow their crimes to go unpunished. These employers are the epitome of EVIL!

Postville Update: Severed Limbs Common at Agriprocessor´s Medieval Plant!

Medieval! The Des Moines Register, the warrant and the OSHA reports tell us the Conditions at the Agriprocessors plant have been medieval for some time! They have a long history of amputations including severed hands, feet, crushed body parts. Workers were made to work long hours (up to and over 80 hours in a week with no overtime) in unsafe conditions and no safety equipment.

The DesMoines Register reports:

Plant has long history of safety violations
Three months ago, state officials cited Agriprocessors for 39 workplace safety violations - an unusually large number.Federal and state records give conflicting information on fines against the company, but for the past few years Agriprocessors appears to have compiled one of the worst safety records of any meatpacking plant in Iowa. Although detailed worker-injury reports since 2006 are not publicly available, the Register has reviewed Agriprocessors' reports for the three previous years.

In 2003, the company reported 83 employee injuries, including smashed ankles, lacerated tendons in hands, smashed arms, and amputated fingers.

In 2004, the number of injuries jumped 45 percent, to 120, with workers being treated for chemical burns to their eyes and feet, third-degree burns, hand lacerations and broken ribs.

In 2005, the number of injuries dropped to 103. They included hearing losses, smashed fingers and severed fingers. The 2005 reports include the three amputations that began with Carlos Torrez's loss of a finger.

State records indicate that four weeks after that accident, Adolfo Lopez, 26, was working on a machine called "the foot masher."Witnesses said they heard Lopez screaming about 5:30 a.m. He had been clearing debris from inside the machine when a supervisor unwittingly turned on the device, crushing Lopez's left hand."I saw (Lopez) caught up in the gears, the teeth of the foot masher," maintenance worker Deon Branish told officials. "His left hand was stuck all the way to the wrist." Ten days after that incident, plant sanitation manager Jeff Bohr was at home when a co-worker called to tell him Eduardo Santos, 25, was in the laundry room with a severe hand injury. Bohr went to the plant, examined Santos' right hand, and called an ambulance. Then he looked into the machine Santos had been working on and saw pieces of two work gloves."There were also pieces of skin and bone," Bohr wrote in his report.Company records indicate Santos lost two fingers and a thumb. The remainder of his hand was crushed.

Workers must pay for safety equipment:

Company records indicate that workers had long been forced to either do without the protective gear or purchase it themselves from the company. And because some workers allegedly had no lockers at the plant, they often took their chemical-soaked rain suits home with them at the end of their shift. Company Vice President Sholom Rubashkin, in a September 2000 memo to all employees, included an "equipment price list" that identifies rain pants and jackets, as well as "wrist wraps" and "back support," as "personal clothing-type equipment," rather than mandatory, company-issued safety equipment. For at least six years, workers were being charged $30 for the pants and $30 for the jackets. Boots were $20.85. At those prices, 100 rain suits would have generated $8,000 in revenue for the company. By comparison, the state fine for this serious safety violation was $1,000.
In December 2006, a commission appointed by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism found significant health and safety concerns at the Postville plant, including unsafe chemical use and "inadequate or nonexistent safety training."OSHA cited the company for more violations, and federal investigators launched a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of people in the United States illegally who were hired there, of child-labor law violations and of workplace safety issues.
Court records show that in January 2008, federal authorities equipped an informant with a hidden device to record a safety briefing for new employees. During the briefing, employees were allegedly told that their pay would be docked $2 per week to pay for gowns and gloves that they were required to wear. That informant, and another, made broader allegations, too. One told authorities a plant supervisor had put duct tape over the eyes of a Guatemalan worker and then beat the worker with a meat hook. Another told authorities that some workers were paid less than minimum wage and were paid in cash. Several informants alleged that the Postville work force was rife with illegal immigrants.

Cronyism:

In April, Eric Frumin of the Change To Win labor organization testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that was investigating workplace safety. He told senators that Agriprocessors had just been cited for 39 additional violations of health and safety regulations that carried potential fines totaling $182,000. "For perspective," he testified, "in 2007, Iowa OSHA issued 19 violations for all meatpacking plants in Iowa, with fines totaling over $120,000."What Frumin didn't realize was that the Iowa OSHA office had already agreed to cut Agriprocessors' fines. The agreement would not be made public for several weeks, but when it was, it showed the state had cut the proposed $182,000 fine to $42,750.

The company has had annual revenue of $250 million.

Postville Latest Update: Low Level Hispanic Supervisors Arrested, Warrant Out for Jewish Manager who Fled to Israel! Feds said Plant "Medieval!"

Congratulations to the Union and to the Blogosphere for keeping the pressure on the Justice Department. They arrested two Agriprocessor Supervisors.
Special Kudos to FailedMessiah.com and to the Latino PRO Blogosphere for keeping this topic HOT!
The bad news is, only two low level Latino supervisors have been indicted so far. Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza was a supervisor in the Beef Kill dept. Officials are saying he was an American citizen. They are keeping mum on the citizenship status of Martin De La Rosa-Loera, the supervisor of the Poultry kill department. There is an arrest warrant out for Jewish Plant Manager Amara, however as we previously reported, Agriprocessors quickly whisked him off to Israel one step ahead of the authorities. Rubashkin also replaced his son Sholom as Chief Executive attempting to save him from being charged. News reports indicate, however, that due to the continued pressure from the Unions and the Blogosphere, the Grand Jury investigation of Agriprocessors is continuing, especially since they found Fake Green Cards in Agriprocessors HR Office and Feds investigating said the Plant Conditions were medieval!
The Cedar Rapids Gazette is reporting:
..The supervisors were indicted by a federal grand jury after a former human resources employee and illegal immigrants at Agriprocessors testified last month, according to court records. They told investigators of an effort by the men to update employee documents in the weeks before the raid. The week before the raid, Guerrero-Espinoza told some of his employees to give him $200 for new documentation to continue working at the company, court records state. Some of the workers testified that he asked them for an extra $20 to cover the cost of gasoline or serve as his commission. On the day before the raid, the workers were provided new application packets complete with fake resident alien cards to sign and return...Both men face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the charges. Guerrero-Espinoza is facing an additional charge of aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft, which could get him another sentence of up to 15 years. ICE officials are seeking the public's help in locating Hosam Amara, 43, last known to live in Postville. The criminal complaint against him has been sealed until his arrest. Anyone with information is asked to call ICE at 1-(888) 347-2423.
The New York Times reported:
..Federal authorities called the raid the largest enforcement operation by immigration authorities at a single workplace. Unions and immigrant advocacy groups had criticized immigration officials for focusing arrests on workers while taking no action against top managers. The arrest warrant was issued for Hosam Amara, 43. In interviews after the raid, several workers said Mr. Amara was a floor manager with more authority than line supervisors. They said he was a link between workers on the slaughterhouse floors and meatpacking lines and more senior management. Agriprocessors, which before the raid was the country’s largest producer of kosher meat, is owned by Aaron Rubashkin. Two weeks after the raid, he removed his son Sholom as chief executive. Most of the illegal immigrants arrested at the plant were from rural Guatemala. In expedited proceedings (Cattle Barn justice), 270 workers were sent to federal prison on criminal charges, most for presenting false documents when they were hired...A former human resources employee cited in the complaint said Mr. Guerrero regularly brought in fake green cards for applicants.
A separate complaint says Mr. De la Rosa, a supervisor in Poultry Kill, also told illegal immigrant workers shortly before the raid that they needed new identity documents. The complaints make it clear that a grand jury investigation of Agriprocessors is continuing. Union officials said the new arrests did not go far enough. “The arrest of two low-level supervisors, while a start, barely scratches the surface of this company’s bad behavior,” said Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to organize the plant. “What about the allegations of worker abuse? Does anyone really believe that these low-level supervisors acted alone without the knowledge, or even the direction, of the Rubashkins and other senior management?”

UPDATE:
Wall St Journal reports:
..The complaint (warrant) also alleges that the May 12 raid resulted in the seizure of dozens of fraudulent permanent alien resident cards in the human-resources department at Agriprocessors. The raid exposed allegations that workers at the sprawling plant, which employed more than 900 people, were underpaid, physically abused, sexually harassed and extorted. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. government official who has visited the plant described the operation as "medieval." An investigation is still under way, and a court spokesman declined to disclose whether more arrests are likely.

Postville Update: Agriprocessors Free to Stir Up More Trouble in Postville!

Postville was left "absolutely shattered" after last month´s heavily armed worker raids. The workers received swift, cattle barn justice. The employers, however, were left free to continue their abuses, despite hiring a GOP crony-pal "compliance" officer.

The Star Tribune Reports:

"There´s Something Bad In This Town"

Why the raid occurred - from warrant (pg 3):

The federal raid this spring came about based on information from an informant inside the plant who reported witnessing plant managers hire and help workers with fake identity papers. Up to 76 percent of workers did not have correct Social Security numbers, according to the search warrant. The informant also reported seeing managers abuse workers, including hitting one with a meat hook. One manager also ran a scam in which illegal workers were coerced into buying cars from him, the warrant said. Some female employees also have alleged they were sexually coerced by managers, according to St. Bridget's Sister Mary McCauley.

Abuses Continue (page 2, 5):

. New replacement worker Josephina Ortiz, near tears, telling strangers that she came from California based on promises by Agriprocessors of free rent, food and a good job. Instead, she claims, she found a filthy, expensive apartment and mandatory 14-hour days. "Please God, somebody help us," said Ortiz, who is in the United States legally. "There's something bad in this town. I don't know how this can happen in the United States of America."

. Agriprocessors' new hires, whites and African-Americans, who arrived on the bus. They said they'd been promised a $100 advance, but few of them got it. So their first stop was the food shelf (free food bank).

. Diane Morris, who was living in a Texas homeless shelter, said the company promised a free furnished apartment for a month. Instead, she was put in a four-bedroom house with 10 men, she said. "Everywhere I've been I've been sexually approached," she said. She claims she was fired after two days when she went to the company clinic for medications for a mental illness.

. Some new hires have already caused enough trouble at bars that city officials and police have met with the company to demand better screening.

Why protesters are angry (page 3, 4):

"Workers openly say they were advised by the plant on how to get false documents," he said. "Now if the government does not take action on that and charge the owners, then this was strictly a raid to threaten and terrorize people. The situation at Agriprocessors reveals "a lack of respect of human dignity of people other than you," Ouderkirk said. "Politicians who should have been leading the way did nothing."

After the Raids, Only Positive (page 5):

"I'd say the relationship between Hispanics and people who grew up around here has gotten stronger because of this," he said. "The people who have grown up around here suddenly realized [the workers] were real people, too." The town even put up red ribbons on lampposts in support of plant workers. While he abhors the tactics of immigration officials, Ouderkirk says some good may come of their raid. "They brought out the cracks in the dam and the folly of our immigration policy," he said.