Postville Update: Human Resourced Indicted!

As I have said from the beginning, Agriprocessors employers sought, recruited, hired and exploited numerous illegal immigrants, primarily from Guatemala, into their meatpacking plant in Postville. Even the initial Arrest Warrant contained documents proving the Human Resources department was involved.
As I reported on Sept 9, the Iowa Attorney General filed charges against the employer and managers for hiring underage children.
Now the Feds are indicting two Human Resources employees for harboring, aiding and abetting document fraud and identity theft. These are significant charges which should have been implemented with the intial warrant. Hopefully soon, the Employer were also be indicted for these charges.
Agriprocessors human resources employees indicted
The Gazette CEDAR RAPIDS — The two Agriprocessors, Inc. human resources employees charged last week were indicted Wednesday by a grand jury in U.S. District Court.Laura Althouse, 38 of Postville, was charged with aiding and abetting document fraud and aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft. Laura Freund, 29, of Fayette, was charged with harboring and aiding and abetting the harboring of undocumented aliens. Both will be arraigned Sept. 24. Althouse works in the human resources department and has payroll duties, and Freund also works in human resources at the kosher meatpacking plant in Postville. The complaint alleges a plant supervisor was in the human resources department assisting employees with the completion of new applications, in new names and using newly acquired false identification documents on May 11, a day before a immigration raid. Althouse was assisting in the process and knew some of the applicants were current employees. Freund was implicated in helping undocumented alien employees obtain false identification documents, according to the complaint.If convicted, Althouse faces up to 12 years in federal prison and Freund faces up to five years.

Postville Update: Owners Continue to go Scot Free While Underling Latino Supervisors Plea Bargains Prove Owners´ Guilt!

The Rubashkins are happy they continue to go unpunished as their Latino flunkies are forced to take the rap!

The Des Moines Register Reports:

Agriprocessors supervisor faces additional charge
GRANT SCHULTE gschulte@dmreg.com • August 19, 2008
A manager who allegedly helped hide illegal workers at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville will plead guilty Wednesday to charges tied to his role in the secret operation that employed nearly 700 illegal immigrants, according to a court docket published Tuesday. Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza will appear at a change-of-plea hearing at a temporary federal court in Cedar Rapids, according to the online court docket. The news came as U.S. Attorney Matt Dummermuth announced the 35-year-old plant supervisor will face charges that he conspired with his employer to hire the illegal workers. The plea bargain comes three months after federal agents raided the plant at detained 389 immigrant workers. Teig said the investigation remains open, but declined to say whether authorities would charge any other managers.

Two lawyers for Guerrero-Espinoza did not return phone calls seeking comment.Guerrero-Espinoza, who supervised the plant’s beef kill department, allegedly told a group of employees a few days before the raid that they needed new identification papers and Social Security numbers to stay employed. The supervisor allegedly asked workers for photographs and $200 to $220 for new documents.Later, according to the complaint, Guerrero-Espinoza told the employees that they could return to work.

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.”

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.

GOP Pal Employer Going Scot Free as Largest Ever ICE Raid Nets over 390 Illegal Immigrants and Sweeps them to Detention!

On the surface the News reports read like any other Immigration Raid. As Drudge reported:
"Federal officials say a raid at a northeastern Iowa meat processing plant this week was the largest in US History. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say 390 people have been arrested on immigration charges after Monday's raid at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville. The facility is the world's largest kosher meatpacking plant. The raid was aimed at seeking evidence of identity theft, stolen Social Security numbers and people who are in the country illegally. Fifty-six of those arrested have been released on humanitarian grounds; many of them have to take care of children. Others arrested in the raid at are being held in county jails and at a converted fairgrounds."
But peel back the onion and a tale of one of the most heinous employers in US History is revealed. Yet, of all the arrests, no arrests were conducted in the Employer ranks. Let´s investigate:
. In 1987, Rabbi Aaron Rubashkin purchased an unused meat-rendering plant in Postville and turned it into a state-of-the-art facility for producing Glatt kosher meat. Today, AgriProcessors provides 60 percent of the kosher retail meat and 40 percent of the kosher poultry nationally, and most retail chains depend on it for supply. The company was also the sole American packing plant whose products are accepted in Israel.
. Rubashkin Family Members are Large Republican Campaign Contributors.
. The Rubashkins belong to a Hasidic Jewish community called the Lubavitchers, who scrupulously follow the Torah. When the plant initially opened, a few hundred Hasim moved to Postville to help manage and operate the facility. Meanwhile, Postville´s population of 1,300 Lutherans had a mixed relationship with the Hasidim. In 2000, author Bloom detailed the struggles between the Lutherans and the Hassidic Jewish population in a book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America." Throughout the book, Bloom describes the power struggles between the two groups and how both groups remained separate.
. Since 2004, the company has twice been sanctioned by PETA for animal abuses.
According to the Des Moines Register:
. Hiring of Illegal Immigrants: 700 complaints of illegal immigration violations
. ICE agents interviewed a former plant supervisor – identified as “Source 1” – in November 2007, who told them that the plant employed foreign nationals from Mexico, Guatemala and Eastern Europe. Roughly 80 percent of those workers were living illegally in the U.S., the supervisor said.
. A plant employee identified as “Source 11” told authorities that he/she was hired without presenting employment documents or filling out any forms. The worker’s first paycheck had a different person’s name on it, which was then cashed at another part of the plant.
. An Iowa Department of Transportation investigator learned from talking with Des Moines County Treasurer's Office personnel that Source #14 was involved in making applications to title and register cars on behalf of people living in Postville. The source said that, more than 200 times, he or she received application information and money and had the registrations and titles sent to various Burlington/West Burlington addresses. Source #14 then arranged to pick up the documents and sent them to the vehicle owners in Postville.
. The supervisors also described an encounter with the plant’s human resources manager about three separate Social Security cards from different employees with the same number. The human resources manager "laughed when this matter was brought to her attention," the supervisor told federal agents.
. Agriprocessors was notified of more than 1,000 discrepancies between names and Social Security numbers on workers' W-2 forms sent to the IRS between 2002 and 2005.
. “Source 1” told federal agents that some employees were running a methamphetamine lab in the plant, and were bringing weapons to work. The supervisor confronted a higher-level manager about the drugs, and shortly after was fired.
. three-fourths of the company's workers at the end of last year were using fraudulent Social Security numbers.
. Employee Abuse: a supervisor covered the eyes of an employee with duct tape and struck him with a meat hook.
. undocumented workers were paid $5 an hour for their first few months before receiving a pay increase to $6 per hour. The minimum wage in Iowa is $7.25 an hour.
--
ICE RAID: Monday, May 12, 2008
Officials say 314 men and 76 women were initially taken into custody by ICE agents. Of that number, 56 have been released on humanitarian grounds, typically because their arrest would leave a child with no custodian. Those arrested are being held in county jails and at a fairgrounds.
--
So now we get to WHY the Raids:
. RUBASHKIN TARGET OF ONGOING STATE & FEDERAL LABOR PROBE – Rubashkin Alleged to Employ Underage Illegal Workers Paid Under the Table, Fake OSHA Report
. The Des Moines Register is reporting United Food and Commercial Workers Union leadership asked ICE not to raid Agriprocessors.
Why?
Because there is an ongoing Iowa and federal labor law violations investigation of Agriprocessors and the union fears Rubashkin will use the raid to intimidate workers and throw the next unionization vote.
Mark Lauritsen, International Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers, wrote a May 2 letter to ICE: ICE action could result in employees leaving the plant, interfering with a government investigation that would “ultimately uncover unscrupulous employer acts,” he said.
IN OTHER WORDS, THE ICE RAID IS PROTECTING THE EMPLOYER FROM FURTHER LEGAL ACTIONS AGAINST THEM!

Update: Tuesday, May 13, 2008
RUBASHKIN OPEN FOR BUSINESS AS USUAL
The slaughter line is operating this morning at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa. The I.C.E. raid, carried out yesterday in conjunction with 14 other federal and state agencies, only stopped production yesterday.

No Prison Time for Employers, Meanwhile Illegal Immigrants Build the Fences and Paid $60K

"Neither the judge nor the young prosecutor could name even a single U.S. employer who went to jail for hiring illegal immigrants even though the practice is widespread."

Forbes Reports - Associated Press
Immigration Crackdown Hits Fence Builder
By ELLIOT SPAGAT 01.12.08, 2:56 PM ET SAN DIEGO -
That the government wanted to put Mel Kay behind a prison fence is an irony, though one that neither he nor his accusers would find amusing. Mel Kay builds fences. His was the largest fence-building company in Southern California; he rode the nation's housing boom to $150 million in annual sales. His fences are just about everywhere - at gated subdivisions, on military bases, at prisons. He even built fences at two immigration jails, a Border Patrol station and the U.S.-Mexico border. Which is the second irony, because he admits now that many of his company's fences were built by illegal immigrants. Federal authorities knew it, and they went after him tenaciously, determined to send him to prison as an example to other employers who hire undocumented workers. They had plenty of evidence. Prosecutors determined that about a third of his 750 workers were illegal immigrants. They told Kay's lawyers of videotaped interviews with about a dozen employees who had been caught in raids at Golden State Fence Co. in 1999 or 2004 - exposed as illegal immigrants - and then were rehired by the company, regardless. Kay thought he was toast. But this lean, sun-beaten 65-year-old had two things going for him: He was tough, and he was tender.
The story of Kay's rise and fall - based on court documents, ...Kay returned to California to start Golden State Fence in 1984 with five employees and was on a roll by the early 1990s. Almost from the start, he relied on illegal immigrants. Nearly all his workers took advantage of the 1986 amnesty but he soon struggled to fill jobs. He shunned applicants who came in off the street, instead relying on Mexican employees to recruit family and friends. "They were more trustworthy and more apt to stay long term," Kay told The Associated Press at his office in Riverside, a sparsely furnished room with a white linoleum floor and an empty desktop. Kay admits depending on illegal workers as the housing market grew in the 1990s and exploded in the first half of this decade. "I'd never experienced any boom like that," he says. "It was almost out of control." Installing fences is punishing labor, especially in Southern California's desert heat and rocky soil. Kay requires job applicants to raise 60 pounds over their heads and move wheelbarrows of dirt. About 75 percent of his workers are Hispanic. But Kay compensated his employees well. New hires start at $35,000 a year and jump to about $60,000 after three years. Full-time workers get health and life insurance, sick leave and at least two weeks vacation.

The business prospered. An array of small companies bought fences from Kay's factory. Other customers include major homebuilders and the government, which accounts for about 30 percent of revenue.
In letters to the judge in Kay's case, they lauded the variety of Golden State's designs and materials and its track record on big projects. "Golden State Fence is able to take on the larger government fencing projects that most other fence companies just simply could not perform on," read one from the Army Corps of Engineers, which hired Golden State for work on several military bases and, in 1997, on a mile-long stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego.
Joe Flores was Mel Kay's nemesis. The El Paso, Texas, native and son of Mexican immigrants began policing federal immigration laws in 1987 after 10 years as a Texas state trooper. A year earlier, the government made it a crime to hire an illegal immigrant; the offense became a felony in 1996. Now, at age 53, he is a group supervisor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. From his office on the second floor of downtown San Diego's federal building, he directed the raid on Golden State Fence. Flores strongly believes that American jobs should go to citizens and legal residents. He is skeptical of Kay's claims that Golden State couldn't find enough of them to dig ditches for $60,000 a year, with benefits. "If you're paying good wages, why risk your company? Why put yourself in that situation?" Flores says.
The government's enthusiasm for punishing employers waned after Flores' first few years on the job and, by the mid-1990s, his focus turned to illegal immigrants who got into gangs and violent crime.
The Bush administration has renewed enforcement at factories and offices but scored few legal victories. There are many reasons: some 7 million illegal immigrants are part of America's work force, making a crackdown on more than a handful impossible for prosecutors with limited resources; employers easily shield themselves by saying they didn't know illegal workers had phony documents; prosecutors refuse cases because it is extremely difficult to prove businesses are complicit. In one prominent case, a federal jury acquitted Tyson Foods Inc., the nation's largest poultry producer, and three former managers in 2003 of conspiring to hire illegal immigrants. Some recent raids, from meatpacker Swift & Co. last year to McDonald's restaurants in Reno, Nev., in September, produced big arrest tallies but all were rank-and-file workers.

Golden State Fence was different. Investigators stumbled on the company when they were auditing military contractors in a nationwide post-Sept. 11 crackdown and determined 48 of 182 workers at Golden State's Oceanside branch were illegal. In the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 21, 2004, agents arrested 12 as they left home.
As they pored over files, investigators discovered a government audit in 1999 that found 15 employees were illegal immigrants, including three they had just arrested. They needed to find them and have them admit they were rehired with the company's knowledge. It is a crime only if 10 workers are knowingly hired.
Investigators picked up two outside their homes. They staked out a warehouse across the street from the Oceanside branch and videotaped workers as they came and went for a week, resulting in six arrests.
There would be other evidence against Kay - 368 workers had Social Security numbers that did not match their names - but rehiring workers flagged in the audits would be the crux of the government's case.
Kay says he ignored the warnings not to rehire the men: "They had been working for me a long time."
"I didn't figure it was that big a deal," he says. "I didn't give it enough thought. Poor decision on my part. Very poor decision." Shortly after Kay arrived at work at 5 a.m. on Nov. 30, 2005, federal agents stormed his 14-acre headquarters in an industrial part of Riverside, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. In 14 hours, they would fill a 16-foot truck with boxes of documents and computer hard drives. Simultaneously, a helicopter with a loudspeaker circled over nearly 200 agents who raided the largest of Kay's 10 branches, in Oceanside, north of San Diego. In all, agents arrested 17 employees at their homes or as they came to load their trucks at 6 a.m.
Finally, Kay recognized he had a very serious problem. But it was too late. He signed up for a voluntary federal program to electronically verify a job applicant's immigration status, which the White House wanted to make mandatory under a proposed immigration overhaul that failed last year. Only 37,000 of an estimated 7.5 million eligible employers have enrolled. Kay's new, high-profile immigration attorney insisted he stop relying on employee referrals to fill jobs. The company put help-wanted ads in newspapers and on its fleet of 225 trucks. It sought workers at job fairs, halfway houses, probation departments, unemployment offices and community colleges. Kay offered to plead guilty to a felony and pay a fine but Carol Lam, then the top federal prosecutor in San Diego, took a hard line. Lam was one of eight U.S. attorneys who were fired last year by the Bush administration after criticism that she was lax on immigration. Kay says Lam wanted him to serve 18 months in prison. Prosecutors were ready to file criminal charges against 10 to 12 managers.
The government relented, agreeing to recommend six months prison time and charge only Kay and Michael McLaughlin, manager of the Oceanside branch. .."They give you some ground, you give them some ground," Kay says. "That's the best I could get." When Kay arrived at his sentencing in March, U.S. District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz said his initial instinct was to send him to prison. Moskowitz joined the federal bench in 1986, the year that President Reagan gave amnesty to 2.7 million illegal immigrants and promised to crack down on employers who broke the law. The crackdown never came, and the judge felt it was long overdue. Neither the judge nor the young prosecutor could name even a single U.S. employer who went to jail for hiring illegal immigrants even though the practice is widespread.
Moskowitz knew Kay's prison term could set a national precedent to determine how much time other employers would spend behind bars. But Moskowitz noted Kay's strong work ethic and support from employees who overflowed the courtroom into the hallway. The judge said he couldn't ignore that Kay and McLaughlin treated employees like family. After a federal raid forced them to fire about 200 illegal immigrants, they paid each two weeks' severance, though they were not legally obligated. "Are these the poster children for being the first ones to get jail time?" Moskowitz asked. "I think the answer is no."
Kay and McLaughlin were confined to their homes for six months with permission to leave only to go to the office. Golden State and the two executives forfeited $5 million in a deal with prosecutors.
Still, the government didn't get the six months prison time that it badly wanted. Flores struggles to hide his disappointment. "Jail time would have really sent a strong message," he says. Kay, whose electronic monitor was removed from his ankle in September, doubts the government can mount an effective crackdown on employers. "On a smaller scale there are thousands of companies like me in Southern California," he says. "Just go down, take out a company and bust 'em. They won't do it. They don't have the manpower." Kay has postponed retirement for three years, when he finishes probation, and is trying to repair a business that was stricken by bad publicity. The Navy, his largest government contractor, wrote in February that he was "lacking in the honesty and integrity necessary to do business responsibly with the Federal Government." It banned him from seeking federal contracts but allowed him to finish existing projects, including a job awarded in 2006 for a chain-link barrier at a Border Patrol station east of San Diego.
Golden State appealed, noting that it revamped hiring and that none of its illegal workers were ever found on a federal job. The Navy lifted the ban in June.
Golden State, now renamed Fenceworks Inc., has seen sales slow severely amid the housing slump and its payroll has shrunk to 450. Kay says most of the workers hired at halfway houses and job fairs didn't pan out. Kay, a longtime Republican, hopes the government overhauls laws soon to permit some illegal immigrants to stay in the United States. If not, he says, he may struggle to fill jobs when the housing market rebounds. Meanwhile, Kay is relying more on government work. One contract he bid on, but did not get: a seven-mile extension of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in California.