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.

Local Mayor´s Dogs are Murdered!! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO AMERICA? ARE WE ALL LOSING OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES?

What is Happening??? Why are we ALL losing our Civil Liberties? Can the "powers that be" storm in and shoot up your dogs? Your Family? What is happening in America?!?!? Are we willingly allowing our Civil Liberties to be stolen from us?? This reminds me of Arpaio´s Racial Profiling Sweeps happening now in Maricopa County!!

Mayor wants federal probe after SWAT raids house, kills dogs (CNN) -- A Maryland mayor is asking the federal government to investigate why SWAT team members burst into his home without knocking and shot his two dogs to death in an investigation into a drug smuggling scheme. "This has been a difficult week and a half for us," Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, said Thursday. "We lost our family dogs. We did it at the hands of sheriff's deputies who burst through our front door, rifles blazing." The raid last week was led by the Prince George's County Police Department, with the sheriff's special operations team assisting, after a package of marijuana was sent to Calvo's home. Authorities say the package was part of a scheme in which drugs are mailed to unknowing recipients and then intercepted.
Calvo said he had just returned home from walking his two Labrador retrievers, Chase and Payton, when his mother-in-law told him a package had arrived for his wife, Trinity Tomsic. Moments later, Calvo was in his room changing for a meeting when he heard commotion downstairs.
"The door flew open," he said. "I heard gunfire shoot off. There was a brief pause and more gunfire."
Calvo said he was brought downstairs at gunpoint in his boxer shorts, handcuffed and forced onto the floor with his mother-in-law near the carcass of one of dead dogs. "I noticed my two dead dogs lying in pools of their own blood," Calvo said. Calvo said his mother-in-law is still recovering from the incident.
"She got the worst of it," Calvo said. "She was literally in the kitchen, cooking a lovely pasta dish, and they brought down the door and shot our dogs." While he was being held, Calvo said, he told police he is the town's mayor, but they didn't believe him. Berwyn Heights has its own police force, he said, but Prince George's County police did not notify the municipal authorities of their interest in his home or the package.
"They didn't know my name. All they knew was my wife's name. They matched that to the registration of the car," Calvo said. "It was that lack of communication that really led to what has really been the most traumatic experience of our lives." After the raid, arrests were made in the package interception scheme.
The incident has prompted the couple to call for a federal investigation because, they say, they don't believe police are capable of conducting an internal investigation. "They've said they've done nothing wrong," Calvo said. "I didn't sign up for this fight, but I think what we have to do now is make changes to how Prince George's County police and Prince George's County sheriff's department operate." Calvo said authorities entered his home without knocking and refused to show him a warrant when he requested one. But Prince George's County Police Department spokeswoman Sharon Taylor said legal counsel had informed her that "no-knock" warrants do not exist in Maryland. Taylor said authorities were acting on a warrant issued based on information available to them at the time. "This warrant was for permission to search the premises," she said. "The special operations team that supported us made a decision about the necessity of entry at the point of being on the scene." "No-knock" warrants have drawn criticism before. In Atlanta, Georgia, Kathryn Johnston, 92, was shot to death by police in a botched drug raid involving such a warrant in November. Taylor, a self-described dog lover, expressed sympathy for the loss of Calvo's dogs, but stopped short of apologizing for the incident.
"We've done these similar kinds of operations over and over again, to the tune of removing billions of dollars of drugs from the community and without people or animals being harmed," she said. "We don't want any of our operations to result in the injury or loss of anybody, and certainly not animals." The deputies have said they killed the two animals because they felt threatened. "I would say that the dogs presented a threat, I would imagine, to the special operations situation," Taylor said. Meanwhile, Calvo and his wife said members of the community have expressed sympathy and concern about the incident. At a news conference Thursday, Tomsic tearfully recalled a recent encounter with a neighbor who used to wave at the couple as they walked Payton and Chase. "She gave me a big hug," Tomsic said. "She said, 'If the police shot your dogs dead and did this to you, how can I trust them?' "

Congressman Gutierrez: Postville, a Political Ploy by the Bush Administration!

Now that the PRO Blogosphere has made Postville front page news, Congressman Luis Gutierrez says the Bush Administration used Postville and Agriprocessors as a political ploy.

The DesMoines Register reports:

Postville raid a political ploy
By TONY LEYS • tleys@dmreg.com • July 26, 2008
Postville, Ia. – The Bush administration tried to score political points by ordering unusually harsh penalties for hundreds of undocumented workers swept up in an immigration raid here, Illinois congressman said Saturday.“I think they’re kowtowing to the most xenophobic, anti-immigrant heart and base of the Republican Party because there’s an election coming up,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez said.The Chicago Democrat made the allegation in an interview after an emotional meeting with about 100 people at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church. He said top White House officials actually favor reforming immigration laws to make it easier for workers to come here, but they ordered the May raid so it would look like they were cracking down.

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.

Agriprocessors, Confident their PAC Money will Keep Them From Being Charged, Hires Compliance Officer! (former US Attornery - wink-wink!)

Agriprocessors is so confident their GOP PAC Money will keep them from being criminally charged, they have hired Jim Martin, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri to serve as Compliance Officer to "monitor Agriprocessor´s compliance with state and federal laws." (wink - wink)

Agriprocessor´s, the largest and most blatant-heinous of all employers hiring and exploiting illegal immigrants, continues to go uncharged for their crimes whiles hundreds of workers were treated like ANIMALS and sent to Cattle Barns to wait for charges to be filed. Then they were subject to Cattle Barn prosecution. Most are now in Prison or Deported.

Agriprocessors Owners continue to go scot free, rubbing their freedom in the noses of Pro CIR supporters, naming their so called Compliance Officer! (The PROs rub their heads asking "Why doesn´t America Care?)

Meanhwhile, the media and the majority of the American Public have shown limited interest in identifying root cause or in penalizing the root cause, the employers, Agriprocessors. SHAMEFUL!!!

The DesMoines Register Reports:

Agriprocessors, Inc. in Postville has hired a former federal prosecutor to monitor the meat company’s compliance with state and federal laws, a spokesman announced today.Jim Martin, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, will serve as the company’s corporate compliance officer starting immediately, according to a news release. Martin heads the Prevene Group, a St. Louis firm that helps companies comply with laws.“Agriprocessors’ 800 jobs are important to Postville and northern Iowa, along with the observant Jewish community across the country that relies on them for meat and poultry,” Martin said in the statement. “Agriprocessors can meet the needs of those who depend on the company and operate in compliance with all laws, and I intend to see that happen.”

The new hire came less than a month after federal immigration agents stormed the kosher meat-processing plant in what was later deemed the largest single-site raid in U.S. history. Nearly 400 illegal immigrant workers were arrested, and 305 were charged with immigration-related felonies.The bust also exposed allegations of physical and verbal abuse by the plant’s managers, though none have been charged.

-----------

From an observers perspective, it is very clear the exploited workers and all Latinos have been raked over the coals and this exploitation and abuse will continue while the employers and cronies to the Administration continue to flaunt their abuse.

Now, more than ever, all PRO Comprehensive Immigration Reform supporters must UNITE and Protest the irregularities by the ABUSERS, the Employers, and those that support them!

RNC Crony ´Agriprocessors´ Still in Business. Owners Unpunished!

Craig from ProjectUSA (an ANTI website) wrote a brilliant blog about the heinous Employer ´Agriprocessors.´
As I wrote a few weeks ago, on May 13, ICE swept through the Agriprocessors´plant and swept 390 migrants away in the largest raid in US History. As Craig wrote, "The 390 detainees who were working in Agriprocessors’ slaughterhouse are the vanilla surface of a much darker story underneath—a deeply troubling story that demands the owners of Agriprocessors, among others, be prosecuted under the full weight of the law."
Craig´s research indicates the Agriprocessor owners have a much darker history.

Agriprocessors..have two lucrative and pernicious schemes going:
Scheme 1: The recruitment, hiring and exploitation of desperate Guatemalans and other Latino workers, driving wages down to bare subsistence to work in its slaughterhouse.
Scheme 2: The Fraudulent Sale of EW-3 Visas to Chinese Nationals. The Chinese Nationals pay $30K for each visa, through which they may obtain a Green Card. This results in thousands of green cards delivered each year through fraudulent means -- fraudently claiming the United States has run out of native-born meat-cutters and then, with the help of American Immigration Lawyers Association member Christopher Teras, securing work visas for foreigners worth $30,000 each on the street in Guangzhou. The end result is millions of dollars in profit for Agriprocessors.
Please read Craig´s detailed report for the full report.

I agree with Craig. "If this story doesn’t end with significant prison sentences handed down for Agriprocessor owners, there is, as they say, no justice."

I again say, ANTIs and PROs should come to agreement on sanctioning, imprisoning the Business Owners, particularly Agriprocessors for their heinous crimes!

LATE BREAKING NEWS: from The Jewish Press
Agriprocessors Founder Orders Shake-Up
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Mounting pressure from Jewish groups and members of Congress has led the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the United States to start searching for a new CEO less than two weeks after federal agents arrested nearly 400 of its employees in a massive immigration raid. Aaron Rubashkin, the founder of Agriprocessors, announced May 23 that he intends to find a replacement for his son Sholom as company CEO.


Note: Some Blogs are reporting this is Agriprocessors way of hiding the owner´s son in Israel to avoid Legal Action against him!

ILLEGAL MMIGRATION: How ANTIs Totally Misunderstand and Misrepresent the PRO Perspective

ANTI pundits and Bloggers constantly mis-interpret the Immigration debate. The National Review published this article titled “Immigration 2008.” The author, Victor Davis Hanson (the famed author of “Mexifornia”), shares his opinion on the current status of Immigration. While he does recognize the importance of this issue, particularly in relation to the Presidential Campaign, I found it incredible that he totally missed the mark when he attempted to interpret the PRO perspective. (or did he purposely misinterpret it?)
Hanson lists the following as the PRO perspective:
1. Open Borders
2. Carrying the Mexican Flag
3. Sending the poor to the US; Mexico remittances
Hanson´s list is totally off the mark. Most PROs, including most PRO Humanitarian organizations, call for:
1. Secure Borders, more trained BP agents
2. Employer Sanctions, especially those that exploit workers. (e.g. Agriprocessors)
3. Fix the Immigration process; Clean up the backlog; End the quid pro quo of the process so people apply and come here the right way.
4. Pathway to citizenship for those here
5. End to Detention Centers, Racial Profiling and End the Scape-Goating (ala Dobbs and Limbaugh) of all Latinos over these Immigration Issues.
The Mexican flag has little to nothing to do with this entire discussion, except for the fact the media and some ANTI groups utilize this ploy as a rallying call to stir up anger. Another rallying call Hanson mentions is the promotion of a Black vs Brown race war and Asians vs Brown educational imbalances. All ludicrous rhetoric to incite anger. Additionally, most PROs care nothing about Remittances to Mexico.

Hanson lists the following as the ANTI perspective:
1. Secure Borders
2. Mass Deportation
What I found interesting is, Hanson himself said Mass Deportation is a “losing issue.” Hanson continues, “(Mass Deportation) the practicality and morality of which are rarely considered by those rightly calling for an end to illegal immigration. Busing every illegal alien back to Mexico right now might resemble the past messy partition of India and Pakistan, and reopen the issue in a way that Democrats can legitimately exploit.”

Another interesting observation: Nowhere on the ANTI agenda do we see ANYTHING in regards to Employer Sanctions. Nor does he talk about the joy the ANTIs revel in when they discuss Sweeps (e.g. Arpaio Sweeps) or Detention Centers (most crony owned private prisons).

Hanson´s recommendations:
Close the border now through fencing, more agents, employer sanctions, enforcement of the law, and verifiable identification. Restore faith in the melting pot by insisting that new legal arrivals learn English and the customs and protocols of the United States.Explain to the Mexican and Central American governments that using the United States to avoid addressing internal problems — while making easy dollars off the backs of their own expatriate laborers — is over.
What is amazing is, most of Hanson´s recommendations fall in line with the PRO recommendations. It is the ANTIs that so adamantly promote deportation of the 12M here and refuse to consider any path to citizenship for those here.

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.