Iowa, U.S. gripped by trial in wake of historic immigrant raid

Source: USA Today

By Grant Schulte, USA TODAY
DES MOINES — The man who managed a once-dominant kosher meat empire heads to trial Tuesday to face allegations involving what U.S. Attorney Matt Dummermuth describes as the largest single-site immigration raid in United States history.

The trial, in which Sholom Rubashkin will challenge 91 fraud-related charges, marks the latest turn in a case that dealt a blow to the northeastern Iowa town of Postville and stoked the national debate over immigration. Publicity surrounding the case has been so intense that the trial was moved from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Sioux Falls, S.D.

The 22-year-old plant, Agriprocessors, which had grown into the nation's largest kosher meat supplier under the Rubashkin family, had become Postville's largest employer, attracting a blend of New York rabbis, immigrant workers and longtime Iowans.


By Jonathan D. Woods, Iowa City Gazette, via AP
Sholom Rubashkin, former manager of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, faces 91 fraud-related charges.


The trial's outcome "will affect our community, especially the Jewish community, quite a lot," said Paul Ouderkirk, pastor at St. Bridget's Catholic Church in Postville.


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-10-11-illegal-immigration-raid-kosher-meatpacking-plant-Iowa_N.htm

If a US community must harbor illegal immigrants in order to survive, it should dry up and blow away and the sooner the better. Let's hope this one does.

after several months and continued labor violations the employment agency broke the contract and sent the texans home. then the company recruited ethiopians from minneapolis. of course that did`t work out either.

i remember when the orthodox jews bought a packing plant in spencer, iowa in the early 70`s...they were not very popular at all. unless things out there has changed since the 70`s i`m not sure if they`ll get a fair trial.

"i remember when the orthodox jews bought a packing plant in spencer,"

all of them?.. how collective. boy, there must have been some haggling in that town.

my mother`s nephew worked there. it was a cultural clash that was ugly. i never got back to find out if anything had changed..hell the packing plant probably shut done years ago.

no, sorry for the jab there.just remember we are addressing individuals rather than entire cultures.. im familiar with the Spencer situation and remember hearing of it being a pretty big catalyst for change in a town that was first to perhaps experience a taste of what was to come for many others. i drive by the grain elevator in Denison Iowa on the way to visit family in Dunlap. 11 people died after being locked in a box car for perhaps four months there.

this isnt an issue of the identity of the owner of the plant, although id bet the farm that an independent owner faces far more scrutiny than a corporate owned mega-plant. its not like it takes an outsider to exploit cheap labor for profits, just a connected individual to get away with it.

By Marissa Brostoff
Published June 19, 2008, issue of June 27, 2008

When two progressively minded Orthodox rabbinical students sat down last week at a Manhattan kosher dairy restaurant with four Lubavitch businessmen, radically different segments of the Orthodox world collided, and sparks flew.

The rabbinical students and a young rabbi who accompanied them were from Uri L’Tzedek, a liberal Orthodox activist group organizing a boycott of Agriprocessors, the country’s largest kosher meatpacking company. The businessmen were tied to that company, which has come under fire for alleged labor violations.

Last month’s government raid on the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, which had been employing hundreds of undocumented workers, created the unusual circumstances under which the meeting took place. Progressive Jewish groups had long criticized Agriprocessors for its treatment of employees and animals, but the raid precipitated the first significant outcry from within the Orthodox world — that is, from within the primary community that buys kosher meat.

Late last month, Uri L’Tzedek leaders released an open letter to Agriprocessors owner Aaron Rubashkin asking that the company obey all applicable labor laws and that it empower a third party to monitor its progress. It cited allegations that the plant has hired child labor, paid its workers below minimum wage and employed supervisors who mistreated employees ...

http://www.forward.com/articles/13619/

A whole mess of folk have been unhappy with Agriprocessors. A brief search will net you bunches of stories like this one

we went out there every summer when i was a kid. the last time was in the early 70`s.

The comments so far show that, unfortunately, some liberals - or perhaps "so-called liberals" - can be as petty, bigoted and close-minded as far too many conservatives. Or does "innocent until proven guilty" only apply to people who look like you or whose cause you support?

Do a little research, and put aside your prejudice, and you'll find that while there were irregularities, this case resembles a witch hunt more than anything else.

(Have you heard of any large immigration raids in the California wine country? Texas meat plants? Etc.)

And I'm not at all blaming the immigrants for wanting to come here for a better life. This guy took advantage of these people and should be held accountable. He is scum.

I loathe the fact that some think the DU is a den for xenophobia.

Are you fucking KIDDING me? This guy wouldn't pay any better than slave wages for filthy, dangerous work - so he had to turn to illegal aliens to fill the jobs because he couldn't find any LEGAL workers (American OR alien) who were willing to take his jobs at the crap wages he was offering.

He directed the criminal facilitation of false identities through illegally obtained SSNs, created and/or acquired fraudulent identification papers, and filed completely false alien work permits with authorities. This man paid below-standard wages to people who were in this country illegally and he did it all for one reason - corporate greed.

"IRREGULARITIES" MY ASS!

These "irregularities" are called CRIMINAL ACTS for profit. They're called BREAKING THE LAW to make more money. He's no better than any other criminal. In fact, he's worse than many. Why do you attempt to downplay his crimes by calling them "irregularities" when everybody (and I do mean everybody) knows he's a criminal?

And what's all of this CRAP you're spewing about bigotry and prejudice on DU? I've read every comment in this thread. I saw NOTHING which called out the man's race, color, creed, sexual orientation, national origin, or choice of facial hair. These "so-called liberals" (as you call us) see a corporate criminal caught in the act with the evidence having appeared all over the MSM - newspaper, TV, AND radio - and we want to see this dirtbag brought to justice.

Or, are you claiming that greedy corporate scumbags are now a protected class in the USA?

"Irregularities". What a load of bullshit.

Celtic Merlin
Carlinist

The Rubashkins are evil. I don't care what ethnicity or faith they are. They treat their employees like slaves, and should be prosecuted accordingly.

By Lynda Waddington 9/9/08 11:59 AM

The Iowa Attorney General’s Office has filed a criminal complaint and affidavit today in Allamakee County District Court listing more than 9,000 alleged violations of Iowa child labor laws at Agriprocessors in Postville ...

http://iowaindependent.com/5235/agriprocessors-charged-with-9000-child-labor-law-violations

Talk about trying to downplay the criminal acts of a criminal (No, they weren't "irregularities"). Where does this jackass find the balls to DEFEND a criminal like Sholom Rubashkin? What possesses somebody to ride to the aid of greedy scum like him? Do you think it's a case of shared ethnicity/faith? Garthranzz DOES raise that possibility in his comment. What a horrible basis THAT would be for such actions.....

I guess that only garthranzz can answer the questions I posed, but I'd doubt the veracity of the answers anyway. Defending a rampant criminal like Sholom Rubashkin kinda shoots one's credibility in the ass, huh?

Celtic Merlin
Carlinist

No, I haven't heard of any large immigration raids in the California wine country. But I have heard those folks and the agriculture folks in the Central Valley complain about laws restricting migrant workers. So possibly they, gasp, comply with the laws.

Federal agents raided six Swift & Co. processing plants in six states on Tuesday in search of illegal immigrants who stole the identities of lawful U.S. residents and used their Social Security numbers to get jobs at the beef and pork company.

Agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency executed search warrants at Swift's processing facilities in Greeley, Colo.; Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn.

ICE officials didn't give the total number of people arrested but said workers were being apprehended on administrative immigration violations and in some cases, existing criminal arrest warrants. The warrants allow federal agents to arrest anyone at the plant who is in the United States illegally.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,236044,00.html


so unless you have some specific evidence this firm was targeted for being jewish, i don't buy your story.

If a company hires illegals they should be punished, fined or put out of business.

— Simone Landon

Undocumented immigrants are criminals but law-breaking employers should get off scot free—at least, that seems to be the position of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ...

In the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history, ICE detained 389 workers, mainly Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants, from the Postville Agriprocessors plant. Federal prosecutors went on to press criminal charges related to identity theft against 306 of them.

The raid is the most glaring example of ICE operating as a “rogue agency,” said Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which was trying to organize the plant. ICE’s actions not only halted the UFCW’s drive but also disrupted an Iowa Department of Labor (DOL) investigation into abuses at the plant.

Worried that ICE was preparing a raid on Agriprocessors, UFCW Vice President Mark Lauritsen sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security in early May requesting ICE not interfere with ongoing DOL investigations. Though the agency has a policy not to obstruct other government bodies, ICE ignored the letter ...

http://www.labornotes.org/node/1902

Had ICE been smart a year ago today, it would have claimed—with credibility—that it raided the Postville, Iowa Agriprocessors plant in order to save the workers it seized that infamous day. Postville and the 2008 ICE raid is not simply the story of failed immigration policy; it is the story of years of indifference to the exploitation of the nation’s low-wage workforce.

Long before the raid thrust Postville into the lexicon of the immigrant rights movement, Agriprocessors exploited its workforce with impunity. For years, fear, intimidation, injuries, short-pay, and under-age hiring characterized everyday life on the packinghouse lines. State and federal agencies responsible for enforcement of labor and safety laws were absent, indifferent, or simply lax. Many who rightly voiced outrage over the raid had not raised their voices over worker treatment at the plant that for years had gone relatively unnoticed, unspoken, and unchallenged.

In its early days, Agriprocessors held out the usual promise of jobs, economic development, and new taxes for its host community. The company also provided background for the lasting vision of American life—that peoples of profoundly differing backgrounds might live well together in harmony and community. In 2000 author Stephen Bloom portrayed that vision and its wrinkles in his book named after the town. Postville—the book and the documentary—told the storied cultural clash of Hasidic Jews as they entered community life in rural Iowa to open and operate a kosher packinghouse, and touched on the rising number of immigrants recruited to its jobs. But the stories of Postville’s Agriprocessor workers themselves went largely unnoticed until 2006.

In a courageous and hard-hitting series that year Nathaniel Popper of The Jewish Daily Forward described worker conditions at Agriprocessors in all their rawness, including wages beginning at $6.25 an hour. The Forward headline for May 26, 2006 read “In Iowa Meat Plant, ‘Jungle’ Breeds Fear, Injury, Short Pay.” The stories of worker conditions and abuse were appalling even to seasoned organizers, as were company efforts to undercut organizing efforts launched by the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. In one vile flyer distributed to workers to dissuade them from organizing, the union was portrayed in a crude caricature of the devil ...

http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2009/05/12/post-postville-it%E2%80%99s-about-worker-exploitation-not-ice/

By David B. Caruso, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK — A kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa that was the target of a sweeping immigration raid this year is not the only venue where the plant's owners are locked in a fight over undocumented workers.

Agriprocessors Inc. has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to urge the justices to reconsider their long-held position that workers in the country illegally have a right to join labor unions.

The Supreme Court has yet to decide whether to take the case, but if it does, it could have ramifications for a complicated area of U.S. labor law.

At issue are rules that make it a crime for a company to hire illegal immigrants, yet simultaneously protect those same workers from retaliation for engaging in union activity ...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-09-15-2154832739_x.htm

Agriprocessor argued that the illegal immigrants it hires have no organizing rights

* By Staff Writer

Published in the 4/1/2008 Issue of InsideCounsel.

Dozens of highly publicized workplace raids on companies employing undocumented workers have underscored the risk of ignoring federal immigration laws. But if an employer unknowingly hires undocumented workers, do those workers have the same rights as legal workers to engage in union activity? And if an employer subsequently discovers the workers are here illegally, must he or she still honor those rights ...

The case centers on a September 2005 vote to join the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union by the employees of Agri Processor Co. When the company refused to bargain, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Agri Processor said most of the workers who voted were undocumented aliens and therefore prohibited from unionizing since they did not qualify as "employees" protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). That rendered election results invalid, the company claimed.

The NLRB charged that Agri Processor's refusal to bargain with the workers violated the NLRA. The board said Agri Processor's contention that undocumented aliens are not "employees" protected by the NLRA ignores the act's plain language and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1984 decision in Sure-Tan Inc. v. NLRB. In January, the D.C. Circuit agreed with that ruling in Agri Processor Co. Inc. v. NLRB ...

http://www.insidecounsel.com/Issues/2008/April%202008/Pages/Judge-Protects-Organizing-Rights-of-Undocumented-Workers.aspx

I hope they get hit with a brutal fine.

Hire americans next time.