Immigrant raid halted in 2000 on election fear, ex-agent says

By Tony Leys
Des Moines Register
Aug. 6, 2011

Federal authorities could have spared Postville a great deal of upheaval if they had gone ahead with a planned 2000 immigration raid there instead of waiting nearly eight years to deal with a blatant case of illegal hiring, a retired federal agent says.

Estela Biesemeyer said last week that she and other immigration agents were poised to raid the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in late summer 2000, but their bosses canceled the action because of fears it might affect the presidential election.

Agency administrators were concerned about political blow-back from the raid, because they had heard the plant's owners were friends with U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, she said. Lieberman was the Democrats' vice presidential candidate that year.

The result of the cancellation, she said, was that the kosher meatpacking plant was allowed to expand dramatically, hiring hundreds more illegal immigrants. By the time authorities launched a huge raid there in 2008, the plant was Postville's dominant economic support, and its ensuing bankruptcy threw the town into a tailspin.

Rumors have long swirled that immigration officials knew about the plant's illegal work force but put off action for years. Confirmation came this summer in "Train to Nowhere," a book about immigration written by former Des Moines Register reporter Colleen Krantz.

Biesemeyer's former boss told Krantz about the 2000 raid being canceled abruptly, though his recollection of the exact timing and motive differs from Biesemeyer's.

Biesemeyer was the supervising agent in Des Moines for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and its successor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She retired in 2008, a few months after scores of federal agents charged into the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant and arrested nearly 400 workers in what was then the largest such raid in U.S. history.

Most of the arrested workers were Guatemalans or Mexicans, who served five months in prison before being deported. Hundreds more workers who avoided the raid fled town. The incident made national waves, and local leaders said it devastated the area's economy.

Biesemeyer, who lives in Indianola, said she was in charge of organizing the 2000 raid. Agents had gathered from around the country and search warrants were ready to go when the action was canceled the day before it was to happen, she said. "I was shocked that at the last minute they scrubbed it."

If the raid had gone through as planned, it probably would have caused much less disruption than the 2008 raid, because Agriprocessors was a much smaller operation than it would become, Biesemeyer said. She said agents in 2000 expected to arrest about 100 Agriprocessors workers, most of whom were from eastern Europe.

The agency was well aware that most of the plant's workers were illegal immigrants, she said, but for some reason, the problem was allowed to fester and grow for nearly eight more years after the canceled raid. "We could have curbed some of the goings-on that were happening there," she said.

She saw no indication that Lieberman asked anyone to scrub the raid. But she said her supervisors were concerned that the raid could affect the election, and they didn't want the agency to get involved in a political mess. She said she never understood why they didn't resume the plan after the election was over.

Immigration agencies were reorganized in 2003, with most of the workplace enforcement duties transferred to the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for ICE, said last week that he couldn't comment on "outrageous statements" Biesemeyer might make as a private citizen. He said he doubted any records from the 2000 incident still existed, because they involved the defunct INS. "When federal agencies go away, they really go away," he said.

A spokeswoman for Lieberman said the senator never intervened in the matter, and she said his staff doubts he ever had contact with the Rubashkin family, which owned Agriprocessors.

Alonzo Martinez, a retired immigration agent who was Biesemeyer's boss, said last week that he was mystified by the cancellation of the 2000 raid. Martinez disputed Biesemeyer's recollection that he told her the raid was being canceled because of concerns about Lieberman, though he said he recalls higher-ups mentioning the senator's name during discussions of the planned raid.

Martinez also said his recollection is that the raid was supposed to be in early November, possibly on Election Day, not in late summer. He said immigration agents planned to raid both Agriprocessors and a nearby turkey processing plant, which later burned and went out of business.

Some observers have speculated that Agriprocessors was able to operate for years with a blatantly illegal work force because it was in a relatively remote area and was "off the radar screen." Martinez chuckled at that theory. "It was always on the radar screen," he said.

The Rev. Steve Brackett, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Postville, agreed with Biesemeyer that a 2000 raid would have caused less disruption and pain. He generally dislikes workplace immigration raids, because he contends they shatter families without addressing underlying immigration problems. But, he said, if federal authorities wanted to deal with the Postville situation, they shouldn't have let it go on for years.

"Because nothing was done sooner, it allowed the business plan of the Rubashkins to continue down a line that was unsustainable," Brackett said.

Sholom Rubashkin, who ran the plant, is serving a 27-year prison sentence on federal fraud convictions. After the 2008 raid, Agriprocessors went into bankruptcy and briefly closed. It then was sold to a Montreal businessman, who reopened it under the name Agri-Star.

Federal prosecutors in Cedar Rapids, who presumably would have helped draw up search warrants for the 2000 raid, declined to comment on the new revelations.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110807/NEWS01/108070318/Immigrant-raid-halted-in-2000-on-election-fear-ex-agent-says?News

Mexican citizen sentenced for faking identity

By JEFF REINITZ
WCF Courier
Saturday, March 5, 2011

POSTVILLE, Iowa - A Mexican citizen has been sentenced to prison for using another person's identity to gain employment in Postville.

Andres Hernandez-Marmolejo, 39, of Michoacan, Mexico, secured a job at Agri Star Meat and Poultry in December 2009 allegedly using a Missouri drivers license and a fake Social Security card identifying him as "Adam Garcia," according to court records.

Agri Star is the successor of the Agriprocessors kosher meat packing plant. Agriprocessors went into bankruptcy shortly after a May 2008 immigration raid that uncovered 389 undocumented workers.

On Thursday, Judge Linda Reade sentenced Hernandez to two years and three months in prison following a guilty plea to charges of making a false claim of citizenship on an employment form, possessing false identity documents and aggravated identity theft.

He must serve three years of supervised release and is subject to deportation after his prison time.

According to court records, Hernandez was arrested for drunken driving in Winneshiek County in July 2010 and claimed he was a U.S. citizen. In the probe that followed, agents with Homeland Security Investigations - formerly Immigration and Customs Enforcement - found the bogus Social Security card and Missouri ID with Garcia's name in Hernandez's wallet.

The Social Security number apparently belonged to an actual person.

Hernandez later admitted he paid $1,200 card and used it to apply at Agri Star. He told agents he knew the number belonged to a real person, records state.

Investigators also checked his I-9 employment form at the company and found he had checked a box claiming to be a U.S. citizen.

As part of the hiring process, Agri Star verifies the Social Security numbers of applicants to ensure they were actually issued as opposed to being a string of random digits, court records state.

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6327459931741489654

Rubashkin prosecutor's claim to set record straight falls short

BY NATHAN LEWIN AND GUY COOK, ATTORNEYS FOR SHOLOM RUBASHKIN
Dubuque Telegraph Herald
June 30, 2010

U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose has decided that "silence is no longer in order" ("Setting the record straight on Rubashkin, Agriprocessors," June 23). Should a U.S. Attorney take offense at the exercise of First Amendment rights by American citizens who support Sholom Rubashkin and publicly denounce how he has been treated?

By publishing a letter that makes assertions never proved or tested in court, Ms. Rose has opened the propriety of her conduct to discussion in the media.

Nathan Lewin has criticized her in a letter to the Department of Justice. We now challenge her to debate Mr. Lewin on the propriety of the prosecution in a one-hour public session in Des Moines.

This response concerns a few errors in her published defense.

Ms. Rose portrays Postville before the May 12, 2008, raid as beset by fear that necessitated the federal government's "massive enforcement operation." Before the immigration raid Postville was enjoying a substantial economic boom because of Agriprocessors' commercial success and substantial employment at the plant. Fears of deportation, creditors, or a crumbling economy resulted from -- and were not cured by -- the ill-conceived raid.

Can Ms. Rose explain why the Department of Homeland Security has reduced substantially the immigration-raid policy Ms. Rose extols? Have the "highest levels of the United States Departments of Justice and Homeland Security" now decided that the "fears" Ms. Rose graphically describes are in fact caused by immigration raids?

Several U.S. attorneys rejected ICE's raid requests while they were in office. Her office was asked in a formal lawyer's letter to enter the Postville plant peacefully and remove those they found to be illegal aliens, as had been done in Texas. Why was this peaceful proposal rejected?

Ms. Rose praises the "tireless" federal court proceedings that followed the raid. Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish interpreter, wrote a detailed essay condemning the assembly-line process, and a federal civil rights lawsuit attacked the procedure she lavishly praises.

The U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously in May 2009 that the identity-theft felony her office and Judge Linda Reade threatened to use against the aliens to get them to plead guilty in 2008 was inapplicable to their case and was, therefore, misused by the prosecutors and the judge.

Ms. Rose says that Mr. Rubashkin's supporters have painted the prosecutors as "racists, Nazis and zealots."

In fact, no responsible Rubashkin supporter has said or implied that anyone on the prosecution team is a racist or a Nazi.

Her claim that Mr. Rubashkin personally profited from Agriprocessors' funds fails to note that he put personal funds into his father's wholly owned business. Agriprocessor funds paid to Sholom Rubashkin were reimbursements for Agri expenses, repayment of loans Rubashkin made to Agri or funds used for Agri purchases.

Ms. Rose claims that the accusations against her office are "vicious and false" and "ill-informed." But there are many critical accusations that she has failed to answer.

Wasn't Mr. Rubashkin handcuffed and arrested in October 2008 only to generate national publicity? The routine procedure is to tell the defendant's lawyer to bring the client in to plead to the charge.

Why was Mr. Rubashkin imprisoned for 76 days before trial on the office's bogus claim that he could flee to Israel and would be immune from extradition under Israel's "Law of Return?"

Were the charges against Mr. Rubashkin deliberately multiplied by the office through an unprecedented seven superseding indictments to 163 counts to impress the media, the public and the jury?

Why was a 1926 law that has never before in U.S. history been used for criminal prosecution invoked when the charges were based on full payments made by Mr. Rubashkin 10 days late?

Did the office prevent sale of the business to any purchaser who might employ any member of the Rubashkin family in a managerial capacity, thereby making a sale of the business virtually impossible?

A consensus of the legal community, including six former U.S. attorneys general, both liberal and conservative, has objected to Ms. Rose's overzealousness in her initial sentencing recommendation.

We trust that Ms. Rose will debate Mr. Lewin publicly on these important questions concerning the propriety of her office's conduct and tactics.

Lewin is a former Deputy U.S. Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division, teaches Supreme Court litigation at Columbia Law School, and has argued 27 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is principal appellate counsel for Sholom Rubashkin. Cook is a Des Moines-based attorney with Grefe & Sidney and was the principal trial counsel for Sholom Rubashkin.

http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=287729

27-Year Sentence for Plant Manager (Postville)

By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
June 21, 2010

A federal judge in Iowa on Monday announced a prison sentence of 27 years on financial fraud charges for Sholom Rubashkin, the former manager of a kosher meatpacking plant where hundreds of illegal immigrant workers were arrested in a 2008 raid that garnered national attention.

Although the case against Mr. Rubashkin originally centered on immigration charges, during the trial in Cedar Rapids prosecutors focused instead on financial abuses when he was in charge of the Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa.

The sentence, two years more than prosecutors had requested, was unusually high in the recent history of financial crimes — longer than the term for Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron, and L. Dennis Kozlowski, the former chief executive of Tyco.

Lawyers for Mr. Rubashkin said they would appeal the decision, challenging the interpretation of federal sentencing guidelines by Judge Linda R. Reade. The appeal would expand the controversy surrounding the case, which has already included six former United States attorneys general writing to the judge to assail the prosecutors’ logic in seeking a term that could amount to a life sentence.

The sentence is also likely to deepen the belief among some Orthodox Jewish leaders, who have sustained an international campaign on Mr. Rubashkin’s behalf, that he was unfairly tried.

In an unusual procedure, Judge Reade, of the Northern District of Iowa, released a 52-page memorandum on Monday, a day before the scheduled sentencing hearing, in which she explained her decision. She will formally impose the sentence on Tuesday.

The raid on the Postville plant became an emblem of the Bush administration’s tough immigration enforcement strategy. It led to the bankruptcy of Agriprocessors, prison and deportation for hundreds of illegal immigrant workers, and a battered economy for the northeast Iowa town.

Mr. Rubashkin was convicted in November in a federal trial of 86 counts of financial fraud for his mishandling of a revolving loan from First Bank Business Capital of St. Louis, among other loans. After that conviction, prosecutors dismissed separate federal immigration charges.

Judge Reade noted that Mr. Rubashkin had misled the bank repeatedly about the finances of Agriprocessors, ordering employees to create fake invoices and moving cash secretly among different accounts, including some designated for religious purposes. The maneuvers caused a loss to the bank of $26 million, the judge found.

In one episode, Judge Reade wrote, Mr. Rubashkin lent $4,500 to illegal immigrants working in the plant so they could buy new fake identity documents, after immigration authorities had questioned the validity of their original hiring documents.

Judge Reade rejected a defense argument that Mr. Rubashkin was not motivated by greed, but was trying out of loyalty and religious faith to sustain a business owned by his father, Aaron Rubashkin. At the time of the raid, Agriprocessors was the largest kosher beef producer in the country.

“No matter defendant’s motive,” Judge Reade wrote, “he defrauded the victim banks out of millions of dollars.” She also sentenced Mr. Rubashkin to pay almost $27 million in restitution to the institutions.

“There was no bank robbery, he never intended to cheat or steal from anyone,” said Guy Cook, Mr. Rubashkin’s defense lawyer. Mr. Cook said the term was “essentially a life sentence” for Mr. Rubashkin, who is 51, and was especially difficult for Mr. Rubashkin’s 10 children, one of whom is autistic.

Mr. Cook said Mr. Rubashkin, who was informed of the sentence Monday morning in a county jail, had taken the news calmly. “He understands that ultimately what happens to him is in God’s hands,” Mr. Cook said.

Some Jewish leaders were not calm.

“Our community will react just as I have, with shock and disgust,” said Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel, who has organized support for Mr. Rubashkin among Orthodox Jews. Rabbi Lerner said he would try to raise an outcry to bring attention to the appeal.

In a separate state trial in Iowa, Mr. Rubashkin was acquitted earlier this month of all charges that he knowingly employed under-age workers at the Agriprocessors plant.

While state prosecutors were not able to convince the jury that Mr. Rubashkin was personally aware of minors in the plant, the trial evidence showed that at least 29 immigrants under 18 were employed on Agriprocessors’ packing lines, some working night shifts and wielding sharp knives.

The company itself pleaded guilty at the outset of the trial to multiple charges of abuse of under-age laborers. Because Agriprocessors is bankrupt, prosecutors said they would not be able to collect any fine.

Last year, responding to the Agriprocessors events, the Iowa state legislature passed a law making it easier to convict employers who hire child laborers and increasing penalties.

Nearly 400 immigrants who worked in the plant, most from Guatemala, served federal prison sentences of up to five months for identity theft and were deported.

But some of the former workers will be allowed to remain in the United States. To date, 41 of the immigrants have been approved to receive a special visa, known as a U-visa, that is granted to victims of violent abuse, said Sonia Parras Konrad, a lawyer who represented those workers. The workers showed that they had been struck by managers or sexually assaulted while working at Agriprocessors, she said.

Ms. Parras praised Judge Reade’s sentence.

“Even though these labor practices never came out in court, the sentence sends a really good message that this kind of practice will not be tolerated,” she said.

The federal prosecutors had originally sought a life sentence for Mr. Rubashkin, but then revised their request to 25 years. Six former attorneys general, including Janet Reno and Edwin Meese III, wrote to Judge Reade in April arguing that a life sentence would be a severe misreading of the sentencing guidelines as applied to white-collar crimes.

Mr. Skilling was sentenced to 24 years, after the court found he caused losses at Enron of $80 million. Mr. Kozlowski, who was convicted of a $150 million fraud, was sentenced in state court to 8 1/3 to 25 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/us/22iowa.html

Agri Star promises big economic effect in Postville

By Jean Caspers-Simmet
Agri News
simmet@agrinews.com

DES MOINES —Agri Star Meat and Poultry, LLC in Postville is ramping up its beef line.

During a Statehouse news conference last week, Hershey Friedman, CEO of Agri Star Meat and Poultry, said production is at 85 to 90 head of cattle per day. That will increase to 150 daily within the next month and 500 head per day over the next year.

Friedman bought the former Agriprocessors plant out of bankruptcy last summer and renamed it Agri Star. Agriprocessors collapsed in the wake of a massive immigration raid in May 2008 when 389 workers were arrested for immigration violations. The raid resulted in charges of fraud, other criminal violations and allegations of worker mistreatment against the company. Sholom Rubashkin, Agriprocessors vice president, was convicted of 86 federal fraud charges.

Friedman said his goal is to expand the plant so that it can process 1,000 head daily within three years. At it's peak, Agriprocessors processed 500 to 600 head in Postville.

"This is a good day for our employees, our community and Iowa cattle producers," said Friedman. "There has been a tremendous void in the kosher food market. We are excited to bring high quality beef items to our customers while at the same time helping boost the economy of Postville and all of Iowa."

"This return to the kosher market is positive for Iowa cattle producers at a time when the market is rebounding," said Bill Northey, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. "Farmers always benefit when a company with strong business practices, such as Agri Star, chooses to invest in Iowa. This expansion helps Iowa as we regain market as a cattle producer."

"I know the importance of hard work and treating people with respect and integrity," Friedman said. "Eight months ago I came to Iowa and started Agri Star Meat and Poultry. I made a commitment to create a quality work place where we could iprovide quality jobs at fair wages while producing quality chicken, turkey, beef and deli products for kosher consumers. It has been a journey, but we have made real progress."

An additional 125 employees have been hired to fill the immediate need created by the beef operation and more workers will he hired. The company has 560 employees. Low-end production jobs pay $8 to $9 per hour, Friedman said. Wages on the beef line range from $12 to $17.

The plant uses E-Verify, a federal verification system to check credentials of all job applicants.

Since acquiring the plant in August 2009, the company has invested $7.5 million to upgrade and modernize the facility. The Iowa Economic Development Board approved $600,000 from the value-added agricultural component of the Grow Iowa Values Financial Assistance Program last fall. The project was also approved for Enterprise Zone tax benefits.

Postville Mayor Leigh Rekow said the city is still dealing with fallout from Agriprocessors collapse.

He said Friedman has met with him often. Friedman's goals are shared by the city — worker safety, fair wages, legal workers and a thriving plant producing jobs and a better living in the community.

"We're pleased that Hershey has accepted the challenge to make Agri Star a world player in the production of kosher meat and poultry," Rekow said. "We are grateful to have him and his plant in our community. We will survive and get back to where we were and maybe even better."

Citation

Postville mayor says community still recovering from immigration raid

By O. Kay Henderson
Radio Iowa
April 14, 2010

The mayor of Postville says his community is still recovering from what happened at the town’s kosher meat packing plant nearly two years ago. In May of 2008 nearly 400 people were rounded up in an immigration raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville. Postville Mayor Leigh Rekow was in Des Moines Tuesday to celebrate the plant’s rebirth under a new name — Agri Star — and new management.

“As a city we are still dealing with some of the negative issues of the past,” Rekow said. “…Agri Star and its success play a large part in our recovery.” Rekow admits there was some concern that the Agriprocessors plant would not reopen after that raid and the fraud charges filed against the plant’s former manager.

But a Canadian-based company bought the plant eight months ago and spent nearly seven-and-a-half million dollars modernizing the facility, which has been processing kosher chicken and turkey under the “Agri Star” label. In the past two weeks beef production has resumed at the plant and there are 560 people on the payroll today.

“When the other plant closed we were left with a huge amount of empty houses, unpaid taxes, water bills that were owed, heating, electricity, but with the plant opening all these people have hope again,” Rekow said. “And our community has been very positive that we will survive and we will get back to where we were and maybe even be better.”

Agri Star C.E.O. Hershey Friedman says he meets regularly with the mayor and other city officials to build “trust” with the residents of Postville. Friedman says it made sense to keep production in Postville rather than build a new plant elsewhere because people who have expertise in kosher processing have made Postville their home.

“There’s a community in Postville which had been there,” Friedman says. “…There are managers and staffing that had stayed on even after the demise of the previous ownership, so we had the personnel to be able to do a quick start.” According to Friedman, there’s a shortage of American-produced kosher meat and the market is “more than ready to accept” products under the Agri Star brand. According to the mayor of Postville, Friedman has done more than just modernize the plant.

“I mean, it was a challenge because of the reputation, the raid, mistreatment of some of the workers,” Rekow said. “And when (Friedman) bought it, he just became straightforward and said, ‘This is what I’m going to do: the workers are going to be treated good. They will be safe…and we’ll pay a fair wage,’ so it has worked out real well and we’re real happy right now.”

About 35 students have enrolled in the town’s high school in the past two weeks because their parents got jobs at the plant when the beef production line started operating. As word spreads about new jobs at the plant, people have started traveling to Postville, looking for work and putting new strains on the support networks for the poor. The mayor acknowledges the upheaval surrounding the packing plant has been too much for some Postville residents.

“You’ll always have a certain amount of people that don’t accept change. They want things to be the way they were and in this day and age that cannot happen,” Rekow said. “We need to move forward. We have good community leaders that have stepped forward and have done a lot of good things to help Postville progress and we’re moving forward.” Before the raid in 2008, there were about 2,8oo people living in Postville.

A year later, the mayor estimates the population was down by about a thousand. Today — another year later — the population has begun to rebound.

http://www.radioiowa.com/2010/04/14/postville-mayor-says-community-still-recovering-from-immigration-raid/

Rabbinical Leaders Shocked At Life Sentence Request For Rubashkin

Yeshiva World News
April 13, 2010

American Jewish leaders are expressing shock and outrage at the federal government’s recommendation that Sholom Rubashkin be sentenced to life in prison for his role as an executive with the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. It is the latest example of a prosecution that has repeatedly targeted Rubashkin for unfair treatment compared to others who have been accused of employing illegal immigrants or compromising the security of a bank loan.

Supporters of Sholom Rubashkin are being urged to sign an online petition at the “Justice for Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin” Web page at http://justiceforsholom.org and call or e-mail Department of Justice Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison (202-514-3465 ; oipl@usdoj.gov and cc pr@justiceforsholom.org), to protest the recommendations of life in prison for Sholom Rubashkin.

Those interested in assisting the “Equal Justice for Sholom Rubashkin” campaign, or in receiving call to action alerts should e-mail their contact info to info@justiceforsholom.org, or text message ICARE to 347-948-JUST (5878).

Jewish rabbinic leaders have signed a proclamation, urging their Jewish brethren to contact the Justice Department on Rubashkin’s behalf, calling it a “sacred obligation of every individual to participate in this mitzvah.”

The sentencing recommendation submitted by prosecutors to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa is inconsistent with sentencing of other corporate executives convicted in comparable cases. For example, Mark Turkcan, an official First Bank, was recently convicted of bank fraud involving a loss of approximately $35 million, and was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. And Cathy Gieseker was sentenced to nine years in prison for bilking 179 farmers out of more than $27 million. Her motive, unlike Rubashkin and Turkcan, was greed.

Rubashkin was originally indicted for employing illegal immigrants, an offense that has been punished with probation or a short prison term. After seven superseding indictments, prosecutors chose to proceed to trial on alleged bank fraud charges in an effort to increase Rubashkin’s punishment, even though interest was paid on all of the money drawn by the loan and the bank has acknowledged it received approximately $21 million in profit from the interest payments.

The bank loan was not paid in full because of the government’s raid on Agriprocessors, which caused the company to declare bankruptcy. The bank “called” the loan when Agriprocessors could not continue to make its payments. The May 2008 raid included a military style raid and more than 600 federal agents. It was widely criticized for the extreme tactics utilized by prosecutors and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The raid destroyed the company and had disastrous lasting effects on the community of Postville and the kosher meat industry.

Prosecutors and the U.S. Probation Office have calculated the total offense committed by Rubashkin at level 45 under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Because the federal Sentencing Table caps at level 43, the Probation Office has calculated the total offense at level 43. An offense level of 43 is punished with a life sentence under the sentencing guidelines, which the Supreme Court held as no longer mandatory.

Rubashkin’s attorneys have asked the court to impose a sentence no greater than 72 months, noting his positive history and character, his extraordinary family circumstances, and the arbitrary nature of the now-advisory guidelines used by prosecutors. They emphasize that Rubashkin’s conduct was not done for personal gain, that he did not intend any loss to the bank, and that a 72-month sentence would allow the Bureau of Prisons to place Rubashkin in a facility with experience in effectively and humanely incarcerating observant Jewish inmates.

In Rubashkin’s bank-fraud trial, prosecutors were allowed to present inflammatory evidence regarding the employment of illegal workers, even though the judge had previously ruled that such evidence would prejudice the jury and had severed the immigration and bank fraud charges for that reason. The charges regarding harboring illegal immigrants were eventually dropped.

Rubashkin supporters argue That prosecutors have subjected Rubashkin to more severe restrictions and potential punishment than other employers whose work premises were raided by ICE and who were found to have hired larger numbers of illegal workers. The country’s largest meatpacker, Swift & Company, was raided in six different states in December 2006, and almost 1,300 illegal immigrants were arrested. No corporate official of Swift & Company has been prosecuted. RCI, International, a restaurant janitorial service operating in 17 states, was raided in 63 locations in February 2007. Its owners, who paid their employees (all illegal immigrants) in cash, were found to have defrauded the United States of more than $18 million in taxes. Its chief operating officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The owner of a Massachusetts manufacturer of leather goods and handbags raided by ICE in March 2007, when 326 illegal immigrants were arrested, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/53588/Rabbinical-Leaders-Shocked-At-Life-Sentence-Request-For-Rubashkin.html

Immigrants in raid must cover own expenses

The Associated Press
March 14, 2010

Cedar Rapids, Ia. — The 37 former Agriprocessors illegal workers being deported by the end of this month have to pay their way home.

Greg Palmore, with the public affairs office with Immigration Customs and Enforcement, said those being deported were told several weeks ago, so they would have time to arrange for transportation and wrap up any business in the United States.

“We’re trying to make the process as humane as possible,” Palmore said. “We care about these individuals.”

He said that if they have a hardship and cannot pay their way home, immigration will consider the issue and may assist in removing them from the country.

The immigrants must pay their own way home because they are not in immigration custody, as others were after the raid who were removed a few months later.

Palmore said he couldn’t release a total number to be deported or dates of deportation because of security reasons.

The 37 were among the nearly 400 who pleaded guilty to charges related to identity theft. Many received probation and agreed to be deported.

Some were allowed to stay in Iowa because they were designated as material witnesses in criminal trials against former Agriprocessors managers in Postville.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100314/NEWS/100313014/1001/NEWS/Immigrants-in-raid-must-cover-own-expenses

Immigrant Rights and American Values: Postville, Iowa Revisited

By Tracy Kurowski
Blog For Iowa
March 9, 2010

[A week of discussion on the Postville raids begins tonight. See schedule below.]

Are we as a Nation willing to accept mass raids, arrests and the detainment of human beings in a cattle warehouse, as an American value?

It’s been almost two years since Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) committed what was then the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history at the Agriprocessors Plant in Postville, Iowa. Nine hundred officers from ICE swept into the Jewish kosher slaughterhouse arresting 390 men, women and children who worked at the plant, 306 of whom were ultimately held for prosecution.

The raid was so large that by the next day, one third of the town had disappeared, and in the days that followed, general panic ensued. American born children of the immigrants, as well as the undocumented, failed to show up to school for fear of arrest. Hundreds of men, women and children sought sanctuary in St. Bridget’s Catholic Church. Still others simply fled town.

Mothers who were released by ICE so they could care for their unattended children, were forced to wear ankle bracelets and remain under house arrest. Those women were prevented from working and could no longer provide for their families. They depended on the mercy of St. Bridget’s and others who provided charity so they and their children could eat. Stores were closed down across the small town, and school administrators and city officials began to wonder how they were going to pay their bills, now that the number of students and residents had declined overnight.

After the raid, ICE bused the arrested en masse to be detained and to appear before a federal magistrate at an ad hoc facility set up at the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo. County officials later claimed they were misled about the nature of the use of their fairgrounds, where later that year cattle would be brought for the perennial rural American county fair tradition. County officials were led to believe that Homeland Security was going to use the fairgrounds for training exercises.

What instead happened was as shocking then as it remains today. Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, who was one of the federal interpreters hired to work at the subsequent arraignments held at the Waterloo National Cattle Congress, will return to Eastern Iowa this week to discuss his experiences. Before his very eyes, Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw mostly indigenous Guatemalans brought in groups of ten to be tried for not only the civil offense of illegal immigration, but for the much more serious criminal charge of identity theft:

"Driven single-file in groups of ten, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before being marched out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of ten." Link

Thanks to the organizing efforts of the six congregations of Catholic Sisters and colleges and universities in our region, Dr. Camayd-Freixas will lead a discussion titled, Immigrant Rights and American Values.

The presentations are all free, open to the public and pre-registration is not required:

* Monday, March 8th: The Canticle, 841 13th Ave. North, Clinton, 7 p.m.

* Tuesday, March 9: University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls: 2:00 p.m. in the UNI Center for Multicultural Education (109 Maucker Union) and 7:00 p.m. at St. Stephen the Witness Catholic Student Center (1019 W. 23rd St.).

* Wednesday, March 10: Noon at Iowa City Foreign Affairs Council and at 7:00 pm. at Mount Mercy College at Basile Hall, Flaherty Community Room, 1330 Elmhurst Drive, Cedar Rapids.

* Thursday, March 11: Clarke College, Jansen Music Hall in the Atrium, 1550 Clarke Drive, Dubuque, 7 p.m.

When he spoke out about the miscarriage of justice, Dr. Camayd-Freixas did something rare among professional interpreters. But what he witnessed so moved him that within months he had written a profound essay. He also wrote an OPED for the New York Times, directing national attention to the events in Eastern Iowa that the press had already since forgotten. He has since written more essays and appeared before Congress to answer questions raised about the raid.

Regardless of how one feels about immigration, what occurred in the days after the ICE raid in Postville and the damage done to the entire community since – to both the American born and the immigrants – is a shameful episode in how not to deal with American immigration.

It’s hard to imagine with the degraded nature of civic discourse today, that our country is in any mood to deal with immigration. Health care hangs in the balance, job losses continue to drive more and more families to the brink of poverty, and the two wars we fight on the other side of the planet continue to drain resources, cause untold deaths and return soldiers home with physical and emotional scars.

Yet this is a discussion that as a country of immigrants, in a world where gym shoes and television sets have more rights to cross borders than human beings, we have no choice but to bring into the light of day. Ignoring the issue won’t make it go away, but it may encourage other heartless bureaucrats to repeat the horrors of May 12, 2008.

Are we as a nation willing to accept mass raids and arrests, and detainment of human beings in a cattle warehouse, as an American value?

Tracy Kurowski has been active in the labor movement for ten years, first as a member of AFSCME 3506, when she taught adult education classes at the City Colleges of Chicago. She moved to the Quad Cities in 2007 where she worked as political coordinator with the Quad City Federation of Labor, and as a caseworker for Congressman Bruce Braley from 2007 - 2009.

http://www.blogforiowa.com/blog/_archives/2010/3/8/4474443.html

10 former Agriprocessors workers to be deported

By Ron Adams
The Associated Press
March 10, 2010

POSTVILLE, Iowa - Ten undocumented aliens who were arrested and charged in the May 2008 raid at the former Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville have learned that they will be deported by March 31.

The 10 workers, who were all from Mexico, picked up deportation papers Monday at the Immigration Customs and Enforcement office in Cedar Rapids.

The 10 were among the 389 arrested and charged in the raid. They pleaded guilty in court proceedings a few days after the raid.

A volunteer at St. Bridget's Church in Postville, which has been helping the immigrants, says a number of former Agriprocessors workers from Guatemala will receive their paperwork for deportation on Wednesday.

http://www.wctrib.com/event/article/id/64651/

Postville raid in March 7 documentary

March 4, 2010
The Decorah Newspapers

Luther College will host a film screening and discussion session with documentary filmmaker Luis Argueta on Sunday, March 7, featuring Argueta's new documentary production "abUSed: The Postville Raid."

The program, part of Argueta's national speaking tour, will begin at 4 p.m. in Room 206 of Valders Science Hall on the Luther campus. It is open to the public with no charge for admission. Film producer Argueta will begin the program with a short introductory talk about the May 12, 2008 Postville raid conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and about his production of the documentary that chronicles the raid. The screening of "abUSed: The Postville Raid" will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

The award winning director of "The Silence of Neto," Argueta is visiting colleges, churches, synagogues, labor and community centers to present his "abUSed" documentary that tells the story of the small northeast Iowa town decimated by one of largest ICE raids in the history of U.S. immigration law enforcement.

By weaving together the personal stories of the individuals, the families and the town devastated by the raid and its aftermath, the film presents the human face of undocumented immigration and the socioeconomic forces which fuel the worker migration. "abUSed" serves as a cautionary tale against government abuses of constitutional and human rights.

Argueta states the purpose of the tour is to create awareness of the on-going situation in Postville and in the Guatemalan mountain villages from which the workers migrated. He also hopes to contribute to the dialogue on immigration reform in the nation, and raise funds to complete the documentary. Argueta has made eight trips to Postville and eight to Guatemala to compile the information and film the footage for "abUSed." One of the trips to Guatemala was an ICE deportation airplane flight with 120 undocumented workers back to their country of origin. Argueta's tour has included presentations at a variety of venues, including the First Continental Forum on Migration and Peace in Guatemala, the Conference on Irregular Migration for the United Nations permanent delegates in New York City, Yale University, the University of Northern Iowa, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs in Chicago, CUNY Law School, John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan.

About 900 armed ICE agents supported by helicopters, airplanes, state troopers and local police conducted the May 2008 raid in Postville, population 2,320. Agents arrested, handcuffed and chained almost 400 undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico at Agriprocessors, Inc., the largest kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in the country. The arrested workers were transported by bus to the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa, which had been outfitted by the government as a detention and processing facility. Using the threat of imprisonment under an aggravated identity theft statute, a felony that carries a two-year jail term, prosecutors "fast-tracked" the undocumented workers into pleading guilty to document fraud and accepting deportation.

After the raids and the whirlwind legal proceedings, 202 of the workers were deported to Guatemala, returning home to poverty and adversity. In Postville, many businesses failed and many families lost their homes. Dozens of workers and family members were denied authorization to leave the state or to work, forcing them to depend on the charity of the church and community for survival.

Sholom Rubashkin, the former plant general manager of Agriprocessors, Inc., was tried and found guilty of bank fraud, but the federal government dismissed all 72 of the immigration and labor law violations filed against him. Because the allegations of labor abuses, wage theft, child labor law violations and other abuses endured by the immigrants will not be heard in court, "abUSed: The Postville Raid" is one of the few public airings of their voices.

http://www.decorahnewspapers.com/main.asp?SectionID=10&SubSectionID=37&ArticleID=21955

Deportation of Mothers in Iowa Tests Local Charity

By Susan Elan
WeNews correspondent
February 21, 2010

A 2008 immigration raid in Iowa separated women from their children through arrest and deportation with, some say, the children's fate left to chance. An immigration official refutes that, saying women with children were released on humanitarian grounds.

POSTVILLE, Iowa (WOMENSENEWS)--Consuelo Vega, a mother of three, lived and worked in this small town surrounded by cornfields for 11 years.

Then in May 2008, she was arrested, jailed for five months and deported to Mexico following a massive, military-style immigration raid at a Kosher meat processing plant.

Vega's three children remained behind in the care of her older daughter, San Lopez, who was 18 and worked part time at a local bakery while raising her infant son.

Overnight, after her mother's deportation, Lopez's responsibilities multiplied as she took charge of her 12-year-old brother Pedro Lopez and 8-year-old sister Samantha Lopez.

"How many nights I could not sleep wondering what we were going to do the next day," she said. "I had to act like nothing was wrong to help my sister and brother but I was also depressed."

A study by the nonpartisan Urban Institute, based in Washington, D.C., found that for every two immigrants apprehended, one child is left behind.

Potentially thousands of parents and children have been separated as a result of immigration enforcement activities and millions more may be at risk, the researchers said. Two-thirds of the children affected are U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Carl Rusnok, spokesperson for U.S. ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Central Region, said 62 of the nearly 400 arrested in the Postville raid were released on humanitarian grounds, mainly because they were the only caregivers for their children.

"ICE agents at that site and all sites take extraordinary measures to determine if any of those arrested are sole caregivers," Rusnok said.

At the time of her arrest, Vega worked 12-to-16 hour days, six days a week, butchering cattle at Agriprocessors Inc. She earned $6.25 an hour, less than Iowa's hourly minimum wage of $7.25.

When U.S. immigration agents stormed the plant on May 12, 2008, arresting Vega and hundreds of other mostly Mexican and Guatemalan workers, Vega told them she had no children because she feared they would be imprisoned and deported too.
'No One Would Listen'

Shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles and bused 90 miles to the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo for arraignment, Vega later tried to tell immigration officials that she had three children at home. No one would listen, her daughter said.

ICE's Rusnok doubts that could have happened. "During Postville and all our operations we repeatedly ask …whether they have medical issues, sole caregiver issues or any other issues that might cause them to be released on humanitarian grounds," he said.

Lopez said that with no means of communicating with her family for weeks, her mother began an odyssey through a series of detention centers scattered from Leavenworth, Kan., to Tallahassee, Fla., before her deportation to Mexico five months later.

About 40 other mothers arrested during the raid on Agriprocessors had GPS-like devices strapped to their ankles so ICE agents could monitor their movements. The devices caused bruising but could not be removed. It took two hours a day to charge them from an electrical wall outlet.

Often the only breadwinner in the family, the detained mothers were not permitted to work or to leave the state.

"It is a horrible life we are living now," said Maria Ruiz, 33, who came to Postville from Guatemala 11 years ago. The single mother of a 6-year-old U.S.-born son earned $7.25 an hour working in the frigid meat packaging area at Agriprocessors.
Relying on Church Charity

Since her arrest, Ruiz and her son, along with many other detainees and their children, have relied on local Catholic and Lutheran churches to pay for their food, housing, medical and other expenses.

ICE's Rusnok said the women had alternatives. Had they not contested their deportation, they would have been sent to their country of origin and not had to depend on charity. "It is something they chose to do themselves," he said.

http://www.womensenews.org/story/immigration/100219/deportation-mothers-in-iowa-tests-local-charity

Rubashkin bail appeal denied, brother-in-law arrested

By Lynda Waddington
The Iowa Independent
2/19/10

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to act on bail release petitions from Sholom Rubashkin, former day-to-day manager at a now defunct Iowa meatpacking company who was convicted on numerous charges of financial fraud last fall.

The Agriprocessors plant, which was sold through bankruptcy proceedings and now operates under new ownership as AgriStar, was the site of a massive immigration raid in May 2008. Nearly 400 workers, or roughly half of the plant’s workforce, was taken into custody by federal authorities. Within days 76 percent of those detained and charged criminally accepted plea agreements, most being sentenced to five months in federal prison prior to their deportation.

Sholom Rubashkin, the son of Agriprocessors’ founder A. Aaron Rubashkin, was instrumental in daily plant operations, which were shared with is brother, Tzvi “Heshy” Rubashkin, who has not faced criminal charges. Prior to the raid, Agriprocessors was one of the nation’s leading suppliers of kosher meat. After the raid, the company quickly deteriorated.

Sholom was charged with numerous financial fraud and immigration-related offenses, the government electing to first prosecute on the fraud violations. When Sholom was convicted in November of 86 counts related to those violations, the government agreed to table the additional immigration-related offenses.

Since his conviction, Sholom has been held in federal custody, pending sentencing. Members of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community to which the Rubashkins belong, have made numerous pleas on his behalf for bail — all to no avail. The sentencing phase of Rubashkin’s case is expected to get underway next month, and Rubashkin faces a multitude of years in prison.

Yet even as the Rubashkin family prepares to perhaps close one very public criminal case, another has already begun. Milton Balkany, a brother-in-law to Sholom, was arrested this week in New York for allegedly scheming to extort a Connecticut hedge fund out of $4 million. He faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of the allegations.

In 2003 Balkany, who is also known as “the Brooklyn Bundler” for his knack for bundling political campaign contributions, was accused of misappropriating federal grant money intended for the Hebrew school. After he entered into a deferred agreement in 2004 regarding the missing funds, the criminal charges were dropped.

The latest allegations suggest that Balkany used his religious influence with a prison inmate to deter the inmate’s cooperation with police. The information known by the inmate, according to court documents, could have been used against a Connecticut hedge fund, which Balkany supposedly extorted for $4 million in exchange for keeping the inmate quiet. Prosecutors contend that Balkany told the hedge fund’s lawyers that, if they did not pay, he would help the inmate reduce his sentence by instructing him to speak openly with government authorities.

Balkany is currently released on $250,000 bond.

http://iowaindependent.com/28334/rubashkin-bail-appeal-denied-brother-in-law-arrested

One Agriprocessors supervisor to remain in jail, another likely heading there

By Lynda Waddington
The Iowa Independent
1/12/10

The day-to-day manager at a Postville meatpacking plant will stay in federal prison following a decision by U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to deny him bail while he awaits sentencing. The plant’s operation manager also entered a guilty plea Monday to his role in aiding undocumented workers find work at the now defunct slaughterhouse.

Sholom M. Rubashkin, son of Agriprocessors founder A. Aaron Rubashkin, was found guilty in November 2009 on 86 charges of financial fraud and money laundering. His counsel had requested that he be released on bail pending formal sentencing on those charges; however, a panel of three judges from the St. Louis-based Appellate Court denied the motion late last week. An exact sentencing date for Rubashkin has not yet been set, but is anticipated to take place this spring.

Counsel for Rubashkin can continue to appeal the decision.

On Monday, former plant operations manager Brent Beebe admitted in a plea arrangement with federal prosecutors that he brokered deals between Rubashkin and undocumented workers, effectively providing the workers with falsified documents for a cost. The transaction of more than $4,000, according to court records, took place one week before a massive May 2008 immigration raid at the Postville facility.

Beebe remains free on bond, pending sentencing.

Since the raid several members of management at the plant have been probed by federal authorities, and many have been convicted of wrongdoing. The plant itself was sold through bankruptcy and now operates under new leadership as AgriStar. Some former members of plant management, including Rubashkin’s brother, Heshy Rubashkin, continue to provide services to the new plant owners, although the exact extent of their involvement remains unclear.

Due to the trial process, several undocumented workers were detained in Postville as possible key witnesses. Wearing ankle GPS tracking devices, some hoped only for deportation while others began their own legal battles to establish residency in the U.S. Just days following Christmas, most of those detainees were brought to Cedar Rapids where their ankle tracking devices were removed by court officials.

The Rubashkin family and friends, who have rallied around Sholom throughout the process, have hired a New York-based communications firm to represent the interests of an established defense fund. The company has reached out to members of the press and has began a presence on social networking sites.

http://iowaindependent.com/25521/one-agriprocessors-supervisor-to-remain-in-jail-another-likely-heading-there

Basu: Postville's legacy: Fix immigration law

By Rekha Basu
December 23, 2009
The Des Moines Register

Nineteen months after the infamous Postville raid plucked 389 immigrant workers from their jobs at Agriprocessors meat-packing plant, about four dozen will spend their second Christmas here, in limbo.

Twenty already served five months in prison and are slated for deportation. They'd been ordered to remain to testify in the trial of the former company CEO Dec. 2. Then the U.S. Attorney's Office dropped immigration and document fraud charges against Sholom Rubashkin, revealing just how one-sided this enforcement has been. The moral seems to be: Let low-end workers pay for crimes that most benefited those at the top.

Now, the workers are told they're needed as witnesses at another trial. But Rubashkin was the big cheese. He was convicted last month of 86 business fraud offenses. The raid was supposed to be about immigration violations, but only one side paid the price for those.

To understand the disingenuousness, let's start with the charges against the immigrants: They weren't for living or working here unlawfully, but for having forged or stolen ID cards. That spared employers from most responsibility for hiring them, even though several managers were convicted of helping workers obtain fake IDs or at least knowingly accepting them.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan said he can't comment on the dropping of 72 charges of immigration and document fraud against Rubashkin. Instead he pointed to the motion he filed to drop them. It notes that the jury's verdicts on Rubashkin's financial fraud case were based, in part, on his deceiving the bank about harboring illegal employees. Further convictions, argued Deegan, wouldn't affect Rubashkin's overall sentence.

But attorney Sonia Parras, who represented many of the undocumented, argues against picking and choosing which crimes to prosecute, saying, "If you have deported 300 people, you prosecute the person responsible." Parras represents other former plant workers who also will see another Christmas in America. Those 20 to 25 women and children have applied for U-Visas, available under the Violence Against Women Act to victims of exploitation. "Some were raped, some sexually harassed," said Parras. "Some kids were working 16 hours straight, some 12 hours." Two or three supervisors, including a woman, allegedly were primary offenders. Parras says there were probably other victims among the women deported after the raid, though processing was done in such haste, they had no time for a challenge. A recent survey in Iowa showed around 99 percent of immigrant women have witnessed or been victims of workplace sexual exploitation.

Considering they're fighting deportation, these women are hardly a flight risk. But six still are wearing painful and stigmatizing ankle-monitoring bracelets, intended to prevent their fleeing the country. Other bracelets were removed after Parras documented injuries.

The litany of injustices still coming out of the May 2008 raid point to one thing: the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Our policies should have a heart, backbone and basis in reality. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, has introduced a bill in Congress that provides a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria.

It's time to end these costly and disruptive raids, and the hypocrisy and inequality underlying them. It's also time to remove the second-class status from some 12 million people who are prey for exploitation. Let's hope this Christmas is the last anyone has to live between the lines, needed and used but told there's no room for them.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091223/OPINION01/912230331/-1/ENT05/Basu-Postville-s-legacy-Fix-immigration-law

Convicted Agriprocessors supervisor requests revisit of sentence

By Lynda Waddington
The Iowa Independent
12/16/09

The first Agriprocessors supervisor sentenced following a massive immigration raid at the Postville meatpacking plant is requesting the court review his sentence on a belief that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling will mitigate it.

Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, 36, was sentenced to and is serving 36 months in federal prison. Two years of that sentence was a mandatory ruling for aggravated identity theft, according to court documents, and was a term of the plea deal he signed that allowed him to avoid deportation and for his wife and children to return to the U.S. following his prison term. He entered into the plea agreement in late August 2008.

Roughly nine months later, on May 4, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that many of the convictions and sentences given to immigrant detainees from the Postville raid were in error. According to the ruling, federal prosecutors inappropriately used aggravated identity theft laws to prosecute undocumented workers because the prosecution did not prove that the workers knowingly used identities that belonged to other individuals.

“As a matter of ordinary English grammar, it seems natural to read the statute’s word ‘knowingly’ as applying to all subsequently listed elements of the crime,” wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer in the decision.

Other Agriprocessors supervisors, despite being originally charged with aggravated identity theft, had charges removed by the prosecution following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In light of this, attorneys for Guerrero-Espinoza is requesting the court vacate or correct his sentence to reflect what has happened in the other cases and the decision by the Justices. If the request is granted, he could be freed after serving 19 months.

Court documents filed in August 2008 indicated that Guerrero-Espinoza “conspired with others, and aided and abetted his employer, in hiring more than 10 individuals” whom he knew to be undocumented and unable to legally work in the U.S. He was convicted, in part, due to a conversation he had with employees under his supervision on May 7, 2008. At that time Guerrero-Espinoza allegedly told workers he knew to be illegal immigrants that they were going to be terminated and then immediately rehired by Agriprocessors. While this testimony goes directly to the aiding and abetting illegal aliens charge, it does not speak directly to whether Guerrero-Espinoza was aware that the documents used to re-hire the workers stemmed from stolen identities.

Upon the federal conviction of Sholom Rubashkin, former Agriprocessors day-to-day manager, on numerous fraud-related charges, prosecutors have agreed not to seek a second trial on the immigration-related offenses that he faced. Without that trial, it is unlikely that much of the immigration-related evidence gathered at the Agriprocessors site following the 2008 raid, or much of the key witness testimony, will ever be publicly revealed.

http://iowaindependent.com/23857/convicted-agriprocessors-supervisor-requests-revisit-of-sentence

Former Agriprocessors Workers Face Deportation

Associated Press
December 7, 2009

About 30 immigrants arrested in the May 2008 of kosher meat plant Agriprocessors Inc. are currently facing deportation now that they’re no longer needed to testify against former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin.

Last month, federal prosecutors dropped all 72 federal immigration charges against Rubashkin, determining that the cost of a second trial wasn’t necessary since Rubashkin was convicted of 86 counts of financial fraud and is facing more than 1,200 years in prison. As a result, the Des Moines Register is reporting that the immigrants who were allowed to stay and work in the U.S. so they could testify at the second trial are no longer needed and could potentially be deported.

Advocates for the workers are complaining that their voice has been taken away and are questioning the workers’ fates.

“What is their future?” asked the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk, retired pastor of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville, Iowa. “What will the government do with them? Will any recognition be made that they sacrificed two years of their lives?”

Among the 389 illegal immigrants arrested in last year’s raid is 40-year-old Juventino Lopez Pichia and 44-year-old Victor Hugo Sis Tepaz, both of Guatemala. Agriprocessors officials were accused of falsifying documents in order to employ illegal immigrants, and most of the arrested workers were charged with identity theft and served five months in prison, including Pichia and Tepaz. In the months after the raid, Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy. The plant is now under new ownership and has a new name - Agri Star.

http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2009/12/07/former-agriprocessors-workers-face-deportation/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

Postville workers to share their stories on stage

18 months after immigration raid, workers awaiting deportation

By Chris Hubbuch
lacrossetribune.com
Saturday, December 5, 2009

DECORAH, Iowa - They came for the promise of prosperity.

From villages in Guatemala and Mexico to a little town in Iowa. They paid thousands - borrowed from brothers and cousins already in America - to coyotes, smugglers who led them across the desert.

They found jobs skinning cattle and cutting chickens, working 12-hour days in dangerous conditions for $7 an hour.

For this, they got prison.

It's been a year and a half since immigration officials raided the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, where more than 300 workers, mostly from Guatemala and Mexico, were arrested on immigration charges. Most pleaded guilty and were sentenced to five months in prison.

Now, as they wait to be sent home, seven are telling their stories on stage.

After serving their time, 24 of the Postville workers - all government witnesses in a case against the plant manager - were released. A handful settled in nearby Decorah, where church groups helped them find a home.

But the promised work permits were slow to come.

As they struggled to get by on odd jobs, seven of the workers came up with the idea of a play about their experiences.

Over the winter, they would get together and tell stories while Spanish-speaking students and recent Luther College graduates took notes. Playwright Alex Skitolsky helped shape the work.

The play is called "La Historia de Nuestras Vidas" - "The Story of Our Lives." The men recite lines in Spanish, with a written English translation provided.

"When we left from the jail, we thought of this idea because we were trying to get some money to send back to our families," said Oscar Mejia Santos, a 30-year-old from Guatemala.

It's also helped people understand their lives in Postville and their struggles since the raid, said Aaron Junech Vega.

They will perform the play for the 15th time tonight at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Admission is free, though donations are welcome.

Mark Kastel saw the play this summer in Viroqua and was so moved he helped bring it to La Crosse.

As co-founder and policy analyst at the Cornucopia Institute - a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable food production - Kastel saw the play as a reflection on the economics of cheap food. He can remember when meatpackers earned good wages.

"We have farmers going out of business. The people who produce our food are treated in an abusive manner. ... We're supporting companies that won't pay enough so that a domestic worker will take a job," Kastel said.

The men eventually got work permits and found jobs at the Postville plant, now under new management.

The pay is better - most now earn about $11 an hour, though without benefits - but the work still treacherous. The days start at 5:45 a.m. and stretch to 5 p.m.

And last month, Agriprocessors manager Sholom Rubashkin was convicted of 86 fraud charges and may spend the rest of his life in prison. A week later, the government dropped its immigration case, eliminating the need for witnesses.

The actors now face deportation, though they don't know when. A farewell party is scheduled for next weekend at First Lutheran Church.

They look forward to reuniting with wives and children they haven't seen in years, but they don't know if they'll be able to provide for them in a country where they might earn only $7 or $8 a day.

"The situation is really hard. There's not very much work," Junech said.

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/news/local/article_538c2e10-e161-11de-a5f5-001cc4c002e0.html

Agri Workers In Limbo After Rubashkin’s 2nd Trial Is Dropped

Lawyers ‘Don’t Tell Me Anything’
By Nathaniel Popper
The Jewish Daily Forward
Published November 25, 2009, issue of December 04, 2009








Holding up: Former workers at Agriprocessors (far left and right), march with Father Paul Ouderkirk (second from right), the priest at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville, Iowa, during an event earlier this year marking the one-year anniversary of the Postville immigration raid.

For the past year, nearly 40 undocumented immigrants from Latin America have been kept in the United States for one reason: to testify against their former bosses at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant.

On November 19, the same prosecutors who had pushed for the witnesses to be kept in the country quietly announced that the charges were being dropped against the top boss at Agriprocessors, Sholom Rubashkin, who had been accused of illegally aiding and abetting the undocumented immigrants who had worked at Agriprocessors.

The news came a week after the prosecution had won a conviction of Rubashkin on separate bank fraud charges. In a filing, the prosecutors explained that after the bank fraud conviction, any prison sentence that Rubashkin might receive for the immigration charges “would be entirely eclipsed by defendant’s recommended guidelines sentence on the counts for which he has already been convicted.”

For many of the men and women who have been kept in the country to serve as witnesses since being arrested in a massive May 2008 federal immigration raid on the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, the news trickled down slowly and was met with confusion. Laura Castillo, a 24-year-old from Mexico who has been kept in the country as a witness, told the Forward that she found out about the charges being dropped only when she looked at online news sites.

“I have to go on the Internet to learn anything about what is going on with the case,” said Castillo, who has found work doing data entry for a municipal agency in Postville. “The lawyers from the government, they don’t tell me anything.”

In nearby Decorah, Iowa, the job of telling a group of witnesses was left to David Vasquez, a pastor at Luther College who helped nine of the witnesses find housing and support during the last year. Vasquez said the men were disturbed that the bank fraud charges had been deemed important enough for a trial but the immigration charges had not.

“They said to me, ‘If you have money and someone lies to you, that matters — the bank matters,’” Vasquez said. “But the things that they have suffered under — the exploitation at the plant — that is not worth airing or talking about.”

On a more practical level, Vasquez said the news of the charges being dropped has raised new uncertainty for the witnesses about when they will be deported. Six days after the charges were dropped against Rubashkin, the prosecutor released the witnesses in that case, but some of them are set to be witnesses in a trial of a lower-ranking Agriprocessors executive, against whom charges have not been dropped, and whose trial is set to begin in January. Moreover, the move to release the witnesses did little to clear up how deportation proceedings might move ahead. Vasquez said that the witnesses have grown used to living with a constant lack of information and a fear that they may be deported any day.

“They could be here for another year for all we know,” Vasquez said. “We just have no information to figure things out.”

Vasquez said that one of the witnesses had been dropped from the list of witnesses nearly nine months ago and was told then that he would be deported within a month. That man is still awaiting the knock on his door.

“He’s like a running joke,” Vasquez said. “He’s been literally living out of his suitcases for nine months now. He’s just sort of waiting with no way of knowing.”

Sean Barry, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office that is responsible for the prosecution, said that he could not speak about the situation of the witnesses.

The current uncertainty is only the latest trial for the immigrant witnesses in the Agriprocessors case. All of them were arrested in the May 2008 raid on the Agriprocessors plant — and most of them served five-month prison sentences after mass judicial proceedings that were later criticized in congressional hearings.

While most of the jailed workers were immediately deported after their sentences were up, close to 40 were ordered to stay in the country to serve as witnesses against Rubashkin and other higher-ups at Agriprocessors. As the Forward reported last fall, these witnesses were sent back onto the streets with no means of support — and, in some cases, with no clothing other than their prison uniforms. They had to wait for work permits to be processed, and in the meantime they relied entirely on churches in and around Postville for support. It took one of the witnesses nearly six months to receive a work permit.

“They felt it was like another punishment for them,” said Stephen Swift, a court-appointed attorney who is now responsible for representing nine of the witnesses.

Swift said that when he requested that the government help the witnesses, he was told that their status as undocumented immigrants prohibited the government from providing them with any financial support — notwithstanding the fact that the witnesses were being kept in the country at the behest of the government. Swift said that after the witnesses received subpoenas to appear at Rubashkin’s trial — six hours away in South Dakota — he was told that the witnesses would have to pay for their own transportation, housing and food while attending the trial.

Early on, Vasquez and Violetta Aleman, who has helped the workers through Postville’s St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, said that a number of the workers wanted to go back to their homes in Guatemala and Mexico, but they were not allowed to. The young son of one of the witnesses died in Guatemala, but his request to attend the funeral was denied, Aleman and Vasquez say.

Since receiving temporary work permits, the witnesses have gone to work — many of them back at the kosher meat plant in Postville, which was bought by a new owner in August and renamed Agri-Star. Before the raid in 2008, many workers complained about the working conditions and low pay at the plant. Vasquez and Aleman both say that the pay has improved, but they have heard an increasing number of complaints about the same old problems at the plant under the new owners, including verbal abuse from managers, and managers unwilling to provide time off for doctors’ appointments and meetings related to the trials.

“Basically the payment is better, but other than that everything is almost the same,” said Aleman, who works at St. Bridget’s as a liaison to the immigrant workers.

A number of workers requested the day off on Sunday November 22 to attend and speak at a community event about the immigration raids. Those requests were denied.

A lawyer for Agri-Star, Shalom Jacobs, said that “in the future, it would be helpful for organizers of these events to schedule events on a Friday or Saturday when Agri-Star workers have the day off.”

Jacobs said that the hours of the employees at the plant have increased lately as the new owners have ramped up operations at the plant, but he said that the owner, Heshey Friedman, “is not aware of any specific employee complaints.”

“While more improvements are planned, in just 90 days our team has begun taking the necessary steps to bring pride to the plant and the Postville community,” Jacobs said.

Vasquez said that the witnesses he has spoken to are willing to put up with difficult working conditions because of the uncertainty about their future.

“They really have no way of planning for even a week ahead,” Vasquez said. “When you’ve got that, and this may be the last they can work in the United States, they just work.”

Now, the prosecutors’ decision to drop the charges against Rubashkin has given the workers a new source of concern. Father Paul Ouderkirk, the priest at St. Bridget’s, said that he had hoped that the resources his church had spent in taking care of the witnesses would be partially compensated for by the opportunity to hear them tell their stories in court.

“We just felt that it was a matter of justice that they have their time in court to testify and explain that they were mistreated — not only in the plant, but by the government as well,” Ouderkirk said. “This means that all of our work was for naught.”

Castillo, who worked at Agriprocessors after coming to the United States three years ago, said the decision to drop the charges sends the message that Rubashkin did nothing wrong in his dealings with his immigrant workers.

That is the message received by the Rubashkin legal team. His lawyer, Guy Cook, told the Forward, “the charges have been dismissed, and so it’s as if the case had been tried and won.”

“For the witnesses,” Aleman said, “it’s basically a year and a half that they’ve sat here — wasted. For nothing.”

Contact Nathaniel Popper at Popper@forward.com

http://www.forward.com/articles/119661/

Rubashkin appeals court-ordered detention

By Lynda Waddington
The Iowa Independent
11/25/09 3:47 PM

Smoldering culture clashes reignite in Postville

Defense attorneys for Sholom Rubashkin continue to assert that their client, despite being recently convicted on 86 fraud-related charges, is not a flight risk and should be granted bail pending sentencing.

Late last week U.S. District Chief Judge Linda R. Reade ruled that Rubashkin, who served as the on-site manager at a Postville kosher meatpacking plant that was raided by federal authorities in May 2008, should be held without bail, pending his upcoming sentencing on numerous fraud and money laundering charges. This week, defense attorneys for Rubashkin filed an appeal of that decision, and have requested the court to impose more sanctions on their client to ensure his lack of flight.

…Defendant Rubashkin would respectfully submit a continuation of the prior conditions with additional conditions will ensure Defendant’s appearance at sentencing or any other court proceeding. On November 18, 2009, Defendant Rubashkin presented evidence that individuals stood ready and willing to post equity in their homes which totaled nearly $8,000,000. Additionally, sacred religious scrolls of nearly $500,000 were offered; the significance of the same in the Jewish religion, however, is priceless. Additionally, Defendant Rubashkin has requested the Court consider evidence presented at pretrial detention hearing. … Conditions such as curfew, home detention, or home incarceration may be ordered. Moreover, the Court may now subject Defendant Rubashkin to 24-hour armed surveillance and order Defendant Rubashkin to pay for the same…

Rubashkin and his wife, Leah, reside in the Postville area and are in the process of raising 10 children. One of the younger children, a son, has a developmental disability and, according to documents filed with the court, is extremely close to his father.

The Jewish community in Postville and beyond has long argued that Rubashkin’s religious faith and the bonds that he has formed in Iowa would prevent him from fleeing charges or criminal conviction.

In a perhaps naive move to show their solidarity and support of the Rubashkin family, some members of the Jewish community in Postville have placed signs in their windows and yards that placed a photograph of Rubashkin on top of an American flag with the phrase, “Send Sholom Home!” The signs, which area military veterans viewed as being akin to support signs for Prisoners Of War, have reignited cultural unrest within Postville, and are being offered up as further proof that the insular Jewish community there doesn’t fully understand the social ramifications of its actions, however well-meaning.

In the wake of Rubashkin’s conviction, University of Iowa professor Stephen Bloom, who authored a 2000 book about Postville, told The Iowa Independent that he knew “from the very beginning [that] almost all of Sholom Rubashkin’s actions reflected an mind-boggling sense of imperial disregard for just about everything that ethical, law-abiding people hold as plain and simple rules of civic and financial engagement.”

“Rubashkin always played very fast and very loose. He and his lieutenants seemed to be not just above the law, but above how employers and business people normally carry out their everyday tasks. There was an air of supreme arrogance swirling around Rubashkin and his men, particularly when it came to paying bills and accounting for those bills.”

Because the Rubashkin family came to Postville to begin a new community instead of joining with the existing one, Bloom said that a certain culture clash was simply inevitable.

“The larger issue to me wasn’t so much blending into the existing culture, it was a sense that Rubashkin and his men had come to town and really didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything — except making money their way. They were the new guys in Northeast Iowa, and what they said, went. If you didn’t like it, well, that was just too bad,” he said.

The sentiment of “you better get used to how we do business because we call the shots now” was one Bloom and others came to expect from Rubashkin and others within the Jewish community.

Bloom also predicted that the guilty verdict would spur “scores of Rubashkin loyalists to scream” anti-Semitism. Indeed, just hours after Rubashkin was taken into custody, the official a prominent Chabad Web site asserted that Rubashkin had been denied basic religious rights by federal authorities, and in the comments to that post as well as others on the site it has been suggested that “a frumer yid” doesn’t “deserve to be in jail together with goyishe criminals”:

now is certainly not the time to stand in judgement of sholom mordechai to decide whether or nor not he deserves to be in jail. He made some mistakes, I’mm sure he would not repeat, given what he is facing now. However, does a frumer yid deserve to be in a jail together with goyishe criminals? Absolutely NOT! EVERY SINGLE STOP needs to be pulled out to free him! INSTEAD of sending aroisgevorfener e-mails and faxes to stupid goyim – you should be banging down the doors of ALL “shluchim” who sat and ate like chazeirim at a “gala banquet” and who know and have contacts with key political top-dogs, that can have influence with senators, governors, congressmen/women, presidents, etc. THESE ARE THE ONES THAT YOU SHOULD MAKE THIER LIFE A LIVING H**L UNTIL they do something! that’s the only way anything can change for Sholom Mordechai. (al pi tevah) CALL, CALL, CALL, WRITE, FAX, FAX, FAX, 10-20-30 times a day until they poshut go nuts – and then they will do something! WHAT GOOD ARE THEY, AND WHAT GOOD ARE THIER CONNECTIONS IF NOT FOR THIS INYAN!? At least, if they are not doing the Rebbe’s shlichus, let them get a yid out of prison!

http://iowaindependent.com/22829/rubashkin-appeals-court-ordered-detention