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
Showing posts with label Forum on Postville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forum on Postville. Show all posts
Friday, March 12, 2010
Immigrant Rights and American Values: Postville, Iowa Revisited
Monday, August 3, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Post-Postville: A Year After the Raid, Lessons Learned
Jewish Forward Daily, Forum
May 15, 2009.
The controversy over abuses at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa, sparked an intensive bout of soul-searching and intra-communal debate among American Jews — and helped fuel our national discussion about immigration.
A May 2006 investigation into working conditions at the plant by the Forward roiled the Jewish world, and heightened scrutiny of Agriprocessors, the country’s leading producer of kosher meat, and of its owners, the Rubashkins, a Brooklyn-based Lubavitch Hasidic family. But it was the massive federal immigration raid on the plant on May 12, 2008, that put the company in the national spotlight.
To mark the first anniversary of the raid — and the approaching third anniversary of the Forward’s initial report — we asked a diverse group of contributors to reflect on what this episode has taught us about immigration, labor, kosher food and Jewish community and values.
-----------------------------
To Sanctify? Or Desecrate?
By Shmuel Herzfeld
One of the lessons of the Agriprocessors fiasco is that the world around us does not have a narrow, legalistic definition of the word “kosher.” To most of the world, kosher means that a given item is produced in complete accordance with sacred Jewish values. This understanding might be flawed, but it is nevertheless a definite reality.
Consequently, kashrut organizations and the communities that support them have the responsibility of living up to those expectations. We might not want such a responsibility, but we have no choice. Any product that is called kosher by a rabbi must adhere to strict standards of both Jewish law and ethics.
If we fail in this area, we will desecrate God’s name. But if we succeed in this daunting task, His name will be sanctified by our actions.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld is spiritual leader of Ohev Sholom-The National Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
-----------------------------
Help Workers Help Themselves
By Sybil Sanchez
Sadly, the Agriprocessors story is nothing new, although some of its lessons may have to be learned anew.
If the Forward reported similar abuses of workers in a kosher food plant 75 years ago, readers would have known immediately what was needed: U-N-I-O-N. The only way for workers to prevent horrific working conditions is for them to have a voice through their union so that they can defend their most basic rights.
“It is up to the working people to save themselves,” famed labor leader Rose Schneiderman said in the aftermath of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire. “The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”
But with Agriprocessors, we saw how a determined company can thwart workers’ efforts to organize. That’s why we must support the Employee Free Choice Act, to remove hurdles to workers trying to join a union and secure decent contracts — and to stop situations like this from happening again.
Sybil Sanchez is executive director of the Jewish Labor Committee.
-----------------------------
The Rubashkin Rorschach Test
By Avi Shafran
‘Rubashkin,” to me, conjures blackness. No, not as in clothing. As in a Rorschach blot. As a screen onto which people have projected their feelings about Jews, especially Orthodox ones.
A prosecutor and a judge denied former Agriprocessors plant manager Sholom Rubashkin bail in part because, like all Jews, he qualifies for automatic citizenship in Israel. Yes, what you smell is a whiff of the old “dual loyalty” stench.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the Forward reporter who spearheaded the Postville story described the Agriprocessors plant as a place where “Bearded, Orthodox rabbis… buzzed around,” ensuring adherence only to ritual laws and not values. The Orthodox Jew is painted as narrow-minded.
Non-Orthodox rabbis, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and others all eagerly shared their own dark visions of Agriprocessors.
Accusations were accepted as facts, revealing more about the critics than about their target.
So the lessons are not new ones: Jews, to many, are invidious. And the Orthodox have become the Jews’ Jews.
Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.
-----------------------------
Immutable Laws, Changing Times
By Menachem Genack
Though the laws of kashrut are immutable, conditions do change. We at O.U. Kosher adapt to these changes regarding food technology, plant design and all of the technicalities governing the modern production of food.
We also have to be concerned about the legal and ethical environment of the companies we supervise — a reality that the Postville episode underscored. If our field kashrut supervisors observe actions in a plant that break legal or ethical standards, they must report these to senior management — and we will act.
Ultimately, however, kosher-certification agencies such as ours rely on the federal and state agencies that monitor the multitude of workplace issues. But in the case of Agriprocessors, we saw how government itself can perform poorly. The immigration raid, with its helicopters, wholesale arrests, violations of due process and destruction of the local economy was a gross overreaction. Government actions must be proportional and also “kosher.”
Rabbi Menachem Genack is rabbinic administrator and CEO of O.U. Kosher.
-----------------------------
Kosher Questions Awaiting Answers
By Joan Nathan
As someone connected to the Jewish food world, I have followed the Agriprocessors story closely. Frankly, it has not only upset but also embarrassed me.
We’ve learned — and the world has learned — that kosher doesn’t always mean adhering to a higher standard. As a result, this episode has prompted some real soul-searching about the meaning of kashrut: If we eat kosher meat that has been slaughtered without compassion, can we really call it “kosher”? (Indeed, would it not be better to buy meat from a local farm that we know raises and slaughters animals in a humane manner, even if it lacks kosher certification?) And just as we must have compassion for the animals we eat, aren’t we also obligated to respect the dignity of the workers who make this meat available to us?
How we answer these questions will determine how kashrut is perceived both by Jews and by our neighbors.
Joan Nathan, the James Beard Award-winning author of “The New American Cooking” (Knopf, 2005) and host of the PBS series “Jewish Cooking in America,” is currently working on a book about the food of the Jews of France.
-----------------------------
Becoming More Observant Jews
By Jill Jacobs
The revelation that religious Jews were paying poverty wages and endangering workers’ safety in order to produce kosher meat has sparked widespread outrage. But our communal response — in the form of the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek initiative and other similar efforts — showed that many Jews are unwilling to limit their religious observance to ritual practices such as Shabbat and kashrut.
Judaism demands consciousness in every aspect of life, from what we eat to the way we do business. Jewish law mandates standards for relationships between employers and employees, treatment of criminals, care for the poor and other civil matters.
It is easy to condemn Agriprocessors for their violations of both federal and Jewish law. But rather than limit our outrage to the most egregious cases, we should also look inward and ask whether our own institutions treat workers with dignity and pay them enough to support their families.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the rabbi-in-residence at Jewish Funds for Justice and the author of “There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice Through Jewish Law and Tradition” (Jewish Lights, 2009).
-----------------------------
Twice Abused
By Jane Ramsey
In Postville, the Jewish community learned firsthand about a broken immigration system that does not reflect our values.
Workers who had already suffered injustices at the hands of Agriprocessors’ Jewish owners were further abused by federal authorities. They were arrested and convicted on criminal charges without due process. Families were torn apart; men and women were taken away in shackles. Many of those remaining in Postville, including children, were left without means to meet their basic human needs, including food and shelter.
Ensuing Jewish protests and an outpouring of support sprang from our deep wellspring of prophetic and Talmudic values, which demand: “Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and does not do so is punished for the transgressions of the entire world.” Today, as a result of Postville, Jewish communities feel the urgency of the need to prevent further human rights abuses and are mobilizing with allies to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
Jane Ramsey is executive director of the Chicago-based Jewish Council on Urban Affairs.
-----------------------------
Our House Divided
By Stephen G. Bloom
Jewish reaction to the Postville raids showed something most Jews already knew: There is a vast, irreconcilable divide within Judaism. Postville was a crucible. It demonstrated how greatly in opposition competing Jewish groups are today.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews rushed to the defense of the Postville Lubavitchers. More liberal Jews, recognizing the atrocious actions of some of the Lubavitchers in Postville, sought to undo the wrongdoing committed in that bucolic Iowa town.
Despite overwhelming evidence of misconduct in Postville, the Jewish community as a whole is still skittish about challenging the we-are-right, everyone-else-is-wrong mindset that prevails within ultra-Orthodoxy. In fact, if you disagree with certain elements of the ultra-Orthodox community, you’re dismissed as an antisemite or a self-loathing Jew. But that shouldn’t stop people of good will in our community from speaking up. Jews need to condemn all forms of injustice, exploitation and bias — particularly when the wrongdoers are fellow Jews.
Stephen G. Bloom is a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa and the author of “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America” (Harcourt, 2000).
http://forward.com/articles/105674/
May 15, 2009.
The controversy over abuses at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa, sparked an intensive bout of soul-searching and intra-communal debate among American Jews — and helped fuel our national discussion about immigration.
A May 2006 investigation into working conditions at the plant by the Forward roiled the Jewish world, and heightened scrutiny of Agriprocessors, the country’s leading producer of kosher meat, and of its owners, the Rubashkins, a Brooklyn-based Lubavitch Hasidic family. But it was the massive federal immigration raid on the plant on May 12, 2008, that put the company in the national spotlight.
To mark the first anniversary of the raid — and the approaching third anniversary of the Forward’s initial report — we asked a diverse group of contributors to reflect on what this episode has taught us about immigration, labor, kosher food and Jewish community and values.
-----------------------------
To Sanctify? Or Desecrate?
By Shmuel Herzfeld
One of the lessons of the Agriprocessors fiasco is that the world around us does not have a narrow, legalistic definition of the word “kosher.” To most of the world, kosher means that a given item is produced in complete accordance with sacred Jewish values. This understanding might be flawed, but it is nevertheless a definite reality.
Consequently, kashrut organizations and the communities that support them have the responsibility of living up to those expectations. We might not want such a responsibility, but we have no choice. Any product that is called kosher by a rabbi must adhere to strict standards of both Jewish law and ethics.
If we fail in this area, we will desecrate God’s name. But if we succeed in this daunting task, His name will be sanctified by our actions.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld is spiritual leader of Ohev Sholom-The National Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
-----------------------------
Help Workers Help Themselves
By Sybil Sanchez
Sadly, the Agriprocessors story is nothing new, although some of its lessons may have to be learned anew.
If the Forward reported similar abuses of workers in a kosher food plant 75 years ago, readers would have known immediately what was needed: U-N-I-O-N. The only way for workers to prevent horrific working conditions is for them to have a voice through their union so that they can defend their most basic rights.
“It is up to the working people to save themselves,” famed labor leader Rose Schneiderman said in the aftermath of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire. “The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”
But with Agriprocessors, we saw how a determined company can thwart workers’ efforts to organize. That’s why we must support the Employee Free Choice Act, to remove hurdles to workers trying to join a union and secure decent contracts — and to stop situations like this from happening again.
Sybil Sanchez is executive director of the Jewish Labor Committee.
-----------------------------
The Rubashkin Rorschach Test
By Avi Shafran
‘Rubashkin,” to me, conjures blackness. No, not as in clothing. As in a Rorschach blot. As a screen onto which people have projected their feelings about Jews, especially Orthodox ones.
A prosecutor and a judge denied former Agriprocessors plant manager Sholom Rubashkin bail in part because, like all Jews, he qualifies for automatic citizenship in Israel. Yes, what you smell is a whiff of the old “dual loyalty” stench.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the Forward reporter who spearheaded the Postville story described the Agriprocessors plant as a place where “Bearded, Orthodox rabbis… buzzed around,” ensuring adherence only to ritual laws and not values. The Orthodox Jew is painted as narrow-minded.
Non-Orthodox rabbis, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and others all eagerly shared their own dark visions of Agriprocessors.
Accusations were accepted as facts, revealing more about the critics than about their target.
So the lessons are not new ones: Jews, to many, are invidious. And the Orthodox have become the Jews’ Jews.
Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.
-----------------------------
Immutable Laws, Changing Times
By Menachem Genack
Though the laws of kashrut are immutable, conditions do change. We at O.U. Kosher adapt to these changes regarding food technology, plant design and all of the technicalities governing the modern production of food.
We also have to be concerned about the legal and ethical environment of the companies we supervise — a reality that the Postville episode underscored. If our field kashrut supervisors observe actions in a plant that break legal or ethical standards, they must report these to senior management — and we will act.
Ultimately, however, kosher-certification agencies such as ours rely on the federal and state agencies that monitor the multitude of workplace issues. But in the case of Agriprocessors, we saw how government itself can perform poorly. The immigration raid, with its helicopters, wholesale arrests, violations of due process and destruction of the local economy was a gross overreaction. Government actions must be proportional and also “kosher.”
Rabbi Menachem Genack is rabbinic administrator and CEO of O.U. Kosher.
-----------------------------
Kosher Questions Awaiting Answers
By Joan Nathan
As someone connected to the Jewish food world, I have followed the Agriprocessors story closely. Frankly, it has not only upset but also embarrassed me.
We’ve learned — and the world has learned — that kosher doesn’t always mean adhering to a higher standard. As a result, this episode has prompted some real soul-searching about the meaning of kashrut: If we eat kosher meat that has been slaughtered without compassion, can we really call it “kosher”? (Indeed, would it not be better to buy meat from a local farm that we know raises and slaughters animals in a humane manner, even if it lacks kosher certification?) And just as we must have compassion for the animals we eat, aren’t we also obligated to respect the dignity of the workers who make this meat available to us?
How we answer these questions will determine how kashrut is perceived both by Jews and by our neighbors.
Joan Nathan, the James Beard Award-winning author of “The New American Cooking” (Knopf, 2005) and host of the PBS series “Jewish Cooking in America,” is currently working on a book about the food of the Jews of France.
-----------------------------
Becoming More Observant Jews
By Jill Jacobs
The revelation that religious Jews were paying poverty wages and endangering workers’ safety in order to produce kosher meat has sparked widespread outrage. But our communal response — in the form of the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek initiative and other similar efforts — showed that many Jews are unwilling to limit their religious observance to ritual practices such as Shabbat and kashrut.
Judaism demands consciousness in every aspect of life, from what we eat to the way we do business. Jewish law mandates standards for relationships between employers and employees, treatment of criminals, care for the poor and other civil matters.
It is easy to condemn Agriprocessors for their violations of both federal and Jewish law. But rather than limit our outrage to the most egregious cases, we should also look inward and ask whether our own institutions treat workers with dignity and pay them enough to support their families.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the rabbi-in-residence at Jewish Funds for Justice and the author of “There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice Through Jewish Law and Tradition” (Jewish Lights, 2009).
-----------------------------
Twice Abused
By Jane Ramsey
In Postville, the Jewish community learned firsthand about a broken immigration system that does not reflect our values.
Workers who had already suffered injustices at the hands of Agriprocessors’ Jewish owners were further abused by federal authorities. They were arrested and convicted on criminal charges without due process. Families were torn apart; men and women were taken away in shackles. Many of those remaining in Postville, including children, were left without means to meet their basic human needs, including food and shelter.
Ensuing Jewish protests and an outpouring of support sprang from our deep wellspring of prophetic and Talmudic values, which demand: “Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and does not do so is punished for the transgressions of the entire world.” Today, as a result of Postville, Jewish communities feel the urgency of the need to prevent further human rights abuses and are mobilizing with allies to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
Jane Ramsey is executive director of the Chicago-based Jewish Council on Urban Affairs.
-----------------------------
Our House Divided
By Stephen G. Bloom
Jewish reaction to the Postville raids showed something most Jews already knew: There is a vast, irreconcilable divide within Judaism. Postville was a crucible. It demonstrated how greatly in opposition competing Jewish groups are today.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews rushed to the defense of the Postville Lubavitchers. More liberal Jews, recognizing the atrocious actions of some of the Lubavitchers in Postville, sought to undo the wrongdoing committed in that bucolic Iowa town.
Despite overwhelming evidence of misconduct in Postville, the Jewish community as a whole is still skittish about challenging the we-are-right, everyone-else-is-wrong mindset that prevails within ultra-Orthodoxy. In fact, if you disagree with certain elements of the ultra-Orthodox community, you’re dismissed as an antisemite or a self-loathing Jew. But that shouldn’t stop people of good will in our community from speaking up. Jews need to condemn all forms of injustice, exploitation and bias — particularly when the wrongdoers are fellow Jews.
Stephen G. Bloom is a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa and the author of “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America” (Harcourt, 2000).
http://forward.com/articles/105674/
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Immigrant Rights Groups Challenge ID Theft Arrests
By Jennifer Ludden
NPR News
Thursday 24 July 2008
For years, the chief punishment for immigrants caught working illegally in the United States has been deportation. But prosecutors are now bringing criminal charges that include aggravated identity theft, which can bring a hefty prison sentence. Immigrant rights groups and some members of Congress are challenging the practice.
A congressional panel is meeting Thursday to look at the controversial fallout from an immigration raid on an Iowa meat-packing plant in May. Not long ago, illegal immigrants swept up in such raids faced administrative charges and swift deportation. But in recent years, the Bush administration has started bringing criminal charges against immigrants who use fake documents, including stolen Social Security numbers.
After the raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, more than 250 workers were sentenced to five months in prison. Rights groups, defense lawyers and even some judges are questioning the Bush administration's strategy.
Iowa immigration attorney Dan Vondra says he was stunned to see immigrant workers from the plant charged with aggravated identity theft. Congress created that law in 2004 to toughen penalties for the growing problem of identity theft.
Still, Vondra said, "When you think of identity theft, what you really want to target is somebody getting credit cards in your name, ruining your credit, using your name to commit crimes, things of that nature."
The immigrants had bought stolen Social Security numbers to help them find work, Vondra said. In fact, one of the translators at the court proceedings has said the mainly Guatemalan immigrants he encountered had no idea what a Social Security card was - let alone that the numbers on it belonged to real people.
Challenges in the Courts
Last year, another Iowa attorney used that argument in court. Gary Koos' client had been arrested at a concrete company after buying an ID off the street in order to fill out employment forms. Koos didn't think that fit the crime of aggravated identity theft.
"If you want to think of it in legal terms, it would be that a person has to be put upon notice of what the crime is," Koos said. "And in this case, it's knowingly to use someone else's identity. My client didn't know he had someone else's Social Security number, he just had a number."
Koos lost the case on appeal, and his immigrant client is now serving five years in federal prison. But Koos' argument has been backed by other appeals courts - and he thinks the Supreme Court may need to resolve the dispute.
The issue is coming up more often because of another part of the Bush administration's immigration crackdown. More and more companies are using a federal computer program that can detect fake Social Security numbers. But it can't tell when real numbers are used by another person - which has fueled a growing market for stolen IDs.
"The issue is whether people using false identifications should be held accountable for that," said Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in northern Iowa, which prosecuted the Agriprocessors case.
Teig said he didn't know whether any of the workers charged with aggravated ID theft had used Social Security numbers for anything but work. But that's not the point, he said.
"The point is, by the time it happens it's too late. The statute is not just designed to punish, the statute is designed to prevent," Teig said.
A Stiff Mandatory Sentence
To be clear, the Agriprocessors employees did not plead guilty to aggravated ID theft. But because the charge carries a two-year prison sentence as its mandatory minimum, it put pressure on them to accept a plea deal on lesser charges.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has called for a hearing to look at that procedure. She's also an immigration attorney, and she questions whether due process was upheld.
"Hundreds of people were convinced to plead guilty to a crime without really an adequate opportunity to see if they had any remedy under immigration law," Lofgren said. "And of course, now that they've pled guilty to a crime, they have no remedies that they might otherwise have had."
Not all arrested immigrant workers are being sentenced to jail time. But federal immigration officials say incarceration can be an important deterrent. And Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says that some victims of this kind of ID theft suffer financial and legal hardships.
"We think it's tragic and unfortunate when people break the law by coming here," Myers said, "and then break the law again by actually stealing the identity of U.S. citizens."
So far this year, the immigration agency has made more than 900 criminal arrests.
http://www.truthout.org/article/immigrant-rights-groups-challenge-id-theft-arrests
NPR News
Thursday 24 July 2008
For years, the chief punishment for immigrants caught working illegally in the United States has been deportation. But prosecutors are now bringing criminal charges that include aggravated identity theft, which can bring a hefty prison sentence. Immigrant rights groups and some members of Congress are challenging the practice.
A congressional panel is meeting Thursday to look at the controversial fallout from an immigration raid on an Iowa meat-packing plant in May. Not long ago, illegal immigrants swept up in such raids faced administrative charges and swift deportation. But in recent years, the Bush administration has started bringing criminal charges against immigrants who use fake documents, including stolen Social Security numbers.
After the raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, more than 250 workers were sentenced to five months in prison. Rights groups, defense lawyers and even some judges are questioning the Bush administration's strategy.
Iowa immigration attorney Dan Vondra says he was stunned to see immigrant workers from the plant charged with aggravated identity theft. Congress created that law in 2004 to toughen penalties for the growing problem of identity theft.
Still, Vondra said, "When you think of identity theft, what you really want to target is somebody getting credit cards in your name, ruining your credit, using your name to commit crimes, things of that nature."
The immigrants had bought stolen Social Security numbers to help them find work, Vondra said. In fact, one of the translators at the court proceedings has said the mainly Guatemalan immigrants he encountered had no idea what a Social Security card was - let alone that the numbers on it belonged to real people.
Challenges in the Courts
Last year, another Iowa attorney used that argument in court. Gary Koos' client had been arrested at a concrete company after buying an ID off the street in order to fill out employment forms. Koos didn't think that fit the crime of aggravated identity theft.
"If you want to think of it in legal terms, it would be that a person has to be put upon notice of what the crime is," Koos said. "And in this case, it's knowingly to use someone else's identity. My client didn't know he had someone else's Social Security number, he just had a number."
Koos lost the case on appeal, and his immigrant client is now serving five years in federal prison. But Koos' argument has been backed by other appeals courts - and he thinks the Supreme Court may need to resolve the dispute.
The issue is coming up more often because of another part of the Bush administration's immigration crackdown. More and more companies are using a federal computer program that can detect fake Social Security numbers. But it can't tell when real numbers are used by another person - which has fueled a growing market for stolen IDs.
"The issue is whether people using false identifications should be held accountable for that," said Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in northern Iowa, which prosecuted the Agriprocessors case.
Teig said he didn't know whether any of the workers charged with aggravated ID theft had used Social Security numbers for anything but work. But that's not the point, he said.
"The point is, by the time it happens it's too late. The statute is not just designed to punish, the statute is designed to prevent," Teig said.
A Stiff Mandatory Sentence
To be clear, the Agriprocessors employees did not plead guilty to aggravated ID theft. But because the charge carries a two-year prison sentence as its mandatory minimum, it put pressure on them to accept a plea deal on lesser charges.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has called for a hearing to look at that procedure. She's also an immigration attorney, and she questions whether due process was upheld.
"Hundreds of people were convinced to plead guilty to a crime without really an adequate opportunity to see if they had any remedy under immigration law," Lofgren said. "And of course, now that they've pled guilty to a crime, they have no remedies that they might otherwise have had."
Not all arrested immigrant workers are being sentenced to jail time. But federal immigration officials say incarceration can be an important deterrent. And Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says that some victims of this kind of ID theft suffer financial and legal hardships.
"We think it's tragic and unfortunate when people break the law by coming here," Myers said, "and then break the law again by actually stealing the identity of U.S. citizens."
So far this year, the immigration agency has made more than 900 criminal arrests.
http://www.truthout.org/article/immigrant-rights-groups-challenge-id-theft-arrests
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)