By The Associated Press
July 9, 2010
DALLAS — A Dallas County jail guard is facing deportation for allegedly being in the country illegally.
Officials say federal immigration officers arrested 34-year-old Maria Elvia Ross on Friday after a background check revealed her status.
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price says Ross has been working for the department since 2001 and was trying to become a sheriff's deputy. He says a background check revealed her status.
He says finding out was a "shock" and the department should have caught it when she was first hired.
Sheriff spokeswoman Kim Leach says the matter is under investigation.
The Associated Press could not find a phone listing for Ross, and no attorney information was available from authorities.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7101728.html
Showing posts with label Labor Problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labor Problems. Show all posts
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Study: Immigration raids hurt workers' rights
AFL-CIO chastises federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement
BY CINDY CARCAMO
The Orange County Register
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Immigration officials and anti-illegal immigration activists are responding to a union labor coalition's report that criticized immigration workplace enforcement actions that took place during the last presidential administration.
The report issued by the AFL-CIO and American Rights at Work blasted Immigration and Customs Enforcement workplace raids, saying they undermined efforts to protect workers' rights and negatively affected immigrant and native-born workers. The AFL-CIO's report and other groups contend that the workplace raids mostly penalized workers and not the employers.
"ICED OUT: How Immigration Enforcement Has Interfered with Workers' Rights" states that there is a growing body of research that points to a decline in workplace protections. It details how the dramatic increase in immigration enforcement agents, arrests and prosecutions of immigrants in the U.S. has reportedly taken precedence over labor law enforcement.
In Orange County, the most recent and public workplace enforcement action took place in February 2007, netting about 20 workers in Anaheim, Orange and Irvine at places including ESPN Zone, House of Blues, La Brea Bakery, and Dave and Busters.
In response, federal immigration officials this week emphasized the new administration's shift, focusing more on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire people who are working illegally in the country.
"In April, updated worksite enforcement guidance was distributed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which reflects a renewed Department-wide focus targeting criminal aliens and employers who cultivate illegal workplaces by breaking the country's laws and knowingly hiring illegal workers," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a written statement.
"ICE focuses its resources in the worksite enforcement program on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire illegal workers in order to target the root cause of illegal immigration,'' he said.
The 2007 Orange County pre-dawn roundup was part of a national Immigration Customs Enforcement action at restaurants in 17 states. It resulted in the prosecution of executives at janitorial and grounds-keeping service Rosenbaum-Cunningham International (RCI), a Florida-based company that also operated in Michigan.
The prosecution of the employers was an anomaly compared to most cases, the AFL-CIO report contends.
"ICE's failure to uphold the firewall between enforcement of immigration laws and enforcement of labor laws has undercut both policies," Rebecca Smith of the National Employment Law Project, co-author of the report, said in a written statement.
"Employers have been encouraged to violate wage and hour laws, OSHA requirements, and labor laws that protect collective bargaining rights,'' she said. "All workers, both immigrant and native born, are suffering from depressed core labor standards as a result."
Steve Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, contends that the immigration workplace enforcement actions have actually helped unions and native-born workers alike.
"There are clear cases where enforcement made life a lot better for native-born American and legal immigrants at work sites," said Camarota, whose organization is an anti-illegal immigration think tank that favors enforcement of immigration law.
"If you don't' enforce the law you make illegal immigrants attractive to employers and that puts native workers and legal immigrants at a distinct disadvantage because illegal workers will work for less or unsafe, unpleasant conditions,'' he said.
In particular, Camarota cited one of his colleagues' studies, which states that the January 2007 immigration workplace enforcement raid of the Smithfield pork plant in Tar Heel, N.C. led to the hiring of native-born American workers and legal immigrants. In addition, the report contends the raid was a key factor in the later successful creation of a union at the facility.
Camarota contends that immigrant workers – in the country legally and illegally – undermine unions.
"If your concern is low unionization and lack of benefits, and working conditions, if these are your concerns, having a large supply of workers -- legal or not -- is going to undermine those efforts," Camarota said. "A tight labor market is the best friend a union can have or a worker could have."
The AFL-CIO report highlighted case studies across the country -- in California, Texas, Kansas, Florida and Oregon -- examining a series of incidents between 2005 and 2008.
The report accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the following:
•taking enforcement action at the behest of employers, their surrogates, and other police agencies;
•conducting immigration-focused surveillance in the midst of labor disputes;
•conducting enforcement action with full knowledge of an ongoing labor dispute;
•engaging in subterfuge to carry out enforcement actions; and
•directly interfering with the administration of justice by arresting workers on the courthouse steps.
Camarota said he agrees with the report on one point.
"It's fair to say that if you have selective enforcement of immigration laws it certainly can be problematic… in the context that if the law is not being applied uniformly then you open up the possibility that an employer will try to use enforcement against illegal immigrants who are attempting to organize and so forth,'' he said.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/enforcement-immigration-workers-2634189-illegal-report#
BY CINDY CARCAMO
The Orange County Register
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Immigration officials and anti-illegal immigration activists are responding to a union labor coalition's report that criticized immigration workplace enforcement actions that took place during the last presidential administration.
The report issued by the AFL-CIO and American Rights at Work blasted Immigration and Customs Enforcement workplace raids, saying they undermined efforts to protect workers' rights and negatively affected immigrant and native-born workers. The AFL-CIO's report and other groups contend that the workplace raids mostly penalized workers and not the employers.
"ICED OUT: How Immigration Enforcement Has Interfered with Workers' Rights" states that there is a growing body of research that points to a decline in workplace protections. It details how the dramatic increase in immigration enforcement agents, arrests and prosecutions of immigrants in the U.S. has reportedly taken precedence over labor law enforcement.
In Orange County, the most recent and public workplace enforcement action took place in February 2007, netting about 20 workers in Anaheim, Orange and Irvine at places including ESPN Zone, House of Blues, La Brea Bakery, and Dave and Busters.
In response, federal immigration officials this week emphasized the new administration's shift, focusing more on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire people who are working illegally in the country.
"In April, updated worksite enforcement guidance was distributed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which reflects a renewed Department-wide focus targeting criminal aliens and employers who cultivate illegal workplaces by breaking the country's laws and knowingly hiring illegal workers," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a written statement.
"ICE focuses its resources in the worksite enforcement program on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire illegal workers in order to target the root cause of illegal immigration,'' he said.
The 2007 Orange County pre-dawn roundup was part of a national Immigration Customs Enforcement action at restaurants in 17 states. It resulted in the prosecution of executives at janitorial and grounds-keeping service Rosenbaum-Cunningham International (RCI), a Florida-based company that also operated in Michigan.
The prosecution of the employers was an anomaly compared to most cases, the AFL-CIO report contends.
"ICE's failure to uphold the firewall between enforcement of immigration laws and enforcement of labor laws has undercut both policies," Rebecca Smith of the National Employment Law Project, co-author of the report, said in a written statement.
"Employers have been encouraged to violate wage and hour laws, OSHA requirements, and labor laws that protect collective bargaining rights,'' she said. "All workers, both immigrant and native born, are suffering from depressed core labor standards as a result."
Steve Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, contends that the immigration workplace enforcement actions have actually helped unions and native-born workers alike.
"There are clear cases where enforcement made life a lot better for native-born American and legal immigrants at work sites," said Camarota, whose organization is an anti-illegal immigration think tank that favors enforcement of immigration law.
"If you don't' enforce the law you make illegal immigrants attractive to employers and that puts native workers and legal immigrants at a distinct disadvantage because illegal workers will work for less or unsafe, unpleasant conditions,'' he said.
In particular, Camarota cited one of his colleagues' studies, which states that the January 2007 immigration workplace enforcement raid of the Smithfield pork plant in Tar Heel, N.C. led to the hiring of native-born American workers and legal immigrants. In addition, the report contends the raid was a key factor in the later successful creation of a union at the facility.
Camarota contends that immigrant workers – in the country legally and illegally – undermine unions.
"If your concern is low unionization and lack of benefits, and working conditions, if these are your concerns, having a large supply of workers -- legal or not -- is going to undermine those efforts," Camarota said. "A tight labor market is the best friend a union can have or a worker could have."
The AFL-CIO report highlighted case studies across the country -- in California, Texas, Kansas, Florida and Oregon -- examining a series of incidents between 2005 and 2008.
The report accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the following:
•taking enforcement action at the behest of employers, their surrogates, and other police agencies;
•conducting immigration-focused surveillance in the midst of labor disputes;
•conducting enforcement action with full knowledge of an ongoing labor dispute;
•engaging in subterfuge to carry out enforcement actions; and
•directly interfering with the administration of justice by arresting workers on the courthouse steps.
Camarota said he agrees with the report on one point.
"It's fair to say that if you have selective enforcement of immigration laws it certainly can be problematic… in the context that if the law is not being applied uniformly then you open up the possibility that an employer will try to use enforcement against illegal immigrants who are attempting to organize and so forth,'' he said.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/enforcement-immigration-workers-2634189-illegal-report#
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Forgotten Corners of the Economy
By Stephen Franklin
The American Prospect
October 21, 2009
As unemployment rises, the illegal treatment of day laborers only worsens. Where's the government?
Another dead day on the street corner and Gonzalo Mejia is wondering how he will get by. He's been finding work just one or two days a week lately. Worse yet, a contractor recently stiffed him out of $400 worth of pay.
"All the time there is less work," grumbles Mejia, a short, muscular man in his mid-50s. His pals nod in agreement as they wait like hawks, ready to swoop down on the next contractor who pulls up. But it's well past 9 A.M., only three cars have trolled by in search of workers, and hardly anyone has budged off the street.
Yet it is not just the disappearance of work that troubles him and the 150 or so men killing time at Milwaukee and Belmont, once Chicago's busiest street corner for day laborers. Everything has become so difficult, so frustrating, so dangerous. For workers with minimal protections against employers who steal from their wages or sometimes leave them dead or maimed, life has lately become bare existence.
Before the housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed, the day laborers here tried to hold the line with employers at $10 an hour for basic work. Nowadays the going rate has dropped to $8 an hour, and some more desperate workers have grabbed $5-an-hour offers, saying it beats waiting around.
Day laborers here and across the U.S. have long suffered from employers who cheat them out of their wages. But there are more complaints recently about employers who give them bad checks or hire them at one rate and then pay less when the work is done or who vanish when it comes time to pay up.
"They say the job is for two or three days and they'll pay you when it's done. And then they disappear. Most of the guys have the same problems," explains Mejia, who was earning $18 an hour as a carpenter when there was work. Nowadays, he takes $12 an hour if he can get it.
Latino immigrants dominate this and nearly all of Chicago's day-labor street corners. But there has also been a rush of U.S. citizens, many of them newly unemployed or low-wage workers, as well as other immigrant groups.
Some day laborers will even continue working for weeks when they have not been paid. "They need money so desperately; they keep working, hoping to get paid. But they don't, and that's sad," says Kasia Tarczynska, a Polish-speaking worker with the Latino Union of Chicago, which serves day laborers. She works with the Eastern European day laborers -- Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Bosnians, Albanians, and others -- who have been showing up increasingly on Chicago's street corners and who suffer from roughly the same problems and abuses as the rest of the day laborers. Many are also undocumented immigrants and because of their limited English skills and the street corner's pack mentality, they stick to themselves.
The flood of new workers has worsened conditions, say the men and workers from the Latino Union, because the increased supply has driven down the wages that the day laborers had struggled to maintain. But some also have made the work dangerous for themselves and others. "They face the greatest dangers because [many of them] have not done day labor before, and they don't have the training," explains Eric Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Union.
The arrival of new groups of increasingly desperate workers threatens to wipe out a decade of efforts to set pay and safety standards on the nation's street corners, says Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois at Chicago expert on day laborers. He is a co-author of a 2006 national study of day laborers, the first and only one of its kind. It is a grim accounting of what takes place on more than 500 street corners across the U.S. where day laborers gather early each morning to catch the best jobs.
On any single day, about 117,000 day laborers are out looking for work or are on the job, the study said. Three out of four of these workers, according to the study, are undocumented immigrants. But because workers often float in and out of the street-corner job market, it is estimated that as many as half a million people do day labor during the year.
The West Coast accounts for the greatest number of the nation's day laborers, over 40 percent, followed by the East, the Southwest, the South, and the Midwest. About 43 percent of the employers are construction contractors. Another 49 percent are either homeowners or renters. This makes the worker situation even more hazardous, since these employers are unlikely to have safety equipment or know about safety rules.
***
The danger of their work is a reality to the day laborers who reel accounts of falling off buildings, getting hit by falling construction supplies, and being trapped while digging ditches. Their stories help explain the 125 percent spike in the number of Latinos killed in construction jobs between 1992 and 2005, a figure that Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis called "unbearable" in a June speech to safety engineers in Texas. Seventy-five percent of the day laborers contacted in the 2006 survey said their work is dangerous, and one worker in five reported being injured on the job in the last year. But more than half of those injured did not get any medical care for their injuries, mostly because they couldn't afford it or the employer refused to cover them under workers' compensation, according to the survey.
Day laborers often turn to Chicago attorney Jose Rivero because he is willing to file workers' compensation cases against shady contractors with the likelihood of minimal rewards for his clients. It is not uncommon for contractors to file bankruptcy or simply vanish or to threaten workers against taking them to court or reporting them to officials, Rivero adds.
But he has been getting fewer calls lately and doesn't think that is because the work has suddenly become safer. The injuries he sees are "as horrible" as ever. "I think the economy is a big factor," he explains. Workers know that they will be "blackballed" by contractors if they talk to a lawyer, he says. Because they are desperate to hang on to the work, they don't take such risks.
But the day laborers' biggest day-to-day worry, according to the 2006 survey, is getting paid. Nearly half said they had not been paid by an employer in the months just prior to the survey, and another 48 percent told of being underpaid. There has been no comprehensive survey since 2006, but my reporting suggests that these trends are worsening.
Chris Newman, Legal Programs Director for the National Day Labor Organizing Network, which links together several dozen groups that serve day laborers, says the level of wage theft "has been amplified by the [financial stresses] downtown. Before, you would be owed $200, but now it is more likely $2,000." Theodore of the University of Illinois at Chicago adds, "I can't tell if you have unscrupulous employers taking advantage of what's happening or it's the financial problems facing those higher up in the contracting chain."
***
As the ranks of the workers on the streets have swollen in the last decade, day labor activists like Newman have steadily complained about the federal government's failure to stop the wage theft or to halt the unsafe conditions the workers face. Now, they say the Obama administration should take these steps:
First, the Labor Department should increase the ranks of investigators in its Wage and Hour Division, the office responsible for making sure employers do not cheat workers out of their wages. Kim Bobo, author of the recent book Wage Theft in America and head of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based group organization, praises the administration's plans to hire several hundred more investigators. "But that's not enough. They need double the number of investigators," she says.
Second, employers need to live in fear that will they face stiff fines for violating federal wage and worker-safety laws. They should not be allowed to negotiate down the penalties so that overworked federal bureaucrats can clear the cases. The likelihood of serious penalties should increase for employers with repeat violations. "Every time we file a case, [the Labor Department] settles it for 50 cents on the dollar, and that means workers don't get what they are owed," says Bobo, whose organization operates a network of worker centers around the U.S. She adds that the government should make employers' violation records more "transparent" and accessible so businesses can be tracked.
Third, the government should develop direct ties with day-labor and worker centers, creating a system that will regularly inform workers of their rights and educate them on safe workplace practices. Theodore says the government should use the locations as worker development centers, where they can train and improve workers' skills. By authorizing the centers to directly file workers' complaints, the government can also expand its investigative outreach to the workers, he says.
Fourth, federal offices serving day laborers should be more accessible to workers, especially in the case of undocumented immigrants who are both fearful of visiting government buildings and who usually cannot enter them because they lack proper identification. "The agencies are designed to serve bankers, not low-wage workers who cannot make a 3 P.M. meeting," Bobo says. So, too, she says there need to be more government workers able to communicate with the largely Latino day-laborer work force. After the Katrina disaster, the government was hard-pressed, she recalls, to cope with the number of Spanish-speaking day laborers drawn to the recovery work in New Orleans.
To Newman, however, the most important step is "harmonizing" the government's immigration and labor-enforcement policies. "If undocumented immigrants are unable to come forward and form unions and file complaints and get redress from unscrupulous practices, then the bad guys will continue on," he says.
As for prospects of the Labor Department improving its day-to-day performance, he is quite upbeat about Solis. "The team that she is assembling is fantastic," he says. "There are all the indications that the U.S. will get its Labor Department back after eight years of self-mutilation."
Solis, the daughter of Latino farmworker immigrants, tells me her agency is hiring 250 investigators, some of whom will be bilingual. She wanted more, "but we didn't have the money." Besides "looking at increasing penalties" against employers who break the laws, she also plans to create a strike force to focus on firms with the "most egregious abuses." If the companies cooperate, the agency will offer them training and assistance, she says. And if they don't want to comply, "we are not going to sit around," she adds.
The agency will closely investigate how employers who use the government's recovery funds treat their workers. "They better know we are taking a different approach here," she says. As for workers' fears of dealing with a government agency, she vows to increase the agency's links with organizations that "have the trust of the community."
***
Help dealing with abusive employers or those who put him in dangerous situations could not come fast enough for Guillermo Caicero. Not long ago he got into an argument with a contractor who promised him $15 an hour but paid him only $10 an hour when the work was done. He complained and the employer called the police. But the police "didn't do anything," he says.
Four years ago he tumbled off a roof and broke a leg, he says. Several months ago, the 50-year-old day laborer dislocated an arm on the job. Not long ago a pipe also fell and hit his head, sending him to a hospital. But the contractor refused to pay for treatment or time lost, and Caicero was not covered by workers' comp. He went to a county hospital and was able to get free care, Caicero says.
Despite it all, here he is, on the corner, waiting and waiting.
Stephen Franklin is a former labor writer for the Chicago Tribune and author of Three Strikes: Labor's Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans (2001).
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=forgotten_corners_of_the_economy
The American Prospect
October 21, 2009
As unemployment rises, the illegal treatment of day laborers only worsens. Where's the government?
Another dead day on the street corner and Gonzalo Mejia is wondering how he will get by. He's been finding work just one or two days a week lately. Worse yet, a contractor recently stiffed him out of $400 worth of pay.
"All the time there is less work," grumbles Mejia, a short, muscular man in his mid-50s. His pals nod in agreement as they wait like hawks, ready to swoop down on the next contractor who pulls up. But it's well past 9 A.M., only three cars have trolled by in search of workers, and hardly anyone has budged off the street.
Yet it is not just the disappearance of work that troubles him and the 150 or so men killing time at Milwaukee and Belmont, once Chicago's busiest street corner for day laborers. Everything has become so difficult, so frustrating, so dangerous. For workers with minimal protections against employers who steal from their wages or sometimes leave them dead or maimed, life has lately become bare existence.
Before the housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed, the day laborers here tried to hold the line with employers at $10 an hour for basic work. Nowadays the going rate has dropped to $8 an hour, and some more desperate workers have grabbed $5-an-hour offers, saying it beats waiting around.
Day laborers here and across the U.S. have long suffered from employers who cheat them out of their wages. But there are more complaints recently about employers who give them bad checks or hire them at one rate and then pay less when the work is done or who vanish when it comes time to pay up.
"They say the job is for two or three days and they'll pay you when it's done. And then they disappear. Most of the guys have the same problems," explains Mejia, who was earning $18 an hour as a carpenter when there was work. Nowadays, he takes $12 an hour if he can get it.
Latino immigrants dominate this and nearly all of Chicago's day-labor street corners. But there has also been a rush of U.S. citizens, many of them newly unemployed or low-wage workers, as well as other immigrant groups.
Some day laborers will even continue working for weeks when they have not been paid. "They need money so desperately; they keep working, hoping to get paid. But they don't, and that's sad," says Kasia Tarczynska, a Polish-speaking worker with the Latino Union of Chicago, which serves day laborers. She works with the Eastern European day laborers -- Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Bosnians, Albanians, and others -- who have been showing up increasingly on Chicago's street corners and who suffer from roughly the same problems and abuses as the rest of the day laborers. Many are also undocumented immigrants and because of their limited English skills and the street corner's pack mentality, they stick to themselves.
The flood of new workers has worsened conditions, say the men and workers from the Latino Union, because the increased supply has driven down the wages that the day laborers had struggled to maintain. But some also have made the work dangerous for themselves and others. "They face the greatest dangers because [many of them] have not done day labor before, and they don't have the training," explains Eric Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Union.
The arrival of new groups of increasingly desperate workers threatens to wipe out a decade of efforts to set pay and safety standards on the nation's street corners, says Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois at Chicago expert on day laborers. He is a co-author of a 2006 national study of day laborers, the first and only one of its kind. It is a grim accounting of what takes place on more than 500 street corners across the U.S. where day laborers gather early each morning to catch the best jobs.
On any single day, about 117,000 day laborers are out looking for work or are on the job, the study said. Three out of four of these workers, according to the study, are undocumented immigrants. But because workers often float in and out of the street-corner job market, it is estimated that as many as half a million people do day labor during the year.
The West Coast accounts for the greatest number of the nation's day laborers, over 40 percent, followed by the East, the Southwest, the South, and the Midwest. About 43 percent of the employers are construction contractors. Another 49 percent are either homeowners or renters. This makes the worker situation even more hazardous, since these employers are unlikely to have safety equipment or know about safety rules.
***
The danger of their work is a reality to the day laborers who reel accounts of falling off buildings, getting hit by falling construction supplies, and being trapped while digging ditches. Their stories help explain the 125 percent spike in the number of Latinos killed in construction jobs between 1992 and 2005, a figure that Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis called "unbearable" in a June speech to safety engineers in Texas. Seventy-five percent of the day laborers contacted in the 2006 survey said their work is dangerous, and one worker in five reported being injured on the job in the last year. But more than half of those injured did not get any medical care for their injuries, mostly because they couldn't afford it or the employer refused to cover them under workers' compensation, according to the survey.
Day laborers often turn to Chicago attorney Jose Rivero because he is willing to file workers' compensation cases against shady contractors with the likelihood of minimal rewards for his clients. It is not uncommon for contractors to file bankruptcy or simply vanish or to threaten workers against taking them to court or reporting them to officials, Rivero adds.
But he has been getting fewer calls lately and doesn't think that is because the work has suddenly become safer. The injuries he sees are "as horrible" as ever. "I think the economy is a big factor," he explains. Workers know that they will be "blackballed" by contractors if they talk to a lawyer, he says. Because they are desperate to hang on to the work, they don't take such risks.
But the day laborers' biggest day-to-day worry, according to the 2006 survey, is getting paid. Nearly half said they had not been paid by an employer in the months just prior to the survey, and another 48 percent told of being underpaid. There has been no comprehensive survey since 2006, but my reporting suggests that these trends are worsening.
Chris Newman, Legal Programs Director for the National Day Labor Organizing Network, which links together several dozen groups that serve day laborers, says the level of wage theft "has been amplified by the [financial stresses] downtown. Before, you would be owed $200, but now it is more likely $2,000." Theodore of the University of Illinois at Chicago adds, "I can't tell if you have unscrupulous employers taking advantage of what's happening or it's the financial problems facing those higher up in the contracting chain."
***
As the ranks of the workers on the streets have swollen in the last decade, day labor activists like Newman have steadily complained about the federal government's failure to stop the wage theft or to halt the unsafe conditions the workers face. Now, they say the Obama administration should take these steps:
First, the Labor Department should increase the ranks of investigators in its Wage and Hour Division, the office responsible for making sure employers do not cheat workers out of their wages. Kim Bobo, author of the recent book Wage Theft in America and head of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based group organization, praises the administration's plans to hire several hundred more investigators. "But that's not enough. They need double the number of investigators," she says.
Second, employers need to live in fear that will they face stiff fines for violating federal wage and worker-safety laws. They should not be allowed to negotiate down the penalties so that overworked federal bureaucrats can clear the cases. The likelihood of serious penalties should increase for employers with repeat violations. "Every time we file a case, [the Labor Department] settles it for 50 cents on the dollar, and that means workers don't get what they are owed," says Bobo, whose organization operates a network of worker centers around the U.S. She adds that the government should make employers' violation records more "transparent" and accessible so businesses can be tracked.
Third, the government should develop direct ties with day-labor and worker centers, creating a system that will regularly inform workers of their rights and educate them on safe workplace practices. Theodore says the government should use the locations as worker development centers, where they can train and improve workers' skills. By authorizing the centers to directly file workers' complaints, the government can also expand its investigative outreach to the workers, he says.
Fourth, federal offices serving day laborers should be more accessible to workers, especially in the case of undocumented immigrants who are both fearful of visiting government buildings and who usually cannot enter them because they lack proper identification. "The agencies are designed to serve bankers, not low-wage workers who cannot make a 3 P.M. meeting," Bobo says. So, too, she says there need to be more government workers able to communicate with the largely Latino day-laborer work force. After the Katrina disaster, the government was hard-pressed, she recalls, to cope with the number of Spanish-speaking day laborers drawn to the recovery work in New Orleans.
To Newman, however, the most important step is "harmonizing" the government's immigration and labor-enforcement policies. "If undocumented immigrants are unable to come forward and form unions and file complaints and get redress from unscrupulous practices, then the bad guys will continue on," he says.
As for prospects of the Labor Department improving its day-to-day performance, he is quite upbeat about Solis. "The team that she is assembling is fantastic," he says. "There are all the indications that the U.S. will get its Labor Department back after eight years of self-mutilation."
Solis, the daughter of Latino farmworker immigrants, tells me her agency is hiring 250 investigators, some of whom will be bilingual. She wanted more, "but we didn't have the money." Besides "looking at increasing penalties" against employers who break the laws, she also plans to create a strike force to focus on firms with the "most egregious abuses." If the companies cooperate, the agency will offer them training and assistance, she says. And if they don't want to comply, "we are not going to sit around," she adds.
The agency will closely investigate how employers who use the government's recovery funds treat their workers. "They better know we are taking a different approach here," she says. As for workers' fears of dealing with a government agency, she vows to increase the agency's links with organizations that "have the trust of the community."
***
Help dealing with abusive employers or those who put him in dangerous situations could not come fast enough for Guillermo Caicero. Not long ago he got into an argument with a contractor who promised him $15 an hour but paid him only $10 an hour when the work was done. He complained and the employer called the police. But the police "didn't do anything," he says.
Four years ago he tumbled off a roof and broke a leg, he says. Several months ago, the 50-year-old day laborer dislocated an arm on the job. Not long ago a pipe also fell and hit his head, sending him to a hospital. But the contractor refused to pay for treatment or time lost, and Caicero was not covered by workers' comp. He went to a county hospital and was able to get free care, Caicero says.
Despite it all, here he is, on the corner, waiting and waiting.
Stephen Franklin is a former labor writer for the Chicago Tribune and author of Three Strikes: Labor's Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans (2001).
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=forgotten_corners_of_the_economy
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Businesses Cite a Catch-22 After Miss. Immigration Raid
Businesses Cite a Catch-22 After Miss. Immigration Raid
By Spencer S. Hsu, Alejandro Lazo and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 28, 2008; A01
The arrests this week of nearly 600 immigrant workers at a manufacturing plant in Laurel, Miss., are fueling a national debate over a federal system to check new hires' work documents, a program whose expansion the Bush administration has made a cornerstone of its fight against illegal immigration.
In what they called the largest immigration sweep at a single site in U.S. history, federal agents raided a Howard Industries electrical transformer plant Monday despite the fact that the company last year joined the work eligibility system, called E-Verify.
The White House has called the program a key weapon against illegal hiring, proposing to expand it to nearly 200,000 government contractors this fall, covering about 4 million U.S. workers. Thirteen state legislatures have enacted similar legislation, and Congress is debating whether to extend E-Verify this fall.
Major U.S. employers assailed the expanding crackdown, saying it creates a Catch-22. If businesses fail to enroll in E-Verify, they run the risk of a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said. But if they sign up, they face added costs, labor disruptions and discrimination complaints -- as well as the risk that flaws in the program won't stop all illegal hiring or prevent government raids, they said.
"I think it's a mistake on the part of a company to think that simply because they [enroll] that they are going to be protected from any kind of government audit or raid," said Myles Gladstone, vice president of Miller & Long, of Bethesda, a major construction firm based in the Washington area.
At issue is a program that is supposed to help employers abide by laws that bar the hiring of illegal immigrants. E-Verify allows companies to check federal Social Security and immigration databases to determine whether an employee is authorized to work.
However, a key weakness in E-Verify is that while it can determine whether a Social Security number presented by a worker is valid, it often cannot determine whether the number belongs to the applicant. Many workers try to evade detection by using another person's identification.
That was allegedly the case Monday, when dozens of U.S. agents sealed entrances to Howard Industries' Mississippi plant, stopping production while they executed a criminal search warrant for evidence related to aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of Social Security documents and other crimes. A civil search warrant for illegal immigrants was also executed, turning up suspect workers from Mexico, Guatemala, Germany, Peru, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama, the government alleged.
About 475 workers were sent to a detention center in Jena, La., for deportation; 106 were released for humanitarian reasons to tend to a child or a medical condition pending court appearances; nine were juveniles transferred to a refugee resettlement agency, and eight face charges of criminal identity theft.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2008082703931.html?hpid=topnews
By Spencer S. Hsu, Alejandro Lazo and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 28, 2008; A01
The arrests this week of nearly 600 immigrant workers at a manufacturing plant in Laurel, Miss., are fueling a national debate over a federal system to check new hires' work documents, a program whose expansion the Bush administration has made a cornerstone of its fight against illegal immigration.
In what they called the largest immigration sweep at a single site in U.S. history, federal agents raided a Howard Industries electrical transformer plant Monday despite the fact that the company last year joined the work eligibility system, called E-Verify.
The White House has called the program a key weapon against illegal hiring, proposing to expand it to nearly 200,000 government contractors this fall, covering about 4 million U.S. workers. Thirteen state legislatures have enacted similar legislation, and Congress is debating whether to extend E-Verify this fall.
Major U.S. employers assailed the expanding crackdown, saying it creates a Catch-22. If businesses fail to enroll in E-Verify, they run the risk of a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said. But if they sign up, they face added costs, labor disruptions and discrimination complaints -- as well as the risk that flaws in the program won't stop all illegal hiring or prevent government raids, they said.
"I think it's a mistake on the part of a company to think that simply because they [enroll] that they are going to be protected from any kind of government audit or raid," said Myles Gladstone, vice president of Miller & Long, of Bethesda, a major construction firm based in the Washington area.
At issue is a program that is supposed to help employers abide by laws that bar the hiring of illegal immigrants. E-Verify allows companies to check federal Social Security and immigration databases to determine whether an employee is authorized to work.
However, a key weakness in E-Verify is that while it can determine whether a Social Security number presented by a worker is valid, it often cannot determine whether the number belongs to the applicant. Many workers try to evade detection by using another person's identification.
That was allegedly the case Monday, when dozens of U.S. agents sealed entrances to Howard Industries' Mississippi plant, stopping production while they executed a criminal search warrant for evidence related to aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of Social Security documents and other crimes. A civil search warrant for illegal immigrants was also executed, turning up suspect workers from Mexico, Guatemala, Germany, Peru, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama, the government alleged.
About 475 workers were sent to a detention center in Jena, La., for deportation; 106 were released for humanitarian reasons to tend to a child or a medical condition pending court appearances; nine were juveniles transferred to a refugee resettlement agency, and eight face charges of criminal identity theft.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2008082703931.html?hpid=topnews
Sunday, June 29, 2008
'There's something bad in this town'
An immigration raid on a kosher plant has torn an Iowa community apart, and the fallout is spreading into the Twin Cities and beyond.
By JON TEVLIN
Star Tribune
June 29, 2008
There is a small-town stillness here, neat houses and kids riding bicycles down quiet, l leafy streets. But in the Guatemalan bakery, in church pews, at the meatpacking plant and the kosher deli, the strained voices almost always dwell on the raid that changed everything.
The stillness is not serenity. It's shock.
Scores of heavily armed federal agents last month stormed into Agriprocessors, which produces up to 70 percent of all kosher meat in America. The feds seized almost 400 of the plant's 900 workers in the largest single roundup of illegal immigrants to date, charging about 300 of them with identity theft and using stolen Social Security cards.
Some of those workers have since sued the company, alleging abuse, fraud and sexual coercion. Postville, which once sold T-shirts boasting of the peaceful coexistence of its many cultures, has been left "absolutely shattered," said the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk of the town's St. Bridget's Catholic Church.
The impact of the raid is spreading from northern Iowa to the Twin Cities, New York and beyond, provoking debate among American Jews about whether it's time to reassess how kosher food is produced.
"Our reputation is at stake," said Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights. "It was embarrassing for us to hear what was being done in order to process kosher food."
To grasp the wide impact of the raids, consider these snapshots:
• Mexican and Guatemalan women whose husbands are scattered in jails across the country, lined up for hymns and hot dish at St. Bridget's, the hems of their frilly native dresses sometimes swaying to reveal the ankle bracelets they must wear to monitor their movements.
• A group of Jewish leaders meeting recently in St. Louis Park to raise money for the Agriprocessors' workers, and vowing to change the way the people who produce Kosher foods are treated.
• Rabbi Shalom Gurkov, a Hasidic Jew like the owners of Agriprocessors, standing on the main street in Postville in his long beard and solemn dress, vigorously disputing the accusations of crimes, inhumane treatment and sexual harassment that have been made by former workers.
• New replacement worker Josephina Ortiz, near tears, telling strangers that she came from California based on promises by Agriprocessors of free rent, food and a good job. Instead, she claims, she found a filthy, expensive apartment and mandatory 14-hour days.
"Please God, somebody help us," said Ortiz, who is in the United States legally. "There's something bad in this town. I don't know how this can happen in the United States of
America."
A foundering town
When Aaron Rubashkin opened Agriprocessors in 1987, Postville was foundering.
The Rubashkin family, widely credited with inventing the modern kosher processing plant, decided to cut costs by "bringing the butcher to the livestock," and moved from New York to Iowa. Agriprocessors became one of northern Iowa's largest employers.
Abe Bistritzky, a friend of the Rubashkin family, agreed to talk to the Star Tribune on behalf of the company, which has declined to comment since the raids. He said the illegal workers used fake documents and the company followed the law in verifying paperwork. Most of the workers were happy to have the jobs and were paid and treated fairly, he added.
The Rubashkins "took a town that had balls of hay rolling in it and they built up a community of approximately 120 Jewish families," Bistritzky said. "They built a yeshiva, a Jewish school for kids," gave money to the city, to charity and recently sent food to flood victims.
"The Rubashkin family is charitable. They're not prejudiced; they'll hire any kind of person, anyone who will walk through the door," Bistritzky said. "What happened was when [Jews] came to town, they looked at us like we're Martians. ... They didn't understand the black coats, the white shirts, the beards, the black hats, and they needed to learn about us."
The sight of Hasidic Jews wandering the streets of a small town Iowa initially seemed quaint. But the insular nature of their Lubavitch sect created distrust in the community, exacerbated when the Rubashkins started importing workers of many nationalities, especially Hispanics, as their plant expanded.
In 2000, Stephen Bloom wrote a book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," detailing the community's conflicts and compromises since the arrival of Agriprocessors. He clearly indicated many of its workers were illegal. Ouderkirk now calls the book "prophetic."
In recent years, there were problems with Agriprocessors in Iowa and elsewhere: pollution violations, fights with labor unions trying to organize, OSHA violations and charges of animal abuse by PETA. This year, the Iowa Division of Labor Services fined the company $182,000 for 39 health violations.
The federal raid this spring came about based on information from an informant inside the plant who reported witnessing plant managers hire and help workers with fake identity papers. Up to 76 percent of workers did not have correct Social Security numbers, according to the search warrant.
The informant also reported seeing managers abuse workers, including hitting one with a meat hook. One manager also ran a scam in which illegal workers were coerced into buying cars from him, the warrant said.
Some female employees also have alleged they were sexually coerced by managers, according to St. Bridget's Sister Mary McCauley.
Federal officials have declined to comment on the case beyond the details disclosed in their warrant.
Empty-handed and exasperated
St. Bridget's is command central for the battle with Agriprocessors. Guatemalan children scramble on the porch as their mothers line up to get advice, or money, from Ouderkirk and McCauley.
One recent morning, Ouderkirk slipped on his St. Paul medal "for protection" and drove to the plant to get money he said is still owed to arrested workers. He waited for 40 minutes, then left, empty-handed and exasperated.
"Workers openly say they were advised by the plant on how to get false documents," he said. "Now if the government does not take action on that and charge the owners, then this was strictly a raid to threaten and terrorize people."
The situation at Agriprocessors reveals "a lack of respect of human dignity of people other than you," Ouderkirk said. "Politicians who should have been leading the way did nothing."
Bistritzky dismisses most of the worst accusations as fabrications.
"I can't vouch for what happened over 18 years," Bistritzky said. "But maybe [the Rubashkins] should have put a little bit more emphasis to reacting maybe to the town. Maybe they had a lack of communication with people."
A delegation of rabbis
Rabbi Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation knew about Agriprocessors' problems a long time before the raid. He knew the most recent CEO, Sholom Rubashkin, who for a time lived in St. Paul's Highland Park before moving to Postville. After reading an article critical of the company, Allen led a delegation of Twin Cities rabbis to Postville in 2006.
Workers told story after story of long hours, unsafe conditions and wages as low as $5 an hour.
They told him many of the same things now in court documents.
"They appeared to me to do everything possible to maximize the bottom line at the expense of human dignity," Allen said of the plant owners.
The Minnesota rabbis tried to work with the Rubashkins. "I think if they had followed our advice, this may never have happened," he said.
Allen is now leading a national movement to create a certification program called Hekhsher Tzedek, much like fair trade agreements, which would ensure not only that kosher meat is prepared properly, but also that workers are treated fairly.
Some Jewish groups have called for a boycott on Agriprocessors, and many more nationally are debating it. While the raid has caused shortages of kosher meat in some places, the Twin Cities have not yet been affected.
Meanwhile, members of the Twin Cities Jewish community, through synagogues and Jewish Community Action, have raised money for families in Postville affected by the raid, and some families have gone to Iowa to offer their direct help. Many plan to attend a march in Iowa in late July.
"We want the people there to know we care, and that we as Jews have not left them," Allen said.
Empty playgrounds
Postville's playgrounds and parks are empty since the raid, and there are fears that as many as 18 teachers may be dismissed because so many of the students have gone back to Mexico or Guatemala.
Sabor Latina, once the town's most popular restaurant, is only open part-time. The busiest address in town is often the food shelf, where demand has tripled in the past month. Those lined up for beans and bread include Hispanic mothers, many awaiting deportation, and their children, most of whom are American citizens.
Four of them, Guatemalan women, live in one house with their nine children. A 16-year-old named William, who said he worked 10-hour overnight shifts at the plant, is the only one left in a house a few blocks away. He shrugged when asked what he would do next.
Then there are Agriprocessors' new hires, whites and African-Americans, who arrived on the bus. They said they'd been promised a $100 advance, but few of them got it. So their first stop was the food shelf.
Diane Morris, who was living in a Texas homeless shelter, said the company promised a free furnished apartment for a month. Instead, she was put in a four-bedroom house with 10 men, she said. "Everywhere I've been I've been sexually approached," she said.
She claims she was fired after two days when she went to the company clinic for medications for a mental illness.
Bistritzky said it's possible recruiters in Texas made false promises, but that has stopped.
Some new hires have already caused enough trouble at bars that city officials and police have met with the company to demand better screening.
Bistritzky said the company also has hired an employment agency to do background checks on prospective employees, hired a former U.S. Attorney as compliance officer, and is searching for a new leadership team.
What would he tell Minnesota Jews concerned about the plant?
"I would say to them it's all totally unfounded, for me as an outsider talking on my own behalf,'' Bistritzky said. "I've been here for a month; I haven't seen any abuse, or any of the accusations that have been made."
Company officials held a phone conference last week to give their side of the story to an invited group in New York.
Meanwhile, rabbis in the Twin Cities are soliciting donations to help the Rubashkins' employees.
"We're really trying to form a grassroots effort to cause change," said Vic Rosenthal, executive director of JCA. "There is a huge need in Postville."
Jeff Abbas, who runs the local radio station, says he has seen some positive changes since the raids.
"I'd say the relationship between Hispanics and people who grew up around here has gotten stronger because of this," he said. "The people who have grown up around here suddenly realized [the workers] were real people, too."
The town even put up red ribbons on lampposts in support of plant workers.
While he abhors the tactics of immigration officials, Ouderkirk says some good may come of their raid.
"They brought out the cracks in the dam and the folly of our immigration policy," he said.
Jon Tevlin • 612-673-1702
http://www.startribune.com/local/22226519.html?location_refer=Entertainment
By JON TEVLIN
Star Tribune
June 29, 2008
There is a small-town stillness here, neat houses and kids riding bicycles down quiet, l leafy streets. But in the Guatemalan bakery, in church pews, at the meatpacking plant and the kosher deli, the strained voices almost always dwell on the raid that changed everything.
The stillness is not serenity. It's shock.
Scores of heavily armed federal agents last month stormed into Agriprocessors, which produces up to 70 percent of all kosher meat in America. The feds seized almost 400 of the plant's 900 workers in the largest single roundup of illegal immigrants to date, charging about 300 of them with identity theft and using stolen Social Security cards.
Some of those workers have since sued the company, alleging abuse, fraud and sexual coercion. Postville, which once sold T-shirts boasting of the peaceful coexistence of its many cultures, has been left "absolutely shattered," said the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk of the town's St. Bridget's Catholic Church.
The impact of the raid is spreading from northern Iowa to the Twin Cities, New York and beyond, provoking debate among American Jews about whether it's time to reassess how kosher food is produced.
"Our reputation is at stake," said Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights. "It was embarrassing for us to hear what was being done in order to process kosher food."
To grasp the wide impact of the raids, consider these snapshots:
• Mexican and Guatemalan women whose husbands are scattered in jails across the country, lined up for hymns and hot dish at St. Bridget's, the hems of their frilly native dresses sometimes swaying to reveal the ankle bracelets they must wear to monitor their movements.
• A group of Jewish leaders meeting recently in St. Louis Park to raise money for the Agriprocessors' workers, and vowing to change the way the people who produce Kosher foods are treated.
• Rabbi Shalom Gurkov, a Hasidic Jew like the owners of Agriprocessors, standing on the main street in Postville in his long beard and solemn dress, vigorously disputing the accusations of crimes, inhumane treatment and sexual harassment that have been made by former workers.
• New replacement worker Josephina Ortiz, near tears, telling strangers that she came from California based on promises by Agriprocessors of free rent, food and a good job. Instead, she claims, she found a filthy, expensive apartment and mandatory 14-hour days.
"Please God, somebody help us," said Ortiz, who is in the United States legally. "There's something bad in this town. I don't know how this can happen in the United States of
America."
A foundering town
When Aaron Rubashkin opened Agriprocessors in 1987, Postville was foundering.
The Rubashkin family, widely credited with inventing the modern kosher processing plant, decided to cut costs by "bringing the butcher to the livestock," and moved from New York to Iowa. Agriprocessors became one of northern Iowa's largest employers.
Abe Bistritzky, a friend of the Rubashkin family, agreed to talk to the Star Tribune on behalf of the company, which has declined to comment since the raids. He said the illegal workers used fake documents and the company followed the law in verifying paperwork. Most of the workers were happy to have the jobs and were paid and treated fairly, he added.
The Rubashkins "took a town that had balls of hay rolling in it and they built up a community of approximately 120 Jewish families," Bistritzky said. "They built a yeshiva, a Jewish school for kids," gave money to the city, to charity and recently sent food to flood victims.
"The Rubashkin family is charitable. They're not prejudiced; they'll hire any kind of person, anyone who will walk through the door," Bistritzky said. "What happened was when [Jews] came to town, they looked at us like we're Martians. ... They didn't understand the black coats, the white shirts, the beards, the black hats, and they needed to learn about us."
The sight of Hasidic Jews wandering the streets of a small town Iowa initially seemed quaint. But the insular nature of their Lubavitch sect created distrust in the community, exacerbated when the Rubashkins started importing workers of many nationalities, especially Hispanics, as their plant expanded.
In 2000, Stephen Bloom wrote a book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," detailing the community's conflicts and compromises since the arrival of Agriprocessors. He clearly indicated many of its workers were illegal. Ouderkirk now calls the book "prophetic."
In recent years, there were problems with Agriprocessors in Iowa and elsewhere: pollution violations, fights with labor unions trying to organize, OSHA violations and charges of animal abuse by PETA. This year, the Iowa Division of Labor Services fined the company $182,000 for 39 health violations.
The federal raid this spring came about based on information from an informant inside the plant who reported witnessing plant managers hire and help workers with fake identity papers. Up to 76 percent of workers did not have correct Social Security numbers, according to the search warrant.
The informant also reported seeing managers abuse workers, including hitting one with a meat hook. One manager also ran a scam in which illegal workers were coerced into buying cars from him, the warrant said.
Some female employees also have alleged they were sexually coerced by managers, according to St. Bridget's Sister Mary McCauley.
Federal officials have declined to comment on the case beyond the details disclosed in their warrant.
Empty-handed and exasperated
St. Bridget's is command central for the battle with Agriprocessors. Guatemalan children scramble on the porch as their mothers line up to get advice, or money, from Ouderkirk and McCauley.
One recent morning, Ouderkirk slipped on his St. Paul medal "for protection" and drove to the plant to get money he said is still owed to arrested workers. He waited for 40 minutes, then left, empty-handed and exasperated.
"Workers openly say they were advised by the plant on how to get false documents," he said. "Now if the government does not take action on that and charge the owners, then this was strictly a raid to threaten and terrorize people."
The situation at Agriprocessors reveals "a lack of respect of human dignity of people other than you," Ouderkirk said. "Politicians who should have been leading the way did nothing."
Bistritzky dismisses most of the worst accusations as fabrications.
"I can't vouch for what happened over 18 years," Bistritzky said. "But maybe [the Rubashkins] should have put a little bit more emphasis to reacting maybe to the town. Maybe they had a lack of communication with people."
A delegation of rabbis
Rabbi Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation knew about Agriprocessors' problems a long time before the raid. He knew the most recent CEO, Sholom Rubashkin, who for a time lived in St. Paul's Highland Park before moving to Postville. After reading an article critical of the company, Allen led a delegation of Twin Cities rabbis to Postville in 2006.
Workers told story after story of long hours, unsafe conditions and wages as low as $5 an hour.
They told him many of the same things now in court documents.
"They appeared to me to do everything possible to maximize the bottom line at the expense of human dignity," Allen said of the plant owners.
The Minnesota rabbis tried to work with the Rubashkins. "I think if they had followed our advice, this may never have happened," he said.
Allen is now leading a national movement to create a certification program called Hekhsher Tzedek, much like fair trade agreements, which would ensure not only that kosher meat is prepared properly, but also that workers are treated fairly.
Some Jewish groups have called for a boycott on Agriprocessors, and many more nationally are debating it. While the raid has caused shortages of kosher meat in some places, the Twin Cities have not yet been affected.
Meanwhile, members of the Twin Cities Jewish community, through synagogues and Jewish Community Action, have raised money for families in Postville affected by the raid, and some families have gone to Iowa to offer their direct help. Many plan to attend a march in Iowa in late July.
"We want the people there to know we care, and that we as Jews have not left them," Allen said.
Empty playgrounds
Postville's playgrounds and parks are empty since the raid, and there are fears that as many as 18 teachers may be dismissed because so many of the students have gone back to Mexico or Guatemala.
Sabor Latina, once the town's most popular restaurant, is only open part-time. The busiest address in town is often the food shelf, where demand has tripled in the past month. Those lined up for beans and bread include Hispanic mothers, many awaiting deportation, and their children, most of whom are American citizens.
Four of them, Guatemalan women, live in one house with their nine children. A 16-year-old named William, who said he worked 10-hour overnight shifts at the plant, is the only one left in a house a few blocks away. He shrugged when asked what he would do next.
Then there are Agriprocessors' new hires, whites and African-Americans, who arrived on the bus. They said they'd been promised a $100 advance, but few of them got it. So their first stop was the food shelf.
Diane Morris, who was living in a Texas homeless shelter, said the company promised a free furnished apartment for a month. Instead, she was put in a four-bedroom house with 10 men, she said. "Everywhere I've been I've been sexually approached," she said.
She claims she was fired after two days when she went to the company clinic for medications for a mental illness.
Bistritzky said it's possible recruiters in Texas made false promises, but that has stopped.
Some new hires have already caused enough trouble at bars that city officials and police have met with the company to demand better screening.
Bistritzky said the company also has hired an employment agency to do background checks on prospective employees, hired a former U.S. Attorney as compliance officer, and is searching for a new leadership team.
What would he tell Minnesota Jews concerned about the plant?
"I would say to them it's all totally unfounded, for me as an outsider talking on my own behalf,'' Bistritzky said. "I've been here for a month; I haven't seen any abuse, or any of the accusations that have been made."
Company officials held a phone conference last week to give their side of the story to an invited group in New York.
Meanwhile, rabbis in the Twin Cities are soliciting donations to help the Rubashkins' employees.
"We're really trying to form a grassroots effort to cause change," said Vic Rosenthal, executive director of JCA. "There is a huge need in Postville."
Jeff Abbas, who runs the local radio station, says he has seen some positive changes since the raids.
"I'd say the relationship between Hispanics and people who grew up around here has gotten stronger because of this," he said. "The people who have grown up around here suddenly realized [the workers] were real people, too."
The town even put up red ribbons on lampposts in support of plant workers.
While he abhors the tactics of immigration officials, Ouderkirk says some good may come of their raid.
"They brought out the cracks in the dam and the folly of our immigration policy," he said.
Jon Tevlin • 612-673-1702
http://www.startribune.com/local/22226519.html?location_refer=Entertainment
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