On May 12, 2008, U.S. immigration conducted what is still the largest illegal worker raid in U.S. history. At the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, IA (now Agri Star) 290 Guatemalans, 93 Mexicans, two Israelis and four Ukrainians were arrested. Hundreds of immigration officers swooped down on the small town with helicopters and waiting busses, marching half of the slaughterhouse's 800 person workforce off to makeshift detention centers.
Initial charges against Agriprocessors included harboring illegal aliens, use of child labor, document fraud, identity theft, physical and sexual abuse of workers, unsafe working conditions, wage and hour violations and shorting workers' pay. According to the search warrant, 1,000 discrepancies between worker names and Social Security numbers occurred in three years and a meth production plant existing within the slaughterhouse, sanctioned by management. Nice. Even former President Obama, then an Illinois senator, weighed in on the Agriprocessors "They have kids in there wielding buzz saws and cleavers. It's ridiculous," he said during a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa.
The 2008 raid was not a shock to some. While Agriprocessors was periodically lauded for bringing a melting pot of foreign workers and orthodox Jews to a small American town that needed the industry, groups promoting animal and human rights had seen storm clouds brewing for some time.
In 2004, People for the Ethical Treatment (PETA), released undercover video showing cows very much alive after being "slaughtered" and having their throats cut at Agriprocessors. The footage led to an USDA investigation which, "reported many violations of animal cruelty laws at the plant," said the New York Times.
Soon after the video surfaced, the Forward visited Postville and found a "more striking concern" than animal abuse--"the impoverished humans who do the factory's dirty work." In "a tour of the mobile homes and cramped apartments just outside town," the Forward found hundreds of immigrant employees working 10-to-12-hour shifts, six days a week for $6.25 to $7 an hour. Unable to quit, complain or even leave Postville (the miniscule farm town has no public transportation), they were essentially indentured.
In addition to six Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violations in one year, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints that Agriprocessors supervisors extorted bribes from workers, employees were untrained and unprotected from dangerous equipment, reported the Forward. Two workers required amputations in one month and one was still working at the plant with a hand missing when the paper visited, "hoping to collect enough to pay off his debts back home," said the paper.
Within days of the raid both Agriprocessors' management and its workforce were in shambles. Three hundred workers were charged with identity theft. Agriprocessors' human resources managers and floor supervisors were convicted of felony charges of harboring illegal immigrants. Child labor charges were filed against Agriprocessors owner, Aaron Rubashkin, his son, Sholom, and others plant employees, though they were dropped when prosecutors decided to pursue financial charges instead. Sholom Rubashkin was convicted of fabricating fake collateral for loans, ordering employees to create false invoices and laundering millions through a secret bank account in the name of Torah Education, reported the New York Times. Sentencing documents also suggest the Postville mayor, Robert Penrod, received or extorted money from Agriprocessors to discourage unionizing at the plant.
But when prosecutors asked for a life sentence, citing Rubashkin's lawlessness and lack of remorse, more than a dozen former United States attorneys cried to the judge: unfair! "We cannot fathom how truly sound and sensible sentencing rules could call for a life sentence--or anything close to it--for Mr. Rubashkin, a 51-year-old, first-time, nonviolent offender," said a letter signed by former attorney generals, Janet Reno, William Barr, Richard Thornburgh, Edwin Meese III, Ramsey Clark and Nicholas Katzenbach. Non-violent, if you don't count running a slaughterhouse and amputations of workers' hands.
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