Category: Uncategorized

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

In May, there was a huge raid at a meatpacking plant in little Postville, Iowa. It was a shock and awe event, helicopters overhead and ICE (Immigration and Customs) officers swaggering and shouting orders. The biggest immigration raid of 2008 — but it was notable for another reason as well.

Usually immigrant worker violations are handled as civil matters, not criminal offenses. The violators, poor people found out of compliance with immigration rules, are usually detained, processed and deported. But the government upped the ante in Postville: It decided to treat these workers as criminals and to set up temporary courts at the nearby fairgrounds, assembly-lining workers before judges. Charged with using false IDs, undocumented workers were sentenced to five months in prison, and deportation afterward.

The New York Times on May 24 said, “The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process.” Immigration experts protested. It seems to these experts “that workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusually speedy plea agreements.”

This raid disturbs me, but I will not write my typical polemic that the Bush administration is bringing about a police state. I won’t connect the Postville mass court proceedings to Guantanamo and to Chertoff suspending 36 acts of Congress to build the Border Wall. I should probably develop this theme, but this time I will let my politically savvy readers draw those connections themselves. I simply want to relate some background details about this raid in Iowa.

First, before reviewing historical material, let me describe some protest activity in Postville since the raid. The National Catholic Reporter described pastoral leaders at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church organizing a protest march to the fairgrounds where the courts were held. “The government’s actions have created fear and destroyed a vibrant community,” said a Lutheran bishop who joined the march. The food pantry at St. Bridget’s has been open every day instead of the usual once a week. Many people are asking for help in paying bills because the family breadwinner is locked up; people are scrambling to travel (often with kids) thousands of miles home, needing help for transportation costs.

Secondly, I’ll give a quick history of Postville’s slaughterhouse. (I am drawing mainly, with permission and encouragement, from researcher Stephen G. Bloom, a University of Iowa professor who wrote a book on Postville and its immigrant workers. Professor Bloom emailed me suggesting I quote Niemann Watchdog online, October 13, 2006 and May 18, 2008).

Several decades ago, meatpacking (hungry for profit) started to shift from big cities like Chicago, Fort Worth and Kansas City to small towns closer to where the cattle were raised. They wanted “fewer uni*ns, cheaper land, less transportation costs and less government oversight,” according to Bloom. In 1980, uni*n meatpackers in bigger cities could earn $19 an hour not including benefits, while small town plant workers today might make little more than minimum wage (Bloom).

I am reminded of the excellent fictionalized movie expose of Midwest meatpacking, “Fast Food Nation.” Thinking about that film reminds me to mention that probably along with low wages in small town meatpacking plants there is lots of speed-up and overtime hours worked. Speed-up and overtime are particularly dangerous, of course, in injury-prone meatpacking plants. A central part of the movie is a gruesome industrial accident.

In 1987, an Hasidic butcher and his family came out from Brooklyn and began producing kosher beef in Postville, Iowa. A number of rabbis came to town too: the “kosher” label requires certification by rabbis at certain points in the process. AgriProcessors was born. By using non-uni*n labor and cutting transportation costs, it became a golden goose. In the mid-1990s, numbers of workers (no doubt, some undocumented) came from Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia, notably) and were exploited by the operation to great benefit. They lived in trailer courts outside of town, often five men to a trailer, and soon the Spice and Ice Liquor Store was selling 24 (!) different brands of Vodka (Bloom).

But when cheap labor from Eastern Europe dried up and the workers moved off to bigger cities, more and more Guatemalans and Mexicans were hired at the plant and the liquor store started selling more Mexican beer and tequila, although most Mexicans there preferred Budweiser (Bloom). AgriProcessors grew more prosperous. Not just the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the world, it soon sold meats widely to chains like Wal-Mart and HEB. (Martha Rosenberg, Counterpunch online.)

A Latino community grew in Postville. The coin-operated Family Laundry boomed, and so did El Vaquero clothing store, which sells Mexican style shirts and quinceaneras dresses (Bloom). But underneath the apparent success, the workers’ undocumented status was a poorly kept secret. And other non-secrets beset the greedy company. Bloom gives a summary:

“Everyone knew what was happening…PETA [an animal rights group] had been in the slaughterhouse and produced a video documenting abuses. The U.S. Department of Labor had fined the company for repeated workplace safety issues. The EPA was involved because the company had discharged pollutants. The USDA mandated recalls because of unsanitary conditions.” (AgriProcessors was hardly squeaky clean — again I recommend readers stop at the video store and get Fast Food Nation.)

That is some background information to ICE sending breadwinners to prison in Postville. Perhaps it can be seen now as a bit more complicated than the first cursory headlines we saw about a wonderful and efficient enforcement operation.

A few further comments. I emailed Jodi Goodwin of Harlingen, a board-certified immigration and nationalization attorney whom I have interviewed several times for my column:

Nick Braune: The Postville raid, as was pointed out earlier, lined the workers up for criminal offences not just the civil ones that used to be common practice. Is this a bad sign? Do you expect that ICE will be pushing for criminal prosecution like this in other places?

Jodi Goodwin: ICE will definitely be pushing for more prosecutions like we have seen in Postville and other locations recently. This is all part of ICE’s strategic plan called “Endgame.” I do not expect prosecutions to lighten up at all; I expect them to become more frequent.

Nick: I have heard some ominous things about the “Endgame” document, but I haven’t done my homework on it. I intend to report on it in a future column. There is something else I am curious about after reading about Postville and St. Bridget Parish trying to help people there. I’m picturing a Guatemalan family (Mom, Dad and a toddler child) living in a trailer in Postville, where Dad, the breadwinner, has been working in the slaughterhouse for two years. When the raid took place and Dad was whisked off with 296 others to five months in prison, didn’t the government have to give mom and child any financial help?

(For instance, if mom wants to take the child with her back to Guatemala, is there any financial aid to do that? Or if she wants to stay in Postville while her husband is in prison, does the government give her any financial assistance to pay rent? And because the child is born in the states and is therefore a citizen, do they get food stamps and CHIP for insurance?)

Jodi: The U.S. Government does nothing to make arrangements for the families of those they prosecute. In fact they would probabl
y do
the best they could to get a deportation order for the wife as well. They would probably tell the wife and husband to make their own arrangements for the child. As far as benefits are concerned, the child, but no one else, would be eligible for benefits like food stamps and probably CHIP.

Nick: Thank you, counselor. I fear our country is acting worse toward immigrants all the time, and I think you have a very important job.

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

Last week I interviewed an active environmentalist, Scott Nicol of Weslaco, about the disastrous wall that Homeland Security is planning for our border with Mexico. There was considerable interest in the column, so I’ll follow-up.

Nicol attended the important Texas Border Coalition (TBC) conference last week in McAllen. (TBC was founded in 1998 as a collective voice for border mayors, county judges and communities on pressing issues, and their June 1st event specifically invited landowners and environmentalists who oppose the border wall.) I asked Nicol his impressions of the conference.

Author: I am curious about the conference you attended. I suppose almost everyone there was pretty suspicious of the government’s wall plans. If I understand it correctly, there were promises made in January that there would be consultation, transparency, and respect for local stakeholders.

But then in the spring all the local stakeholders found that there were detailed plans for the wall that they had not been consulted on. The Mayor of Brownsville was quoted as dismayed: “They told us one thing and it appeared something else was being done.”

There was some uproar in the Valley. Senator Cornyn of Texas stepped in as a mediator in a sense, speaking in favor of openness. He assured everyone that Homeland Security (which includes the Border Patrol) has been making a better effort lately. They have been “enormously straight” with local landowners and stakeholders, Cornyn said.

I understand a big shot from the Border Patrol was at the TBC conference you attended. Did everyone think the Border Patrol speaker was “enormously straight,” or was he hiding his cards?

Nicol: The speaker was the Border Patrol’s highest ranking officer, David Aguilar, and he attempted to reassure the attendees several ways, implying that everything about the controversial wall is very preliminary.

Author: Was he trying to calm the group, saying there is lots of time to talk?

Nicol: Yes, he even said twice that the plan only exists “on the back of a napkin.”

Author: I’m sure that did not sound too believable to the annoyed conference attendees. They know things are in the works.

Nicol: Yes, he has had eight months to create schematics from any sketches on napkins. And he was at the Secure Border Fence Act signing ceremony itself. He is in the official photograph, looking over the President’s shoulder. He knows the provisions and the timetables. When asked by the mayors and business people to show the maps, Aguilar said the wall’s route has not been determined.

He said that showing the group a map of the wall’s route would mean that he had not consulted with us on it. This despite the fact that the Border Patrol met with landowners that same day in Weslaco, during which detailed maps showing the wall’s path were displayed.

Aquilar further tried to reassure the attendees by saying, “If in fact a fence is built, it will not be one continual fence.” But that statement is directly contradicted by the Secure Border Fence Act of 2006, which mandates a double layered fence running continuously from Laredo to Brownsville. Clearly, Chief Aguilar did not live up to Senator Cornyn’s recent characterization of the Border Patrol as being “enormously straight” in its dealings with border residents.

Author: Did you have the idea that Aguilar was filibustering the meeting more than trying to reach consensus?

Nicol: I am not sure, but he was not on the original schedule and his speaking forced the scheduled presentations to be abbreviated. His presentation took over a half hour of the hour-and-a-half for the arranged speakers. Other speakers clearly cut their comments back.

Author: These are important people who were there, accustomed to being listened to. Did they leave the conference appeased?

Nicol: I thought most people left angry. There were Texas Border Coalition members there, the Mayors of McAllen, Eagle Pass, and El Paso, business leaders, environmentalists, and agriculture representatives — there are even judges in the Texas Border Coalition. And having listened to the press conference afterward, I think many attendees did not feel they were dealt with in a straightforward way.

Author: Thanks for your comments.

The AP reports that the Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman “will visit Utah National Guard troops stationed at the Mexican border in Arizona during a break in the Western Governors’ Association annual meeting Monday.”

As with others before, the AP is treating the Utah Guard as “the first to deploy along the border under President Bush’s plan to send up to 6,000 National Guard members to the four southern border states.”

But in fact the Utah Guard would be on the border if Operation Jump Start had never been jump started. There has for a long time been a low-level Guard presence at the border (see the Reuters report below). But now they count as photo ops in an election year and get counted as news.

As Guard Chief Gen. Blum explained to the Armed Forces Press Service, “When you take the counternarcotics mission and the innovative readiness training initiative, we have well over 500 National Guardsmen on our border this morning, but not as part of Operation Jump Start.” Sources: Governor Huntsman to visit Utah Guard troops working on border, LAST UPDATE: 6/8/2006 2:35:09 PM, SALT LAKE CITY (AP).

‘Operation Jump Start’ Puts 2,500 Guardsmen on Border
American Forces Press Service | Steven Donald Smith | June 07, 2006.

Reuters reporter Tim Gaynor collects valuable background info about previous Guard operations at the border. But there isn’t much evaluation of the facts included, which might leave the reader with an impression that the future is the same as the past.

But these “joint” operations (after all they helped stop $6 billion worth of pot) were mentioned by El Paso Congressman Sylvestre Reyes last month when he cast his vote against expanding the Guard role.

Reyes commanded the El Paso sector for the border patrol before retiring to elected office. He argued from the floor of the House of Representatives that massive troop deployment would not be a good idea because troop training is not police training, and it’s bad policy to militarize political issues. Border role not new for discreet US military unit

By Tim Gaynor
Reuters
Friday, June 09, 2006

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) – While the first U.S. National Guard troops are finding their feet in a new role on the Mexico border this week, one discreet military unit has aided police there and on the Canadian frontier for years.

Last month President George W. Bush ordered 6,000 troops to help Border Patrol agents secure the porous frontier, and the first few soldiers arrived in Arizona earlier this week.

The deployment has upset many in Mexico who say they are unhappy at the increasing militarization of the border, while some residents in U.S. border states remained skeptical about the role troops will play there.

But a cadre of Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen and defense department civilian specialists have used cutting-edge military technologies and know-how to help federal law enforcement there since the 1980s.

Originally called Joint Task Force Six, the group includes engineers, map makers, radar and intelligence specialists and was founded in 1989 to help federal police curb drug smuggling over the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) Mexico border.

Renamed Joint Task Force North two years ago, it was given a broader role to support law enforcement agencies in efforts to secure the U.S. mainland from threats including “international terrorism” and drug trafficking.

“Working on the border is nothing new for the military, we’ve been supporting law enforcement there for years,” said Col. Barry Cronin, JTFN’s deputy commander, adding that they would be there “after the National Guard has gone.”

In 2005, the El Paso, Texas-based unit carried out 63 operations nationwide, including 55 on the Canadian and Mexican borders. Its kit includes unmanned aerial drones, combat radar systems, long-range infrared optics, and seismic detectors.

“Typically we’ll go in with our planning and organizational abilities, offering federal law enforcement agencies a kind of one-stop shopping for all their needs,” said Lt. Col. Dan Drew, JTFN’s chief of future operations.

Utah National Guard troops arrived in Yuma, Arizona, this week, where they will patch border fencing and add security lighting, and New Mexico National Guard troops are due to deploy to Las Cruces over the weekend.

They are the first of several units that will help the Border Patrol secure the border for up to a year. They are set to play a support role and will stop short of making arrests.

SUPPORTING THE BORDER PATROL

Joint Task Force North is not involved in the National Guard deployment. But the scope and nature of the unit’s prior support to federal law enforcement is evident in a Mexico border operation last year.

Dubbed Operation Western Vigilance, the deployment of 400 military personnel to deserts west of El Paso enabled Border Patrol agents to arrest 2,020 intruders from Mexico and impound more than 1,000 pounds of smuggled drugs.

In it, soldiers used high-powered Forward Looking Infra-Red thermal imaging sensors to provide the Border Patrol with advanced intelligence on traffickers and undocumented immigrants as they trekked north from staging areas in Mexico.

The operation also used Hunter aerial drones from a military intelligence battalion to monitor movements along the Arizona-Mexico border, and sent Marine Corps engineers to put up lighting along a steel border fence in Arizona.

Another operation, on the Canadian border, threw a battlefield radar net across a stretch of coast between British Columbia and Washington State to help agencies like the Border Patrol and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police track smugglers in a cross-border marijuana trade valued at $6 billion a year.