ICE Raids Swift Plant: 800 illegal aliens arrested

GREELEY, Colo. -- Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents raided six Swift & Co. plants Tuesday morning with civil search warrants, arresting hundreds of illegal immigrants working at the plants, including the plant in Greeley, federal officials confirmed.

At least 800 workers at the Greeley plant are identified as illegal immigrants; 300 of them will be deported within the week, some as soon as Tuesday evening, said Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck.

Not all of those suspected to be illegal immigrants will be deported because federal authorities just don't have resources to go after them all at one time, Buck said.

"At this point, a civil search warrant allows us to search the premises to find any illegal aliens. The strong point here is that a lot of U.S. citizens and U.S. residents have been victimized ... by a large-scale identify theft scheme," said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE public affairs officer.

Gonzalez said that other plants in the raid included beef plants in Grand Island, Neb., Cactus, Texas and Hyrum, Utah, and pork plants in Marshalltown, Iowa and Worthington, Minn. Operations at all six plants have been temporarily suspended.

ICE said the workers were being arrested on administrative immigration violations and in some cases, existing criminal arrest warrants stemming from a nearly yearlong investigation dubbed Operation Wagon Train.

ICE chief Julie L. Myers told reporters in Washington that agents had uncovered a scheme in which illegal immigrants and others had stolen or bought the identities and Social Security numbers of hundreds of U.S. citizens and lawful residents to get jobs with Greeley-based meat processor, Swift & Co.

"Swift has never condoned the employment of unauthorized workers, nor have we ever knowingly hired such individuals," Swift & Co. President and CEO Sam Rovit said in a written statement.

Hundreds Of Relatives Gather Outside

In Greeley, during the raid, agents spread out about every 25 yards along the railroad tracks behind the plant at Eighth and Seventh avenues.

Two large white buses were parked in front of the plant and a few vans and other buses were parked in the back of the building to transport those who were detained. Trucks carrying cattle to the plant were not allowed in.

Cars lined the street leading to the plant as about a hundred family members stood outside near the plant's gates, worried about what may happen to their loved ones. A number of women and children were crying. Many worried about the fates of their loved ones, who face deportation.

One person held a sign that said, "Presents! Not tears at Christmas!" Another sign that read "Goodbye, my daddy," was held by a woman carrying an infant.

"They're gone. He's gone. He said, 'What is he gonna do now?' He can't send money. What are we supposed to do to live, seriously? What is my baby supposed to do without a dad? The baby's innocent. He didn't do anything wrong. ... He's illegal but he came here to work," said one woman. She said that her husband works at the plant.

Some family members were trying to deliver documentation to relatives inside. A handful of protesters jeered at Greeley police officers directing traffic and a man who came to show his support for ICE agents.

"It's illegal and what they did is criminal, so they should be the ones who are sent home," said the man, identified only as Gary.

ICE agents carried out the raid with Greeley police and Weld County deputies helping to control the growing crowd outside the plant and other traffic issues.

Authorities have not confirmed exactly many workers were taken from the plant in Greeley. The raid, which started at 7:30 a.m., was the culmination of a federal investigation that began in February, officials said.

In July, immigration officials subsubpoenaed Swift for its employee records.

"They had the records from last July of employees at the plant, so they had targets but what they've done today is they're interviewing all the employees to determine their legal status in this country," said Buck.

Buck said he's known about the raid since last Thursday.

"Immigration authorities came to me and asked me if I would help them receive arrest warrants for 25 individuals at the Swift plant here in Greeley, and they would execute those warrants today. So we went to the courts late yesterday and received those warrants for identity theft," Buck said.

"We have targeted 25 for arrest warrants for identity theft ... Several hundred folks will be removed from the plant and if they are in fact illegal, they will be deported. So, that is an arrest of another sense, but we have identified 25 people that have stolen identities of U.S. citizens and used those identities," he said.

Buck said that the raid adversely affects many families, who were working to put their children through school in Colorado, but there are other victims involved.

"It is a difficult day in Greeley. But it's also been a difficult day around the country as people's identities have been stolen and they've had to go and clean up their credit. And they've suffered great harm also," Buck said.

He said while some of the cases will take months to progress, others may more quickly processed.

"If somebody voluntarily waives deportation, they could be out of the country in a matter of days," Buck said.

He said he suspects Swift may face charges about its hiring practices.

Background On Swift

The plants in the raid represent all of Swift's domestic beef processing capacity and 77 percent of its pork processing capacity.

"Today's action at Swift will have a strong ripple effect on the rest of the livestock industry. Weld County is the most profitable agricultural county in Colorado, with over $1 billion in agricultural sales. Today's move by ICE will greatly impact the economy there," said Sen. Ken Salazar.

Since 1997, Swift has been using a government pilot program that confirms whether Social Security numbers are valid. Company officials have previously said one shortcoming may be the program's ability to detect when two people are trying to use the same number.

No charges had been filed against the company.

"Swift believes that today's actions by the government violate the agreements associated with the company’s participation over the past 10 years in the federal government's basic pilot worker authorization program and raise serious questions as to the government’s possible violation of individual workers' civil rights," the company said in a statement.

Swift & Co. describes itself as an $8 billion business and the world's second-largest meat processing company. In Hyrum, Utah, where city Administrator Brent Jensen said the plant employs more than 1,000 workers, the company can process up to 2,200 cattle a day, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

"Since the inception of the basic pilot program in 1997, every single one of Swift's new domestic hires, including those being interviewed today by ICE officials, has duly completed I-9 forms and has received work authorization through the government's basic pilot program. Swift has played by the rules and relied in good faith on a program explicitly held out by the president of the united states as an effective tool to help employers comply with applicable immigration laws," said the company's CEO.

Myers said immigration officials were "looking very aggressively" at who may have sold the identities to the workers in several cases. She said ICE had uncovered several different rings that may have provided illegal documents.

Some immigrants targeted had genuine U.S. birth certificates and others had other kinds of false identification, Myers said.

"The significance is that we're serious about work site enforcement and that those who steal identities of U.S. citizens will not escape enforcement," Myers said.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union said in a statement it planned to ask a judge to halt the raids, but there was no immediate word on when or where the request would be filed.

Reaction From Other Parts Of The Country

"I congratulate all law enforcement agencies involved in the successful raid," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, an outspoken advocate of stricter immigration laws. "My hope at this point is that the U.S. government has the courage to prosecute the Swift & Company executives who may have been complicit in their hiring."

"When something of this scale happens, it's pretty likely that the plant managers were aware of it, often with the consent of management," Tancredo said.

"ICE's action at multiple Swift plants today is a clarion call for the nation to complete its work on comprehensive immigration reform. We need to have laws in place to take us from today's chaos and lawlessness to law and order. That law and order system must include: increased border security, strict enforcement of immigration laws including a sound employer verification system, and a realistic method of dealing with the human and economic reality of millions of undocumented workers in America," said Sen. Ken Salazar.

One sheriff's deputy described the scene outside a meatpacking plant in Hyrum, Utah, as a circus.

"They've got three buses, a bunch of transport vans, a lot of cars and 150 or so agents," chief Cache County deputy David Bennett said Tuesday.

Bennett said ICE officials didn't notify the sheriff's department about the raid.

"They didn't ask for our help," Bennett said. "We were lucky to find out."

Moore County Sheriff Bo DeArmond said he, too, got no advance warning of the raid in Cactus, Texas.

DeArmond said Cactus, though relatively small and remote, is not immune from identity theft.

"It's everywhere," he said. "The only way they can get a job is by getting a Social Security number, ID, all that other stuff. They'll do whatever they can to get a job."

At Grand Island, Police Chief Steve Lamken said he refused to let his officers take part in the raid.

"When this is all over, we're still here taking care of our community and if I have a significant part of my population that's fearful and won't call us then that's not good for our community," he said.

ICE officials at the plants said the total number of arrests might not be released until Wednesday, when a news conference was scheduled in Washington.

Immigration officials and the Federal Trade Commission say they've identified hundreds of potential victims.

"I am grateful that ICE agents are appropriately targeting illegal aliens whose prior record of criminal behavior may present a risk to the citizens of Colorado," Sen. Wayne Allard. "It is my understanding that Ken Buck played a key role in the investigation that led to today's raid at the Greeley facility. Once again, District Attorney Buck has demonstrated his commitment to ensuring that individuals involved in criminal behavior will be pursued to the full extent of the law."

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