Welfare Warriors

Summer 2008

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  Summer 2008

Raids Create Ghost Town and Constitutional Crisis

Postville, Iowa has been turned into a ghost town. Nearly a third of its residents, mostly undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico, sit in jail. They were convicted of identity crimes or are awaiting deportation.

Hundreds more hide in fear. Their children are too scared to go to school. They have left the town’s classrooms nearly empty. For this, Postville should thank their local police, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and a failed immigration policy.

Aided by local law enforcement, ICE arrested 389 workers during the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history. The arrests took place at the Postville meatpacking plant, the area’s major employer.

In an unprecedented move, ICE criminally charged 302  workers with aggravated ID theft and/or using false social security numbers. Within days, ICE resolved their fate: 297 men and women pled guilty. They were sentenced to prison and subsequent deportation. Only a few await criminal trials or immigration hearings.

Postville is one of the latest in a series of immigration raids. The raids have intensified in the past three years. These raids are leading our nation to a moral, legal and humanitarian crisis.

ICE’s heavy handed enforcement against undocumented workers in the wake of failed immigration reform is shameful. Under current immigration laws, no more than 10,000 of the backlogged visas for unskilled workers and 66,000 temporary visas for seasonal workers are available each year.

 
Postville Community Protesting After Brutal Raid

In contrast, an estimated 2,000 persons cross the Southwest border into the U.S. daily. And an estimated 12 million undocumented persons live in the U.S.

Global economic realities push willing workers out of their nations. They have no means to earn even a subsistence living. And they are pulled into low wage jobs in the U.S..The lack of labor protection here leaves them vulnerable to exploitation.

U.S. employers and we as consumers benefit from their cheap labor. But these workers and their families bear the brunt of a broken immigration system.

Few employers face civil and criminal sanctions for violating immigration and labor laws. So far, no one from Postville plant has been charged. Yet there is overwhelming evidence that the company helped workers procure false documents. And the company paid substandard wages. And it failed to pay overtime. And it seriously mistreated its workers.

All the while, Congress continues to kill proposals granting even temporary legal status to agricultural workers. At the same time Congress doles out large subsidies to U.S. farmers. They disregard their effect on future migration of rural workers from developing nations.

Legally speaking, ICE and federal prosecutors overstepped their powers. They had no right to criminally charged the workers. Congress specifically exempted from prosecution such workers.  Any workers who use false Social Security numbers to engage in otherwise lawful conduct, such as to procure jobs, are not to be prosecuted.

This new criminalization of undocumented workers has not been accompanied by any constitutional guarantees. ICE conducted the Postville investigatio with easy access to immigration databases and employee documents. ICE then executed the raid with easily-procured administrative, not criminal, warrants.

Thus, the protection of stricter Fourth Amendment search and seizure, Fifth Amendment due process, and Sixth Amendment right to counsel constitutional guarantees available to most criminal defendants were unavailable to these workers. Nearly all waived any rights they might have had under extreme prosecutorial pressure. Most had no idea what was going on, according to two interpreters.

The uncharacteristic speed and efficiency of the Postville raid left workers without adequate opportunity to consult with defense counsel. And none or few had access to immigration lawyers to learn about the immigration consequences of their pleas.

The involvement of local police in these raids is also worrisome. Distrust of police keeps many immigrants from reporting crime. This increases their vulnerability as victims. Moreover. This is a drain on limited resources on local police. It takes them away from their primary duties in the community.

The courts must be vigilant in protecting the rights of workers and their families. They must insist on stricter constitutional guarantees when criminal charges are involved.

These raids should be halted immediately. The prospect of future raids should create a sense of urgency for the U.S. to adopt immigration policies that allows employers to hire migrant workers, and include strong labor protections that offer a path to legalization for workers and their families. If workers are legal, we are all better off.

 Aldana
Professor, University of Nevada,
Las Vegas School of Law.