Now and then, you see national headlines news made by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) employment enforcement raids and the number of criminal and administrative arrests they made.
Fo the average American citizen these are good news. ICE is doing an "outstanding job" in removing more and more illegal alien workers and "express-shipping them" to their country of origin.
Unfortunately, to maintain ICE operating, paying salaries, buying brand news large government-owned vehicles, detailing ICE special agents to raid a large employment site, and paying for other resources comes with a price.
We already have a number of heads of state and local alw enforcement agencies complaining that ICE is not doing enough in the war against drugs, violent crimes, gun smuggling and trafficking, money laundering, smuggling of weapons of mass destructions, Customs fraud and other high priority federal criminal acts that the Legacy U.S. Customs Service's Office of Investigations used to get involved.
Then to the embarrassing of ICE, we have the Miladin Kovacevic case, the Serbian student attending a U.S. university with a student visa issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who evaded justice and the "radar screen of ICE" and who is now wanted by the FBI and Interpol for almost killing another student in New York.
ICE claims that "This is not a case that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement was involved in at any point."
Unfortunately for ICE, from the moment Miladin Kovacevic received a foreign student visa from DHS, he became the responsibility and monitoring of ICE. see "Improvements to Student and Exchange Visitor Program announced today in Manhattan
Proposed increase in fees will support enhancements to Homeland Security's critical system" http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/080411washington.htm
But this Narco News report is not about Kovacevic, is about ICE an agency that is being mismanaged, is dysfunctional and is wasting billions of U.S. tax payer's monies in their number one priority: immigration employment enforcement.
I am posting a news story published by the DesMoines Register which describes the problems associated with "the largest workplace immigration raid in U.S. history," in Postville, Iowa. One of the reasons I am posting the entire report is because what's happening in Postville, IA is happening all over the United States where ICE is leaving their presence at employment sites.
DesMoines Register - July 27, 2008
New hires bring new problems to Postville
By NIGEL DUARA
nduara@dmreg.com
Postville, Ia. - Ten weeks after the largest workplace immigration raid in U.S. history, this is the new Postville:
Drunken brawls. A food pantry that is almost bare. Women afraid to walk alone at night.
Postville is now home to hundreds of men and women from tough towns and tough lives, brought to this northeast Iowa community by recruiters who entered homeless shelters in dusty Texas border towns offering $15 and a one-way bus ticket.
The impact is evident: New laborers are changing Postville. The Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant, the site of the immigration raid, once employed men and women with families. Now, its workers are mostly young, single people with no stake in the community and nothing to lose.
The rise in crime has strained Postville's tiny police department. One night in June, the calls were so numerous that police asked the local bar to close early.
The change in Postville started when nearly one-third of the town was detained on May 12 after a federal raid at Agriprocessors. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement came looking for 697 plant workers; 389 were rounded up for being in the country illegally, and 304 were charged with identity theft or false use of a Social Security number. Others hid in the plant, then fled town.
Their work force depleted, Agriprocessors recruiters sought contract laborers - people willing to leave their homes and move to Postville for meatpacking jobs - to fill the void.
Unlike many previous plant workers, the laborers appear to be U.S. citizens or legal immigrants who have been vetted by contract labor firms. Before they left Texas, most were unemployed, and a few didn't have a place to sleep.
The laborers brought with them the promise of helping the plant get back on its feet.
They also brought the dangers associated with an influx of uprooted people from the margins of society to the fragile ecosystem of this small, agrarian town.
Company needs workers; recruiters send busloads
A recruiter asked the standard questions one day at a homeless shelter in Amarillo, Texas: Are you physically and mentally capable of doing the work? Can you pass a drug test? Do you have any experience in a meatpacking plant?
Soon after the federal raid in Postville, labor recruiters had potential employees headed to the Iowa town by bus from Texas.
Recruiter Clint Haider did the groundwork for Agriprocessors in Amarillo, handing out fliers and talking to candidates for contract labor.
One of the places he visited was the homeless shelter.
The extent of the questions he could ask was limited by law, Haider said.
"There's only so many things you can ask to try to prescreen people," he said. "We are targeting people that are looking for work, looking for a new experience, looking for a change, obviously looking for a job. If you fit in that category, we can't be biased to people because they say they're homeless.
"(Agriprocessors) got cleaned out over there. The thing is, they need workers, with possibly some packing-house experience, that are willing to move," Haider said. "(The laborers are) the type of people that would be able to move pretty quickly, people looking for advancement, employment, probably a new start."
Agriprocessors representatives declined to speak about the specific arrangements between the company and the labor firms it uses, but contract labor typically works like this: A company will hire laborers for its peak meat season through contractors like Labor Ready in Waterloo and the Bravo Labor Agency in McAllen, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border.
There are two arrangements. In one, the meatpacking plant hires the workers full time and makes them employees of the company. In a second arrangement, the laborers work at the plant but stay employed by the contract firm.
Haider said he looked for good workers - he doesn't get paid if the people he sent to Agriprocessors leave or get fired within 90 days.
"I don't get paid for putting people on a bus," Haider said. "I wouldn't profit a nickel from someone who doesn't make it over there. It's totally a commission deal for me."
Of the 50 people pulled from Amarillo, five lost their jobs at Agriprocessors within two weeks.
But the men and women brought to Postville have changed the climate in the town. It was a change many residents feared would happen after the raid, a change that occurred 20 years ago when the plant opened and young, single men came to town looking for work. The crime went up, the drinking was harder, the parties went longer.
Kimber Bruns, who oversees the Tyler Street Resource Center in Amarillo, Texas, said 18 of the 20 people who went to Postville from her homeless day shelter have kept their jobs at Agriprocessors.
"It's a good thing (Agriprocessors is) doing. They're bringing money into the economy," Bruns said. "Are (the workers) drinking? Probably. (But) I hate to see one or two disgruntled people make such an issue of something that a company's doing for the good to be overshadowed.
"We're thrilled with it."
Agriprocessors supervisor Randy Vogt, who laborers said was their point of contact in Postville, agreed to an interview for this article, then declined to comment when questioned. He referred all questions to a spokesman.
Agriprocessors vice president Chaim Abrahams said the company didn't seek the homeless to work in its plant, but didn't exclude anyone, including workers who might have mental-health issues or physical ailments.
"The recruiting companies then conducted their normal recruiting efforts for work of this type. Agri in no way sought out any particular type of worker, nor did it act to exclude certain categories of potential employees, such as those who are down on their luck and presently living in homeless shelters," Abrahams wrote in an e-mail.
"Mere residence in a homeless shelter does not disqualify a person from consideration for employment. With respect to potential employees who are not qualified to work because of mental health issues, each new employee is given a safety orientation and reviewed for their ability to perform their tasks without undue risk of injury to themselves or others."
As to the potential effects of a new population on Postville, Abrahams said the company hopes "all workers will be productive members of the community."
Demand skyrockets at local food pantry
The food pantry in Postville was overrun one recent weekday afternoon.
Mothers, children in tow, lined up outside under black and threatening skies. Most of those in line had relatives who were picked up during the raid and have been sentenced to spend five months in jail before being deported.
Joining them, according to food pantry organizers and others, were several dozen contract laborers, men brought to Postville to make up for the arrest of nearly a third of the plant's work force.
The men took milk and Cornflakes, rice and beans. Most, including Ines Armijo of Eddyville, Texas, said they were brought here by Bravo Labor Agency.
Armijo said he came to the pantry to stock his refrigerator. He's being paid by Agriprocessors, he said, but "every little bit counts."
By handing out peanut butter and venison to contract laborers hired by the company, the Rev. Steve Brackett of St. Paul Lutheran Church said the pantry is effectively subsidizing the meatpacking plant that left its contract laborers without enough money to survive until their first paychecks.
"As a food pantry, we have to serve everyone," Brackett said. "However, we cannot take the hundreds of people at a time. I think Agriprocessors is going to have to do something."
Brackett pointed to a ground freezer that was packed with venison and hamburger meat in May. Now, it's less than one-quarter full.
For a facility that was designed to serve 30 to 40 families and individuals once a week, the influx of contract laborers has stretched the pantry's resources to the breaking point.
In May, the pantry expanded its hours and opened three days a week. The demand forced the pantry back to one day a week in June, when it served more than 600 "donations units," which amount to about a week's worth of groceries.
"We're going to have to give less food to the people who come in," Brackett said. "Rationing."
Increase in fights leaves some residents worried
The impact of the new workers is already being felt at the Postville and Monona police departments, where officers at each say that there has been an increase in calls - and violence - in town.
Postville Police Chief Michael Halse checked the crime reports from the last week of June. Each suspect in an incident of assault, disorderly conduct or public intoxication is "a new person," Halse said, although many already have Postville addresses.
Postville averaged 12.5 disorderly-conduct and public-intoxication charges per year since 1992 with a high of 44 such cases in 1998, Halse said at a Postville City Council meeting this month. At the meeting, he said this year's incidents could break that record.
The crime reports tell the story.
The criminal complaint against Cristobal R. Silva, a newcomer, is straightforward: Silva, 30, was causing a ruckus at a local bar in late June. Bartenders asked him to leave and called police. Hours later, police found Silva and his roommate, Herihardo Reyes, at their apartment, drunk, bruised and bloodied.
A witness told police that Silva and Reyes "began yelling at each other in Spanish and the defendant pushed Reyes and they began fighting," according to the complaint.
On his way to the patrol car in handcuffs, Silva slipped on some steps and banged his head. He had to be hospitalized and was charged with disorderly conduct.
Another criminal complaint, this one dated June 15, began like many recent incidents in Postville.
Men were drunk, fighting outside a bar. Three of them ganged up on one. When the police came, the men fled on foot.
While interviewing witnesses in the bar, the officer saw one of the men run by. He chased him in his cruiser. The man hid behind a Dumpster. The officer found him and put him in handcuffs.
At the time of the arrest, the suspect, 31-year-old Audon Hernandez, had a blood-alcohol content of 0.22.
Patty Brown, who lives next door to the police station, said she's worried by the new arrivals.
"I just feel uncomfortable during the day," Brown said. "There's a lot of trouble going on."
Brown said she won't walk around at night, especially given her proximity to Postville's lone bar.
That concern was echoed by Carolyn Real, whose husband, Paul, is a lay minister for the Hispanic ministry in Postville. She warned other women to walk in groups and take care not to be caught on the streets alone at night.
"I told them to be careful," Real said. "People need to be careful."
Postville Police Officer Nick Hazel, 28, said he has noticed the new faces and the new problems.
"It's a whole new crowd," he said.
'Back to square one,' pastor says of issues
From business owners to police officers to clergy members, the raid that wiped out most of Agriprocessors' work force meant one thing:
Here we go again.
Merle Turner of the Postville Diversity Council said the first wave of immigrants, mainly young, single men, came in the late 1980s when Agriprocessors was just getting off the ground. They came from the former Soviet Union, mainly Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the Ukraine. They were followed by Mexican immigrants in the mid-1990s, Turner said, and Guatemalans earlier this decade.
The Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants settled in Postville and eventually sent for their families, Turner said.
Those families, which made up much of the immigrant population in Postville, have disappeared since the raid, Brackett said. In their place are a group of people more likely to "drink, stay out late, have house parties till late at night."
"I thought we had it under control," Brackett said. "Now, we're back to square one, back to the way things were."
Postville Mayor Robert Penrod said police will continue to patrol as usual, and the city won't add officers unless issues arise.
But, he said, the city would prefer families to the influx of young, single men.
"If we can get families back in there, it helps the city, it helps Agri and it helps the schools," Penrod said. "That's our goal ... to get family-oriented people here." http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080727/NEWS/807270335/1001
Link:
www.ice.gov
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