Immigration Raids and the Politics of Fear

The cruelty—the utter contempt for common decency and common sense—of this government was on full display last week when agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), some in riot gear, stormed into six Swift & Company plants in Cactus Texas; Grand Island, Nebraska; Greeley, Colorado; Hyrum, Utah; Marshaltown, Iowa; and, Worthington, Minnesota. They detained 1282 day shift workers, roughly 10% of the entire workforce. Workers on other shifts were left to worry.

Inside the plants workers were separated into two groups: US citizens and non-US citizens. Non-US citizens were herded on to buses and transported to deportation centers, some in distant states. Families were wrenched apart. In some communities children were left in school at the end of the day with no one to pick them up. Immigrant communities were in shock.

The raids were clearly calculated to spread terror. Michael Chertoff head of the Department of Homeland Security ominously put it this way:

It’s going to be a deterrent to illegal workers.  It’s going to cause them [immigrant workers] to say that, you know, this happened in Swift, it could easily happen somewhere else. In fact, I’m pretty much going to guarantee we’re going to keep bringing these cases.”

So far not a single executive, manager, or stockholder of Swift & Co, the second largest beef and pork processor in the country, has been charged with wrong doing, although company officials almost certainly colluded in the massive employment of undocumented workers. Indeed, undocumented workers have constituted the core of the industry’s staffing strategy over the past decade. Prior to the raid officials said ".... a raid would remove up to 40% its 13,000 employees."  Swift & Co actually sought, but failed to get, an injunction in Federal Courts to prevent the raids, claiming the company has obeyed all laws. According to the New York Times;

Sam Rovit, chief executive of Swift, said the company learned of the I.C.E. investigation in March, but had been “rebuffed repeatedly” when it offered to cooperate. Mr. Rovit said the company had participated since 1997 in a federal program known as Basic Pilot, which allows employers to use a federal database to verify documents presented by job-seekers.

We have complied with every law that is out there on the books,” Mr. Rovit said in an interview.

The raids represent a delicate balancing act for the Bush administration’s self-contradictory agenda on immigration.

The Republican Party is deeply split into two contradictory factions: a nativist “enforcement only” wing that wants to close down the border and kick-out undocumented workers; and a corporate wing that wants access to cheap immigrant labor any way they can get it and generally favors some kind of normalization for some of the workers now in the country and a guest worker program to bring in others. 

On the one hand, the harshness of the raids plays to the “enforcement only” wing of the Republican Party, but on the other hand, the raids also play to the corporate wing of the Party that is pushing for access to immigrant labor, since it is unlikely that industries like meat packing can operate without large numbers of immigrant workers. By sowing terror and confusion among immigrants and uncertainty among employers the Administration apparently hopes to create a crisis atmosphere that will enable it to force through its agenda.

Businesses are already expressing alarm and mobilizing for action.

This is any business’s nightmare, whether you are in the meat industry or outside the meat industry,” said Janet Riley, spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute.

Randy Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, warned that the raids would lead companies to question the value of participating in the Basic Pilot program. And Laura Reiff of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, said she was deluged on Wednesday with calls from business owners upset by the Department of Homeland Security’s actions.

They’re frightened; they’re outraged,” said Ms. Reiff, whose coalition represents hotels, restaurants, construction companies and other service industries. “Companies have tried to work with them in good faith. For them to target a company that is using a program that they’re trying to sell is disingenuous.

A new twist

The Department of Homeland Security added a new twist as a pretext for the raids: identity theft. Apparently some workers were using both the names and Social Security numbers of other people with or without their consent.  According to the Associated Press:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff  said Wednesday the investigation uncovered a "disturbing front" in the war against illegal immigration, in which illegal immigrants are using the identities of U.S. citizens to obtain jobs.

"Violations of our immigration laws and privacy rights often go hand in hand," he said. "Enforcement actions like this one protect the privacy rights of innocent Americans while striking a blow against illegal immigration."

But in keeping with this government’s tradition of inflating and fabricating evidence to justify its heavy handed actions, only 65 workers, or about 5% of those detained, were initially charged with identity theft. And many of those may have used the identities of others with consent. Representatives of the United Food and Commercial workers, which represents workers at Swift & Co plants, say that ICE actually knew the names of those involved in identity theft before they raided the plants

More likely, the use of identity theft and privacy issues as a pretext for the raids is an attempt to buttress the Administration’s efforts to obtain new powers to monitor and investigate Americans. This Administration—more than any other in history--has sought to invade peoples privacy with heavy handed use of illegal wire-taps and similar invasions of privacy. And it clearly wants new and expanded powers including the greater access and use of Social Security information and, possibly, national identity cards.  But it has run into fierce opposition from a broad cross-section of people—including many conservative Republicans—who are suspicious of granting the government new powers to snoop. By linking illegal immigration and identity theft in such a high profile way, the Administration thinks it can shift attention from its own sorry record on privacy and get the additional powers to invade privacy that it seeks.

An assault on labor rights

It’s no surprise that 5 of the 6 raided Swift & Co plants were unionized.

Meatpacking jobs are among the most arduous and dangerous industrial jobs. The meatpacking industry has always run on the backs of immigrant workers. What has changed in recent years is the legal status of many of the immigrant workers in the industry. Today 27% of all “butchers and meat processors” are undocumented workers according the Pew Hispanic Center. 

Over decades of struggle, workers had managed to raise wages and improve working conditions. Then, in the 1980s the meatpacking industry launched a successful assault on union power. The rise of non-union companies, the de-skilling of slaughterhouse work, and the re-location of plants to more rural areas severely weakened industry unions. The defeat of the Hormel Strike in Minnesota in the late 1980’s—a strike triggered by unilateral wages cuts by the company—was a pivotal moment in the history of the industry and of the US labor movement.  Following the defeat, wages and benefits in the industry collapsed and working conditions deteriorated.  Companies turned to immigrant workers—often desperate and undocumented—to fill jobs.   

Now the newcomers are trying to rebuild union strength in the industry. Major organizing drives are underway at companies like Smithfield in North Carolina that employ large numbers of immigrant workers where, it should be noted, workers have been regularly fired for immigration violations. Similarly workers in other industries with large numbers of immigrants are also seeking to organize to improve their lot.

There is growning alarm among immigrants and activists that aggressive raids in industries that employ large numbers of undocumented workers—some of the very industries that are the focus of union organizing efforts—could de-rail attempts to revive the labor movement. The raids create a climate of fear and undermine the ability of workers to exercise their basic human and labor rights. They are a clear and present danger not just to immigrant workers, but to all workers. If a significant percentage of the workforce can be threatened with arrest or deportation, what chance is there for successful organizing? Unions need to mount a vigorous defense of the human and labor rights of everyone—immigrant and non-immigrant  alike. A high profile fight against such raids, conducted shoulder-to-shoulder by immigrant and non-immigrant workers, can help lay the basis for a worker-friendly immigration policy that unifies both groups. 

Our next blog will outline steps to genuine reform.
M.O.

Comments

[Kent]

You guys need to keep in mind that throughout our history so-called native workers have complained that immigrants - legal or not - drive down wages and deprive Americans of jobs. My great-grandfather was an impoverished farmer from Scotland who emigrated to Canada. His sons came to Michigan to work as lumberjacks in the late 1880s. I don't know if they came into the country legally or not. What's funny is that my grandfather later became a state senator and spent a lot of time griping about immigrants. My question is, what country did your ancestors come from?

[ms villalpando]

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO HARBORING ILLEGALS? TO USE A SOCIAL SECURITY THAT IS NOT YOURS IS ILLEGAL IT IS FRAUD. WHY DO ILLEGALS COME HERE AND COMMIT FRAUD,CROSS THE BORDER ILLEGALLY, DRIVE WITHOUT DRIVERS LICENSE OR USE FALSE DRIVERS LICENSES, AND DO NOT CARRY ANY TYPE OF INSURANCE WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE AM I THE ONLY PERSON ON THIS EARTH THAT THINKS THAT ILLEGALS SHOULD BE DEPORTED! PLEASE HELP TO GET OUT OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE I AM THE ONLY HUMAN LEFT!

[Robert]

The main reason why it seems cruel to "bust" illegal workers who have been working at their jobs, and supporting their families for years and years, is because our government has been indifferent in enforcing our immigration laws for 20 years (until recently with the raids). Since 1986, the year of the last immigration reform, we should have been aggressively seeking out, and punishing and fining, businesses that dared hire illegals. This way, the illegal workers would work, say, just for a few months, rather than several years. They wouldn't be coming up with the annoying argument that we'd be breaking up their large families. And fewer Americans would be victims of identity theft.

[Borg697]

This proves the "jobs Americans won't do" is a bunch of bull. Plenty of American's lined up for those jobs!

[Susan Trevino]

How can you have rights if your not an AMERICAN?
I am sorry but I don't feel sorry for anyone breaking the law!
Cruel is stealing someone else's identity and not givng a second thought to who has to pay.

My sister had the same thing done to her.
Her and her children have suffered, she has had to pay while the ILLEGAL CRIMINAL INVADER just found another identity!

[ACT]

This is a prime example of why American corporations who hire illegal aliens should be punished.

The U.S. has guest worker programs.

Use them.