Free Republic

Abdiamar Bare, 21, walks up to the nondescript mosque in Greeley for noon prayers and pauses a moment to talk about his faith. He is asked by a visitor if he's seen the DVD "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West." No, he says. He's asked if the principles of Islam allow other religions to coexist with it. "Every religion is the same. No religion is better than another religion," Bare says. "I believe in Islam. I like my religion, and I don't want it to interfere with other religions." Bare is one of about 120 Muslim workers recently fired...

OMAHA, Neb. — Officials at a meatpacking plant in Grand Island fired at least 86 workers Friday after they walked off the job amid a dispute over prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the company said. However, a Muslim leader and one of the fired workers disputed the plant's numbers, saying 150 people had lost their jobs at the JBS Swift & Co. facility, which employs about 2,500 people, not including management. About a fifth of them are Muslim. JBS Swift spokeswoman Tamara Smid, who confirmed 86 firings late Friday, said the action was taken against employees who...

First Swift Company tells Muslims that their demands for special break times would no longer be met. Now Swift has fired 150 Muslims who worked there. They were fired for being selfish and taking unauthorized work breaks to accommodate Islam. A few Muslim workers actually fainted on the job because of lack of food. Them fainting makes me wonder how much other Muslim workers slacked off this month due to lack of energy.

The walk out staged by the non-Muslims at Swift Plant has worked, at least for now. As the Muslim employees were told that their demands were causing too much trouble and they would not be met any longer. I applaud the non-Muslims at Swift Plant for not allowing Islam to be imposed on them. As for the Muslims there, they need to learn to keep their religion to themselves or move to an Islamic country.

GRAND ISLAND — A group of 500 Muslim workers from Grand Island's JBS Swift & Co. plant staged a protest Monday afternoon. Members of the B shift (3 to 11:30 p.m.) and some members of the morning A shift walked off the job after being denied time to pray during what they said is the holiest of times for them -- Ramadan. A group of protesting women said they were kicked by a supervisor when they attempted to pray at work. Asha Abdi said she knelt to pray when the supervisor said, "You can't pray here," kicked her feet and...

JBS Swift & Co. fires about one-fourth of 400 workers who had walked off the job, demanding break time to pray during the holy month of Ramadan. The union local says it will fight the action. ... When Ramadan began Sept. 1, workers said supervisors informally gave them time to break their daylong fast at sundown. But non-Muslim employees protested, and on Friday, JBS Swift & Co. officials refused to give workers break time to pray and eat. About 400 workers left the company's meatpacking plant, which dominates this city of 90,000. By Tuesday, 250 had not returned, and Swift...

At least 130 Muslim workers at the north Greeley JBS Swift & Co. plant were fired Wednesday afternoon, apparently over a dispute involving breaks during Ramadan. At issue is a request by Muslim workers to be able to take their lunch breaks at sunset to end their fast during Ramadan... expressed their dissatisfaction with negotiations by saying, “No prayer, no work.”

More than 100 Muslim workers were fired from a Greeley slaughterhouse Wednesday after refusing to report for work a day earlier in protest of the company's refusal to allow a prayer break during the work shift. ... "This action is a direct violation of our collective-bargaining agreement," Swift said of the walkout in a statement. "Employees were told . . . failure to report to work when recalled would result in their immediate termination." ... "There were no negotiations (Wednesday), nothing," said Ahmed Mohamud, a spokesman for the workers and one of those fired Wednesday. "I honestly thought we'd work...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008Talks break down between Muslims and Swift Chris Casey Talks between JBS Swift & Co. officials and Muslim workers seeking prayer breaks during Ramadan broke down Tuesday afternoon and turned into calls of breach of contract. The roughly 250 workers, who've been suspended since walking off the job Friday night, say they will not return to work and may take legal action. They also acknowledge they may face mass terminations. A mid-afternoon meeting between the Muslim representatives and about 80 of the suspended workers grew heated in a downtown Greeley park when the representatives relayed information to...

Sixteen months ago, federal agents swept into the Panhandle town of Cactus, Texas, in Moore County as part of a massive raid of Swift & Co. beef processing plants across the country. They arrested 297 workers on immigration violations and sent hundreds more fleeing the community for fear of more raids.

WASHINGTON - The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye. The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday. The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said. It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. However, NASA...

The FBI is investigating a Tennessee trucking company. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Bureau of Immigration and Customs and several other agencies searched the Swift Transportation trucking company in Memphis on Monday. Swift Transportation dispatches more than 500 trucks per day, transporting mainly for the United Parcel Service. Employees said agents seized computers but authorities have not released what they were looking for. "I haven't a clue,” said training driver James Richardson. “All I know is all of the training activities have been put on hold right now until an investigation is over...

Texan and super-conservative Bob Perry formally endorsed Brian Klock for the Texas Congressional seat in CD-22. A Republican candidate for the District 22 congressional seat will be getting a lot of attention today with a very unique campaign ad. klockforcongress.orgIt's yet to be seen just whether it's negative or in his favor. Now in the private sector, Brian Klock remains a commander in the US Navy Reserve. He's an underdog candidate trying to gain new ground. Later Monday, his campaign will unveil a billboard (pictured above) on the Southwest Freeway near Fountainview. It shows crosshairs trained on downtown Houston, it...

Muslim workers in Neb. allege harassment By OSKAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer 26 minutes ago Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say. The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a...

Nineteen people were arrested at Swift & Co. meatpacking plants around the country as part of a sweep involving illegal immigrant workers at the plants, according to a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Agents made the arrests Tuesday in Cactus, Texas; Marshalltown, Iowa; Grand Island, Neb.; Worthington, Minn.; Greeley, Colo.; and Hyrum, Utah; where Swift has plants. They involved current or former Swift workers suspected of identity theft, ICE officials said in a news release. Seven of the arrests were at the Swift plant in Cactus, Texas, said Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman in Dallas. "Swift is to be...

AMARILLO, Texas -- Prison awaits the last four now-ex-workers of a Swift meatpacking plant in Cactus targeted in an illegal immigration bust. A federal judge in Amarillo today sentenced the final defendants of the 53 people arrested in the December 12th raid. Each pleaded guilty to charges related to false identification. Prosecutors say Jesus Gutierrez-Ramos, Manuel Castro-Pablo and Cristino Pablo-Alonzo pleaded guilty to using fraudulently obtained identity documents. Each must serve eight months in prison. Domingo Velasquez-Gutierrez pleaded guilty to the same charge and received a six-month prison term. No charges were filed against Colorado-based Swift.

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. -- On Dec. 12, just after 7:30 a.m., Superintendent Steve Joel got a call from the police chief saying "something big" was about to happen at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant. Mr. Joel realized what that meant: Dozens of Swift workers were about to be rounded up in an immigration raid. What would happen to their children, students in his district? Would some seniors ever be able to graduate? "It was like a tornado," says the head of the Grand Island School District. The twister that struck this Midwestern town was part of far-reaching operation targeting...

AMARILLO, Texas — Six more former workers arrested during a raid of the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Cactus pleaded guilty to federal charges this week and could go to prison. The six entered pleas in federal court in Amarillo on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release issued Wednesday. Charges against them stem from a December immigration raid at the Swift plant in the Panhandle conducted as part of an investigation into the use of Social Security numbers by illegal immigrants to gain employment. Four of the defendants — Jesus Gutierrez-Ramos, Domingo Velasquez-Gutierrez, Manuel Castro-Pablo...

HYRUM - There are rumors whispered among the Swift plant workers here that immigration agents will return for a second raid - the night shift might be next. But employees rarely speak openly about the Dec. 12 roundup at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant, where 158 undocumented workers were arrested. The plant hasn't been the same since the raid, employees say. Some workers never returned after the roundup. And there's a lot of work, but many new people can't cut it. "They've been hiring right and left," said Maria, a Swift employee who asked that her last name...

BOSTON - Jane Swift, whom Mitt Romney stepped over in 2002 to become governor of Massachusetts, announced Wednesday she was endorsing Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential race. ”Senator John McCain is a principled leader whose unwavering determination to improve the lives of Americans is admirable,” Swift said of the Arizona Republican in a statement issued by his presidential exploratory committee.

Back in June 2006, the front page of the New York Times carried news of a highly secret CIA-Treasury department intelligence program to track al Qaeda financing that drew on data supplied by a European banking consortium based in Belgium known as SWIFT. President Bush denounced the newspaper’s disclosure of the classified counterterrorism operation as “disgraceful.” Prior to publication, administration officials had strenuously warned the newspaper not to run the story, arguing, among other things, that it would endanger national security by placing the SWIFT consortium under intense pressure to stop sharing information with U.S. intelligence. Bill Keller, his paper...

Greeley-based Swift & Co. says it will consider a sale, merger or IPO after unnamed suitors approached the giant meatpacker. Swift, at more than $9 billion in revenue, is one of the nation's biggest private companies. It was part of ConAgra until the Omaha-based agri-giant sold it in 2002 to a partnership between buyout firm HM Capital - formerly Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst - and George Gillett's Booth Creek. Gillett serves as Swift's chairman. Over the five years of ownership, Swift has dealt with a Japanese beef ban that crimped sales and prompted layoffs, as well as a raid...

Attorneys representing foreign workers jailed in the recent crackdown at meatpacking plants accused immigration officials of violating a federal court order to hold bond hearings within 48 hours for the detainees. Today the attorneys asked U.S. District Court Judge John Kane for an emergency order to force the government to hold bond hearings for 61 Mayan workers from Guatemala who now are held without bond at a federal facility in El Paso, Texas. The order was for all of the roughly 260 detainees who have not had a bond hearing to receive one, attorneys said. A court filing by Jim...

DENVER - A federal judge demanded Friday that U.S. immigration officials disclose the whereabouts of 265 people arrested in a meatpacking raid last month in Colorado. U.S. District Judge John L. Kane gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement until Jan. 22 to submit a list accounting for all the detainees, including those who have been deported. "There are people in custody — there is an urgency to this," Kane said. Union attorneys are contesting the arrests at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant in Greeley, one of six Swift plants in six states that were raided Dec. 13. In all,...

One of the hoariest cliches in the immigration debate is that illegal aliens in the workforce "do the jobs Americans won't do" - hence the need for a general amnesty......Vicente Fox said it....President Bush has referred to "good, honorable, hardworking people here doing jobs Americans won't do" as he tried to drum up support for his "path to citizenship" ........ But is the conventional wisdom true? Last week, as part of a broader ID theft and illegal-document probe, ICE agents raided Swift & Co. plants in six states - rounding up hundreds of illegal workers. Yet the plants managed to...

Few would call it a dream job. But the position of slaughterer at the Swift & Co. plant in Greeley, Colo., was drawing some interest last week... The Rocky Mountain News observed that the line of applicants “was out the door” at the county employment office.... ...Meanwhile in Nebraska, union officials said Tuesday that 40 to 50 workers had been hired at the Grand Island plant, one of six Swift plants raided by the ICE in a sweep that led to nearly 1,300 arrests. And funny thing —they say Swift has been improving its wages, benefits and bonuses since before...

A spokesman for Swift & Co. says a lawsuit filed recently by eighteen former Swift & Co. employees is "completely without merit." The $23-million lawsuit alleges that the meat packing company conspired to manipulate and depress the labor market and wages by hiring illegal immigrants. The lawsuit, filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleges that defendants including Swift and its owners, HM Capital Partners LLC in Dallas -- formerly Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst -- engaged in an "enterprise that grossly affected commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity" in violation of...

They came to tell the stories they say aren't being told. In the wake of last Tuesday's raids at Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in Worthington, Minn., and five other states, a group of about 200 people gathered Monday afternoon outside the St. Paul offices of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman to condemn the federal action and demand immigration reform. After a 40-minute rally, a smaller group walked into the Republican senator's office and read stories about families affected by the Minnesota roundup of more than 200 workers on alleged immigration violations. "One woman is pregnant and is terrified to leave...

A federal grand jury in Minneapolis indicted 15 people on identity-theft charges and four more on other identity-related counts, all stemming from last week's raid on the Swift & Co. pork processing plant in Worthington, Minn. The immigration raids on Swift plants in six states led to the arrests of nearly 1,300 people, including 230 in Worthington, in what was described as a crackdown on illegal immigrants using stolen identities to get jobs.

DALLAS (AP) - Former employees are suing Swift & Co. for $23 million, alleging the meatpacking company conspired to keep wages down by hiring illegal immigrants. The 18 former employees are legal residents who worked at a plant in Cactus, Texas, north of Amarillo. The plant was one of six facilities raided in a multistate federal sweep that led to the arrests of nearly 1,300 employees and temporarily halted Swift's operations. "These plaintiffs are ... victims in a long-standing scheme by Swift to depress and artificially lower the wages of its workers by knowingly hiring illegal workers," said attorney, Angel...

For nearly two weeks, Swift & Co. officials fought to block an impending immigration raid they knew was coming. According to newly unsealed federal-court records filed in Amarillo, Texas, on Dec. 4, the company sought an injunction to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from raiding six of its plants across the nation. On Dec. 7, the company's request was denied. And on Tuesday, the raid went forward. While waging the sealed court fight, Swift scrutinized its workers' employment documents. Nearly 400 workers nationally "simply disappeared" because of that review, said Don Wiseman, the company's general counsel. "We never fired...

Man's ID theft linked to raidsWorkers used his information in 3 different states By Mike Baird Caller Times December 16, 2006 A former Landry's busboy is bucking Uncle Sam, who wants a cut of $75,790 earned by employees at three national meat processing companies using Steven De Leon Aumada's identification. Aumada, 21, says he feels "skinned and filleted" after realizing he might be trapped in the web of worker deceit that led immigration officials to raid six Swift & Co. meat processing plants Tuesday in six states, according to officials. The Internal Revenue Service notified Aumada in July that he...

Not all of the suspected illegal immigrants detained in the raid are in Iowa some are back in Grand Island. In cases where married couples with children both worked at Swift and were detained, the mother has been allowed to return to her kids. One of the alleged illegal immigrants is back at home, but her husband is still with authorities somewhere in Iowa. The 261 suspected illegal immigrants detained in Tuesday's Swift raid were made up of both men and women, some of whom were married to each other. If they had kids, the mom could go home. Thursday...

We should throw them a parade. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and investigators who did that nationwide raid at Swift packing plants the other day. We should throw them a parade. We should treat them like the national heroes they are. We should let them -- and the rest of the country -- know that most of us don't agree with this hand-wringing going on in the media. We don't think the raid was a bad thing, we don't think it was unfair or un-American. We think that it was a federal agency for once doing its job. Here's...

......"But as Catholics, we also need to vigorously question the timing, manner and focus of these latest arrests. Staged on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and barely two weeks before Christmas, these raids have disrupted hundreds of families in the immigrant community and frightened many thousands more. And while public officials have explained the reason for these raids as criminal identity theft, most of the real criminals – the people who steal and sell the false identities so that undocumented immigrants can find work – were not among those arrested. Click here to find out more! Dramatic, get-tough...

The immigration raids on meatpacking plants in six states were the largest sweep of their kind against a single company and resulted in the arrests of 1,282 suspected illegal immigrants, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday. The raids early Tuesday of facilities owned by meatpacking giant Swift & Co., based in Greeley, Colo., were followed by immigration charges against 18 percent of the 7,250 workers scheduled to work the morning shift, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said. More than 100 people were charged with crimes that included identity theft, Chertoff said, and that number is expected to grow. Federal...

First it was the chaos. Then it was the confusion as to who was arrested and where they would be taken. Now, the Spanish-speaking residents of Cactus, Dumas and other neighboring communities who escaped Tuesday's raid because they either are here legally or do not work at the Swift meat plant, face an even bigger problem: what is going to happen to the more than 100 children whose parents were rounded up and arrested? "Right now the children are being taken care of by relatives or friends of those who were deported," said Orlando Gajardo, spokesman for the St. Peter...

Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras at a Press Conference on Operation Wagon Train Secretary Chertoff: Good morning, everybody. I'm joined here by Julie Myers, the Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement; by Deborah Platt Majoras, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission; and by George Gaines, the County Attorney for Cache County, Utah. One thing that I've spoken about and many others in the administration have talked about over the last year is the need to take a comprehensive approach...

The union representing workers at Swift & Co. meat processing plant in Greeley went to Federal District Court in Denver this morning to demand that more than 200 workers be released because they were interrogated and detained illegally. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 attorney John Bowen says, “We are saying that the were seized unlawfully, they do not know what conditions they are being held under or they have not been advised of their rights.”

US promises immigration crackdown US officials have pledged to continue a crackdown on illegal immigration a day after agents arrested 1,200 people at meat-packing plants in six states. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the arrests had uncovered flagrant violations of immigration and privacy laws. Most of the workers arrested at the Swift & Co meat-packing plants are from Central American and African countries. Swift & Co said it did not knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The arrests followed a 10-month investigation into alleged illegal immigrants suspected of using forged or stolen identity papers. "Violations of our immigration laws and privacy...

GREELEY, Colo. — Federal agents raided six Swift & Co. processing plants in six states on Tuesday in search of illegal immigrants who stole the identities of lawful U.S. residents and used their Social Security numbers to get jobs at the beef and pork company. Agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency executed search warrants at Swift's processing facilities in Greeley, Colo.; Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn. ICE officials did not have an arrest total but said workers were being arrested on administrative immigration violations and in some cases, existing criminal arrest...

WASHINGTON - More than 1,200 people were arrested in meatpacking plants in six states during raids that federal officials said amounted to the largest-ever workplace crackdown on illegal immigration. 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." The raids at Swift...

One way to get businesses to STOP HIRING ILLEGAL ALIENS is to BOYCOTT their products to QUIT SUPPORTING THEM!!!

BRUSSELS, Belgium - A report by an EU panel released Thursday said the bank data transfer agency SWIFT broke European privacy laws by handing over personal data to U.S. authorities for use in anti-terror investigations. The Belgian-based company, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, "committed violations of data protection laws" by secretly transferring data to the United States, without properly informing Belgian authorities, the EU's data protection panel said. The panel's report calls on SWIFT, financial institutions and EU authorities to "take the necessary measures" to end the transfer, which it said contradicts Belgian and EU data protection rules....

The NY Times, which has revealed some of the nation’s most crucial secrets (including the surveillance of foreign Al Qaeda communications with domestic accomplices, and the SWIFT program that traces bank transactions of foreign terrorists) now opines that maybe it shouldn’t have revealed the SWIFT program to the world. The Public Editor of the Times (sort of an ombudsman) said yesterday

The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, will retire in March or April under the military's "up or out" promotion system. Swift said last week he was notified he would not be promoted to commander. He said the notification came about two weeks after the Supreme Court sided with him and against the White House in the case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a...

...Has Times editor gotten away with murder?Posted: September 22, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern If you blinked you would have missed it. I'm speaking of the news coverage about who really leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a non-covert CIA agent. The leaker, former Colin Powell aide Richard Armitage, was a vocal critic of the war in Iraq. Perhaps the media "overlooked" Armitage and his role in this scandal precisely because he shared their disdain for the war in Iraq. Did you happen to notice that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby didn't receive that same consideration – even though they...

Dear Friend, The topic of this email -- and the subject of a major speech I will deliver in Boston's Faneuil Hall tomorrow -- is national security. If you think I'm planning to alert people to Republican pre-election fear-mongering on this vitally important issue, you're only half right. Of course, we need to reject the Republicans' idea that a "debate" on national security involves them demanding another book of blank checks for policies that don't work. And, needless to say, we can't tolerate them smearing any Democrat who stands up to their miserable record of failure. I will be campaigning...

LONDON (Reuters) - Teams of international scientists have used observations from NASA's Swift satellite and other telescopes to witness the evolution of a cosmic blast into a stellar explosion or supernova. The blast is thought to be a milder type of gamma-ray burst (GRB) -- the most powerful type of explosion known to astronomers -- called an X-ray flash. It is known as GRB060218 after the February 18 date it began in the constellation of Aries about 440 million light years away. A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year. "This extends the...

By Walter Pincus pincusw@washpost.com Courage in journalism today takes all the obvious, traditional forms -- reporting from a war zone or from a totalitarian country where a reporter's life or safety are issues. In Washington, D.C., where I work, it's a far less dramatic form of courage if a journalist stands up to a government official or a politician who he or she has reason to believe is not telling the truth or living up to his or her responsibilities. But I believe a new kind of courage is needed in journalism in this age of instant news, instant analysis,...