DHS Press Conference Transcript on Swift Raids

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 to the issue of illegal immigration. I shouldn't have to remind people this problem has been with us for decades. It won't be solved overnight, and it won't be solved with a piecemeal approach. What's required is a comprehensive approach. And as the President has said, that means stronger border security, effective interior enforcement and a temporary worker program.

Now, some of this requires further congressional action. We need Congress to act if there's going to be a temporary worker program. That would be a program that would allow businesses that need foreign workers, because they can't otherwise satisfy their labor needs, to be able to get those workers in a regulated program that gives us visibility into who is coming in, has a secure form of identification, and makes sure that the federal government is able to collect and properly allocate all the necessary taxes.

But while we're waiting for Congress to act on a temporary worker program, there are other areas in which we can take significant steps. And we have taken significant steps in order to control this decades-long problem. We've added more boots on the ground at the border. We've added new technology in fencing. We've let our SBI net technology contract, which brings 21st century capabilities to the border, to leverage our Border Patrol assets. And, very significantly, we have ended catch and release at the border, just as we promised we would.

But we've also done some things in the interior, and that revolves around our efforts to substantially increase what we do with respect to worksite enforcement in the United States. We all know that the primary economic engine that draws in illegal migration is work. And when businesses are built upon systematic violation of the law, or others go to systematically violate the law, in order to either bring in illegal migrants or to allow them to find jobs, that is a problem that we have to attack.

As a consequence, we've set a new record this past year for worksite enforcement. During fiscal year 2006, we arrested or charged 716 individuals for criminal violations of our immigration laws. These are charges which, in many cases, have jail terms and substantial financial penalties attached to them. That compares, by the way, with only 25 criminal arrests back in 2002. These cases, I want to emphasize, are not about administrative fines; they are about criminal felony sanctions, with a very real threat of jail time.

In addition to this effort focused on the criminal law, we've stepped up our targeting of criminal organizations and enterprises that support illegal migration by trafficking in false and stolen documents, including Social Security numbers and driver's licenses. This is a serious problem not only with respect to illegal immigration, but with respect to national security. And that's precisely the point made by the 9/11 Commission a couple of years ago, because illegal documents are not only used by illegal migrants, but they are used by terrorists who want to get on airplanes, or criminals who want to prey on our citizens.

And so, as part of this overall strategy of worksite enforcement, we've gotten very focused on the question of those who exploit illegal documents and identity theft in order to pursue illegal acts. So yesterday's enforcement action demonstrates another step in this work site enforcement strategy. A tough stance against worksites that employ illegal aliens and against individuals and organizations that commit or facilitate identity theft or fraud.

As you learned yesterday through raids that were conducted at six facilities for Swift & Company, Operation Wagon Train, which is the product of months of investigation, is targeted at a massive use of document fraud to support illegal work in the workplace. ICE agents yesterday arrested 1,282 individuals as part of ongoing worksite enforcement investigations at six facilities owned by Swift & Company, the nation's third largest processor of fresh pork and beef. Warrants were issued at Swift facilities in six states — Greeley, Colorado; Grand Island, Nebraska; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minnesota.

Of the 1,282 workers who were arrested on administrative immigration violations, approximately 65 were also charged with identity theft-related charges — those are criminal charges — or other similar criminal violations, including reentry. That number may change as the investigation continues and as more individuals get charged with criminal violations in addition to administrative violations.

The investigation began in February of this year. The evidence we uncovered indicates that hundreds of Swift workers illegally assumed the identities of U.S. citizens, using stolen or fraudulently acquired Social Security numbers and other identity documents which they used to get jobs at Swift facilities. I emphasize that the investigation is continuing, particularly with respect to those who facilitated or conspired with others to allow this use of identity theft to support illegal work. So some of the follow-on is going to continue as the investigation matures.

Now, this is not only a case about illegal immigration, which is bad enough. It's a case about identity theft in violation of the privacy rights and the economic rights of innocent Americans. I will tell you that the people whose identities were stolen — and we believe, based on reporting we got at the federal Trade Commission (FTC) — that these number at least in the hundreds. These individuals suffered very real consequences in their lives. These were not victimless crimes.

Let me give you a couple of examples. One victim in Texas stated that his personal information was used by someone else for employment. As a consequence of that identity theft, the victim reported that he was pulled over and arrested on one occasion because the suspect used his identity information to conduct illegal activity. The victim believes the suspect got his information because he lost his wallet. And the FTC information indicates the suspect was working at the Swift plant in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Another victim in Texas reports that the suspect obtained utility accounts and a cell phone account, using her identity information. Suspects have also gained employment at several locations throughout the United States using this identity information. And the victim believes, again, this started as the result of a theft of personal information from a purse. The suspect using this, or at least a suspect using this information, was also working in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Anybody who has ever been a victim of identity theft understands the hardship, and, in fact, the persistent hardship, that follows from this kind of crime, and the hardship that is felt by innocent people. We're working with the Federal Trade Commission to notify all the individuals who have been identified as victims of this scheme of the results of the enforcement action taken yesterday and today.

I want to talk for a moment about one dimension of this case. As the company has indicated, they participated in a program set up by the law called Basic Pilot. And what Basic Pilot does is it allows participating employers to check names and Social Security numbers by perspective employees to make sure that the name matches the Social Security number, and that the Social Security number is, in fact, legitimate and real within the system. That is a very, very useful tool in preventing one kind of use of identity for purposes of illegal immigration and illegal work. But it is not a magic bullet for every kind of problem.

There is a separate problem, a more sophisticated problem, that arises when people actually steal legitimate names and numbers that match together, and then use those stolen identities to get work. So that, while Basic Pilot inoculates a company against one kind of illegal immigration fraud, it doesn't inoculate against all kinds of fraud. There are additional tools that we have to bring into play. The analogy I use is, a polio vaccine protects you against polio, it doesn't protect you against tetanus. You've got to use multiple kinds of vaccines to protect against multiple kinds of problems.

Now, a question that arises is why is it that people are able to get away with using genuine identities and genuine Social Security numbers obtained through identify theft or through the sale of identity in order to get work? In other words, why doesn't Basic Pilot cover this, too? And the answer is, there's a legal obstacle. The law currently does not allow the Social Security Administration to refer to us instances where the same Social Security number is used on multiple occasions in multiple work places as a basis for obtaining jobs.

If we were able to get the legal authority to do this kind of review of information, we could much more readily identify the kind of identity theft and identity fraud that we discovered in this case. We have urged Congress to act to give us this authority. Once again, I call on Congress, when Congress returns early next year, to take up this issue of revising the Social Security rules so we can further protect Americans from identity theft, and protect our borders against illegal immigration.

I might also add that when we get a temporary worker program, if Congress passes such a program, a critical element of that will be a biometric secure credential, which, again, will be a weapon not only in allowing us to fight against illegal migration, but as important, to protect Americans' identities against theft and other identity-related crimes.

Finally, I want to put this into somewhat larger context. While this theft is not, in itself, related to national security, the issue of fraudulent identification is one which, as the 9/11 Commission recognized, poses a homeland security challenge. The 9/11 Commission said — and I'm quoting — "Secure identification should begin in the United States. The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people who are who they say they are, and to check whether they are terrorists."

So we have been working very hard to move forward, in general, on this recommendation of the 9/11 Commission with respect to things like our Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and our Real ID Secure Drivers License Initiative, both of which were passed by Congress in the last few years. Again, we're going to press Congress to give us the support and continue the support to get the job done. Yes, it costs a little bit of money, yes, there's a little bit of grumbling about the need to change to these new kinds of documents, but if it protects Americans against terrorism or identity theft or a host of other problems, it's worth making the investment and getting the job done.

So now I'm going to ask the Assistant Secretary, Julie Myers, to provide a little additional specifics on Operation Wagon Train. I'm going to then ask the Chairman of the FTC to comment, then we'll take some questions.

Assistant Secretary Myers: Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Chertoff. This investigation began in February, 2006 as a result of information provided by local police and developed during ICE's Criminal Alien Program — or CAP. Under CAP, ICE agents process aliens who are being held in state or federal jails for removal following completion of their sentences. In this case, ICE agents conducting CAP interviews in Marshalltown, Iowa found a troubling pattern. They kept on interviewing criminal aliens who said they worked at Swift and who admitted that they had assumed identities — other's identities in order to circumvent employment eligibility screening.

At the same time we were conducting these CAP interviews, we started receiving referrals from local police agencies, and we also had several calls to our hotline from anonymous individuals who reported illegal aliens working at Swift. These factors led us to open this investigation.

And over the past several months, as the Secretary noted, the investigation uncovered substantial evidence that hundreds of illegal aliens working at Swift had apparently stolen the identities of U.S. citizens, and improperly used their Social Security numbers and dates of birth to gain employment. The illegal aliens had obtained these documents from a variety of document rings and vendors.

I want to note that yesterday's operation was first and foremost a worksite enforcement operation where we determined which Swift workers were without valid immigration status, and we took them into custody on immigration charges. Indeed, Operation Wagon Train is the single largest worksite enforcement operation to date. A number of individuals, as the Secretary noted, have also been charged with the state crime of identity theft in Colorado and Utah.

Operation Wagon Train is an outgrowth of ICE's current worksite enforcement strategy, a comprehensive approach that focuses on how illegal aliens get to our country, the ways in which they obtain identity documents allowing them to become employed, and the employers who knowingly hire them.

Our new strategy is really built upon extensive review of past efforts to control illegal employment, and that history is clear and undisputed. Ever since the establishment of employment verification requirements back in 1986, the use of fraudulent documents by illegal aliens seeking employment has been a significant problem.

In recent years, however, this fraud has evolved into a disturbing new trend. Now, instead of obtaining fraudulent documents with fraudulent identities, illegal aliens are buying genuine documents with real identities, identities of unwitting U.S. citizens. Combating this new and burgeoning problem is one of our highest priorities, and that's why back in April of this year, ICE and the Department of Justice established document and benefit fraud task forces in 11 major cities throughout the United States.

The goal of our multi-agency task forces is to target and take down the criminals and the organizations that produce and sell the fraudulent documents, the stolen identify information, and the other products used in immigration-related identity theft and benefit fraud.

Identity theft is widely reported as the largest and fastest growing crime in America, and this case illustrates that illegal immigration may be a driving force behind this growth. I would like to thank our partners at the Department of Justice who have vigorously supported our efforts, including the Deputy Attorney General's office, the United States Attorneys who prepared the warrants, civil search warrants, the Assistant United States Attorneys who are assisting in the criminal investigations, and the Civil Division, who defended us well in the civil lawsuit Swift filed to try to block us from pursuing this action.

I would also like to thank the Federal Trade Commission, the departments of Agriculture and Labor the Social Security administration , and the District Attorney from Cache and Weld counties for their participation.

Chairman Majoras: Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here this morning with Secretary Chertoff, Assistant Secretary Myers, and our other law enforcement partners.

These arrests today demonstrate the power of interagency coordination. They show how enforcers from across the government, working together, can uncover and stop a scheme that harmed hundreds of U.S. citizens who simply were going about their daily lives.

The FTC, of course, is a civil law enforcement agency, but we also play an important role in supporting the criminal investigations of identity theft. The FTC runs the National Identity Theft Clearinghouse, taking in consumer complaints about the crime which we then share with over 1,400 law enforcement partners. We also advise consumers about what to do if they've been victimized by this crime. And we probably receive on average about 15 to 20,000 contacts from consumers every week.

In this case, ICE agents came to us with thousands of Social Security numbers that they knew were being misused in identity theft employment scams. We then took those, ran them through the Identity Theft Clearinghouse, and found, indeed, that they were being — that people's identity's were being misused not only for securing employment, but also for credit card fraud, student loan fraud, tax evasion, and the like.

Identity thieves have learned that information is a powerful currency. But we, too, can use information to beat them at their own game. The data we provided will be instrumental in prosecuting hundreds of criminals and bringing them to justice. And we will continue to work with ICE and our law enforcement partners to reach out to the hundreds of innocent consumers who were caught up in this scheme.

I especially want to extend our gratitude to the millions of U.S. citizens who have contacted the FTC and provided us with information about how they were victimized by identity theft. By reporting this crime, they give criminal authorities the tools that are necessary to catch up with these identity thieves and bring them to justice. So whether consumers need information about protecting themselves from ID theft, whether they need to report it, whether they need our help in figuring out what to do next, we urge them to visit the FTC's identity theft website at www.ftc.gov, or by calling 1-877-ID-THEFT.

Secretary Chertoff: I want to join in thanking our partners, as well, across the federal government and state and local authorities, like County Attorney Daines, for their cooperation in what was a joint effort, and really could only be successful as a joint effort.

Question: One question I have, as you look at each of the facilities, what percentage of the workforce were illegal immigrants —

Assistant Secretary Myers: Well, our initial review of the I-9s established that approximately 30 percent of the I-9s we reviewed at Swift plants overall were suspect. And so that prompted kind of the further investigation. Yesterday — we have the specific breakdown in plants on how many individuals were working, and we can give that to you, so 200 out of a certain number.

Question: What was the incentive for companies to participate in a Basic Pilot program that has so many flaws to it?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, what's the incentive for taking a polio vaccine if you don't necessarily have a vaccine against AIDS? I mean, we have a program which at least eliminates one problem, and that's a very good incentive. And for companies to participate in that program, they essentially, if they do it in good faith, they're not going to wind up getting punished, even if it turns out that there was a problem that emerges.

But because it's only a partial solution, I'd like to see a better solution. The better solution requires congressional action. And that would be a solution that allows us to have the Social Security Administration identify multiple uses of the same Social Security number in different places, so we could see there's an identity theft issue here and a fraud issue here. It's certainly better than nothing, but it's not a complete solution, and Congress can act and give us what we need to make it into a more complete solution.

Question: Secretary Chertoff, you say that 1,200 people were arrested, 600 have been charged. What are you going to do with the other — I think it was about 600. What are you going to do with the rest? Have they been charged?

Secretary Chertoff: No, no, everybody was charged administratively; 65 of them have also been charged criminally. So everybody gets charged — everybody who was arrested is charged as an immigration violator, but then a subset of those who actually are accused of committing a criminal offense are charged with criminal charges. That number may change. Some of the people who are in the administrative category may also get added to the criminal category.

Question: And the second part of my question, where are they now? What facilities —

Secretary Chertoff: They are now being sent to facilities in various places in the country. In fact, they are tracking in the operations center the flow of aircraft and buses that are being used to move people around to where they're going to be in detention centers, pending their ultimate disposition of the cases. Obviously, we're continuing to investigate. So there are interviews that have been going on all night, and are continuing, as we process people.

Secretary Chertoff: If it's an administrative facility — an administrative charge, it's a DHS or an ICE facility. If it's a criminal charge, it may be a state or it could ultimately be a federal jail facility.

Question: Yesterday's raids were targeted at plants by one company in one industry. What is your sense as to the dimension of this problem throughout —

Secretary Chertoff: Well, we did a case earlier this year in April against a pallet company called IFCO, in which we arrested 1,187 people. At that time, that was the biggest case. We've now broken that record. I think this is a problem that is not limited to a single industry. It's to be found in a number of industries. A slightly different measure of the significance of this issue of illegal work is the complaints that we're hearing from growers out in the west who say now that we've cracked down on people coming across the border illegally, they're having trouble finding people to pick lettuce and other kinds of crops. And what it suggests is that the solution here long term is to come up with a temporary worker program that answers this economic need without putting people in the position where they are sorely tempted to break the law.

Question: But would you assume that millions of people are using fraudulent documents, hundreds of thousands of —

Secretary Chertoff: I can't — some number are using identity theft. Some number are using the simpler, less sophisticated method of just coming up with a phony number, which is what we do catch with Basic Pilot. And some may have found other ways to get illegal work. So there's no one template. This scheme happens to be a little more sophisticated than your garden variety scheme where people would just come in with a made-up Social Security number.

Question: Mr. Secretary, let me clarify, there are no charges against the company at this time?

Secretary Chertoff: At this — right, there are no charges against the company at this time.

Secretary Chertoff: Well, obviously we're continuing to investigate. We don't charge people until and unless we have evidence that they've committed a crime.

Question: Can you talk about cooperation, sir? I mean, that's what we're all getting at. We all wonder why it's a coincidence that all of the arrests —

Secretary Chertoff: Well, the company did participate in Basic Pilot. And therefore, as a consequence of participating in Basic Pilot, if you participate in that in good faith, then you are not going to be charged criminally or be held civilly liable. The company was cooperative with us to the extent that our coming into the plants, they helped us work to do it in an orderly way.

The company — I think it's now public — did attempt to stop us from doing these raids by going to court. Their effort was totally rejected by the district court. The company did complain about the fact that we were doing these raids, but as the district judge pointed out in her findings, there wasn't any way to meet the important public interest of preventing illegal migrants and identity thieves from escaping, except to do it the way that we wanted to.

The fact is that — and I'm going to quote directly from the judge's opinion — there was a period of time, for example, this fall where the company itself conducted interviews of suspect employees, found that between — I'm quoting right from page 7 of the judge's opinion: "Swift found that between 90 percent to 95 percent of its suspect employees were either not who their identification documents said they were, or were not legally eligible to be employed in the U.S. Over 400 workers were terminated, quit or did not show up."

ICE wasn't notified and we don't know where those 400 workers are. So it wasn't practical to stage this over a long period of time without putting at risk really hundreds of innocent Americans whose identities have been stolen.

Question: Were they essentially on notice, though, the workers that — from the company, was there anything to prevent the company from saying, well, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE is coming in here?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, we asked the company not to do that. We asked the company not to reveal that we were going to be coming in in advance because common sense tells you, if you do that, everybody who is illegal is going to flee. And the problem is those people are all going to flee with their phony documents, and we're going to have to track them down. And in the meantime, there's a risk to the innocent victims that the people with the phony documents are going to continue to do things that hurt the real individuals involved.

So we did engage with the company. But at the end of the day, what we were not prepared to compromise on was an enforcement action that would simultaneously address the problem so that we could maximize the number of people who had these phony identifications that we could scoop up at one time. Otherwise, what we're doing is we're taking a chance with an innocent person.

Question: Mr. Secretary, some companies I would imagine will now look at this and say, well, the company wasn't charged, but we are at risk — something that DHS has acknowledged that for many companies, their options here are pretty limited. What do you say to companies out there? Do you anticipate that — I know that you've tried to target in the past companies that you thought were particular violators. Do you suspect that chambers of commerce are now going to be concerned about how do companies protect themselves? This company was a target, they lost —

Secretary Chertoff: Well, certainly, Basic Pilot addresses one set of issues. And as we've said, if you enter into Basic Pilot and you do it in good faith, that will protect you against criminal and civil liability.

Now, I emphasize good faith; obviously, if you enter into Basic Pilot and then you deliberately evade it, that's a different story. So that's certainly one measure.

And I think common sense is an important measure. Obviously, you have to be very careful not to discriminate against people. But where there's some indication that you have what may be an identity theft, obviously, you have to be alert to that. But again, I go back to the fact that if we could get the permission of Congress to have the Social Security Administration begin to identify these multiple circumstances where the same number appears in five different places all across the country, that would be a step forward that would help businesses who want to comply with the law and help us do our job.

The other thing that I'm hoping this is going to do is it's going to be a deterrent to illegal workers. It's going to cause them to say that 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 that ought to be part of what starts to push in the other direction on what has been drawing people into this country to do illegal work. We're going to try to make it inhospitable to break the law here.

Question: Assistant Secretary Myers mentioned that most of the documents came from some sort of criminal identity theft ring. Has that ring been identified? And what's being done about it?

Secretary Chertoff: It's not necessarily one ring. There may be some multiple rings. We are currently investigating based on what we have already learned. And that's why I emphasize the investigation is open. We're particularly interested in working with the Department of Justice and state and local authorities to track back where the documents came from. We may get some cooperation, for example, from some of the people that have been arrested. Because ultimately, we want to strike at the source of the documents, as well as the people who misused them.

Question: Just to follow up, if I may, the companies, though — the 400 workers who quit and you're now trying to figure out where they went, was that after the company was notified by federal officials that you might have a problem, that they did their own internal review? And I guess my next question would then be, did they then come back to you and say, look, we've got a pretty significant problem?

Assistant Secretary Myers: Sure. Yes, that was well after the time that the company knew that there was a significant problem in their workforce. And we regretted that they went ahead and took that action and then did not talk to us in the midst of talking with them.

Question: Did they notify you a large number of their workforce disappeared?

Assistant Secretary Myers: No, they did not. We actually learned through other reports that — schools and the like — that individuals were not showing up at the school. And the town's population was shrinking in certain cases.

With respect to the document rings, though, I also would note that there's been one arrest earlier this month in Worthington, Minnesota that related to a document ring that was providing documents to some of the Swift employees. And the documents they were providing were genuine U.S. birth certificates of individuals from Puerto Rico, as well as Social Security cards. And so we've tied that ring, which was a part of the rings that were operating here, to the Swift problem.

Question: And would it be fair to say based on what we just described that the company — you're now still looking at the company?

Secretary Chertoff: I'm not going to speculate. I'm just going to say we are continuing to investigate all the facts, and at the end, based on what the facts are, the Department of Justice will make charging decisions, or state prosecutors will make charging decisions.

Question: Mr. Secretary, has there been an effort out there to inform the people whose identities may have been stolen?

Chairman Majoras: Yes, there is. At least for those we've identified who have a problem, we're working together with the information that the department has to reach out to those consumers to let them know as much as we can about what we know, and then to advise them on the steps that they can take to continue to — or in some cases to start protecting themselves and getting their identities back.

Question: Some farmers also feel like they're (inaudible) because you chose to shut down the operations of one of the only buyers of cattle and hogs in some areas. Can you tell what steps you took to address this?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, first, let me say that in terms of — obviously, we were mindful of all the health and safety dimensions of what we were doing here. So we worked closely with the Department of Agriculture. They had Agriculture folks present in the plants to make sure that we managed the process in a way to avoid any potential health effect with respect to the product itself and tried to manage it in terms of the animals in as humane a way as possible.

Obviously, when even unwittingly a business is significantly built on illegal labor, once we enforce the law, that's going to have a ripple effect. And that's a way of emphasizing the fact that getting this issue of comprehensive immigration reform right is ultimately going to save everybody a big headache because it's everybody's problem.

In the current system, if we enforce the law as we are absolutely determined to do there are going to be cases where people further down the distribution chain will wind up having a consequence because when we remove the illegal workers, there's going to be some kind of a slow-down. And a temporary worker program that would give everybody a confidence level that we built an entire system that's visible and regulated would, in the long run, help all those people. So this immigration thing is one of the most fundamental economic and social issues that this country has ever faced. And we have an opportunity to take an approach that deals with the whole problem.

But until the problem gets resolved in its entirety, we are going to enforce the law. We're going to do it as vigorously as we can. We're going to be fair about it, but we're going to be tough about it. And again, we want to work with Congress to see if we can come up with a solution that is more comprehensive and addresses everybody's interest in having a fair outcome.

Homeland Security asked Swift not to notify its employeer? Whatever happened to unannounced missions? How long before the raid did they let Swift know they were coming?

When does the illegal Mexican immigrant who's life will be thrown into chaos by his arrest at Swift, sue DHS and win 20 mil?

Tyson should be shut down entirely if illegals are arrested in their meat packing plants. Perhaps they shouldn't have closed down on May 1, when the illegals were demonstrating in the streets. That was a dead give-away that they couldn't stay open if their illegal labor force stayed away. Book 'em, Dano.

So yesterday's enforcement action demonstrates another step in this work site enforcement strategy. A tough stance against worksites that employ illegal aliens and against individuals and organizations that commit or facilitate identity theft or fraud.

Yeah, really tough, 1282 arrests, not one arrest of a Swift company manager or office personnel.

This is nothing more than a public relations stunt to protect their phony-baloney jobs at ICE.

I might believe the administration was serious if we were seeing raids of this scope staged on a weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly basis.

Until then it's not enough.

And by the way, they should have started five years ago.

Yeah, really tough, 1282 arrests, not one arrest of a Swift company manager or office personnel.

They may not be statutorily complicit but they are most certainly knew their workforce was packed with illegal-aliens.

Much ado about nothing. This penny-ante raid is but a drop in the bucket.

Ot will be interesting to see how many (!) Swift employees wind up being charges with a crime. My guess, zero. Which sends exactly the wrong message to employers of Criminal Aliens.

"During fiscal year 2006, we arrested or charged 716 individuals for criminal violations of our immigration laws."

Only 30 to 40 million to go!

I hope to hear that their follow up investigation leads to some arrests of Swift Co. ownership and/or management. It would be hard to swallow the notion that over 1,200 employees used falsified documents without a lot of help from the company.

This is nothing more than a public relations stunt to protect their phony-baloney jobs at ICE.

I might be more than that. It might be a stunt designed to create maximum controversy in order to build Congressional consensus on the ~~comprehensive immigration reform~~ amnesty the President wants. It was right before Christmas. It was on a big holy day for Mexican Catholics. It hit the third largest beef and pork processor in the U.S. (again, right before Christmas) which will raise prices, put a hurt on those communities (short term) and in addition you can bet Swift has a lot of political clout.

I predict that we'll hear lot of demagogic whining about "all the people this hurt, the mean old Republicans, can't we all get along."

"I predict that we'll hear lot of demagogic whining about "all the people this hurt,"

They can:t hurt enough to satisfy me!

Well be happy then because a lot of people will be hurting over this. The question to me is whether the right people will hurt the most. Tops on that list should be the employers. They are Americans and should naturally have the greater motivation to respect our laws.

Here is an unrelated arrest on the same topic. However this dude has assess to all federal secured documents.

Federal building worker arrested on immigration, identity theft charges
December 14,2006

http://www.themonitor.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=16870&Section=Local

Chertoff is nothing more than an idiot comparing polio to aids. He is one stupid dude.

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