Posted on 10/04/2004 8:55:55 AM PDT by esryle
U.S. officials are probing the possibility the al-Qaida terrorist network sought to infiltrate a Texas company in order to contaminate ready-to-eat meals designated for the military.
A high-ranking al-Qaida operative provided information leading authorities to nearly a dozen illegal immigrants working for the McAllen, Texas-based Wornick Co., the largest supplier of the meals, according to McAllen's The Monitor newspaper.
The firm that places the workers at Wornick has been charged with conspiring to make and use false employment eligibility verification forms.
U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby explained, "Immediately after the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban in 2002, U.S. forces on the ground received specific information that links McAllen, Texas, by name and the Wornick facility by name to information within al-Qaida's possession."
The Texas paper noted the Department of Defense has a $67 million contract with Wornick to produce the meals.
Armed with the al-Qaida operative's information, the FBI was led to an employee-placement firm, Remedy Intelligent Staffing in McAllen, which referred a number of workers to Wornick.
"There had to be an investigation into the possibility that al-Qaida had the intention of infiltrating the Wornick Company for the purposes of contaminating -- possibly -- the MREs produced by the company," Shelby stated, according to The Monitor.
Shelby said no contaminated meals have been found, but 10 temporary employees at Remedy, involved in all aspects of assembling the meals, were convicted in July on charges of stealing Social Security numbers.
The indictment of Remedy, unsealed Thursday, was a significant event to servicemen worldwide, Shelby said, noting Wornick officials cooperated with the investigation.
Remedy's vice president, James Eckensberger, appeared in court Thursday to enter a plea of not guilty on behalf of the company.
"Remedy and all of its officers are responsible for following all federal laws and regulations concerning its own workforce, including those laws that prohibit the hiring of unauthorized workers or illegal aliens," Shelby said.
"Today's indictment alleges that Remedy hired a number of illegal aliens and did so basically knowingly and then they falsely certified that they had in fact checked the information provided by those unauthorized workers when in fact, they had never even attempted to verify the information for hundreds of people," Shelby said.
The attorney said that after the managers were confronted by the FBI with the discrepancies, they tried to conceal the fact they had not verified the illegals' information by creating false official forms and delivering them to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Shelby said he did not want to discuss where the undocumented workers might have obtained their fake Social Security cards.
Index
and it dovetails so nicely with the debate over our southern border, too.
Let me guess, both of these Texas companies are still in business?
Business as usual?
What *#@*$ lunacy.....
Check this out.
For your reading pleasure.
bttt
Remedy Staffing? What an appropriate name.
Still doing business, making a nice profit no doubt.
That's the one.
So it was dining services and not MREs.
You'll have to read around some of posters that think this is somehow cute and funny.
What's your take on the fact that this happened in McAllen?
“Companies that willfully violate our nation's immigration laws potentially trade long term security for short term profits,” said U.S. Attorney Shelby. “While no direct link to terrorism has been discovered in this case, the undocumented worker is vulnerable to anyone who seeks to exploit his illegal status.”
“We will continue to close the gaps that exist in our immigration system and vigorously pursue those that use fraudulent documents to expose vulnerabilities in our nation's security,” said Special Agent in Charge of the ICE San Antonio Division Alonzo Pena.
This was also mentioned in a previous post about AMFELS (a Department of Defense contractor) employing illegals in Brownsville, TX, through a temp agency ... though they state the two incidents are unrelated.
"making a nice profit no doubt."
It's always about the money, Joe. What's amazing is that so many good Christian Republicans will condone the sell out of our security and the economic well being of many of it's citizens by an illegal invasion, defend illegals getting driver's license so they can vote, not to mention raiding Social Security for illegals who will get benefits easier than any American Citizen who has paid into that scheme for decades, break immigration and labor laws......just to make more money and not care a whit what happens to the rest of us.
You immigration paranoid people on FR are just racists. Immigration..illegal and/or unlimited is good for business and since our president isn't controlling it, what is good for business must be good for the United States of America.
/sarcasm against RINO immigration apologists on FR in case the target of this post is not clear ;))
BTTT
I don't recall a chocolate covered cookie, but after thirty years who knows. I do recall tropical chocolate that tasted like cocoa flavored wax. About all we ate was the spaghetti, which came out of the can like a jello mold, and the beef and potatos which had big chunks of white fat floating on top. Ahhh, the wonderful memories.
marking
Yup. And that these efforts to change our laws exist because they inconvenience those that choose to ignore them.
You left out "mean-spirited xenophobes." ;)
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