For Operation Vanguard, the INS used a more sophisticated tactic. It subpoenaed personnel records from Midwestern meatpacking plants and checked them against INS and Social Security databases of authorized workers, then interviewed suspect employees. Of 24,148 employees checked, 4,495, or 19 percent, had dubious documents at about 40 plants in Nebraska, western Iowa and South Dakota. Of those workers, 70 percent disappeared rather than be interviewed. Of 1,042 questioned, 34 were arrested and deported.
Nebraska's members of Congress at first called for tougher enforcement, recalled Mark Reed, then INS director of operations. But when the result shut down some plants, "all hell broke loose," he said.
Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns (R), who was governor at the time, appointed a task force to oppose the operation. Former governor Ben Nelson (D), now a U.S. senator, was hired as a lobbyist by meatpackers and ranchers. Sen. Chuck Hagel (Rino) pressured the Justice Department to stop.
...Operation Vanguard -- which was designed to expand to four states in four months and nationwide the next year, eventually including the lodging, food and construction industries -- was killed.
What would anyone expect? These are stupid, ham-fisted police-state actions. Sound like they were planned by some 1950's southern redneck sheriff guarding the polls with dogs and firehoses against "them coloreds voting."
Somewhere in this great land there has to be a law enforcement person with enough brains not to shoot his country in the foot. The objective is to get rid of alien criminals, fer crissake, not shut down meatpacking plants and onion farms. Sheesh.