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Workers at a Smithfield Foods pork plant in Milan, Missouri, say that for years they have endured repetitive stress injuries on the meat processing line — and urinary tract infections because they had so few bathroom breaks. But as the coronavirus pandemic has emerged, workers say they have encountered another health complication: reluctance to cover their mouths while coughing or to clean their faces after sneezing because this can cause them to miss a piece of meat as it goes by, creating a risk of disciplinary action. The claims appear in a complaint filed Thursday in federal court by an...

Refugees, which is it: Meatpacker laborers or helping the “oppressed?” Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 4, 2018 Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum tries both arguments in USA Today. Ali Noorani on twitter: @anoorani https://twitter.com/anoorani?lang=en I wasn’t planning to post on one more hysterical story about Trump refugee numbers being low and thus decimating the refugee contractor industry, but I can’t resist mentioning one little bit of the story entitled: Refugee admissions to U.S. plummet in 2017 Before I get to Noorani, Mark Krikorian summed it up with this: “Elections have consequences,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of...

An innocent man is freed.  Alan Dershowitz and numerous congressmen, senators and former US attorneys general spanning the entire political spectrum all put their names and reputations on the line for him.  Hundreds of thousands of Jews, and many Righteous Gentiles, celebrate around the world.  As usual, that doesn't stop the social justice warriors (what a complete misnomer if ever their were one).  And if that were all that happen, who would care?  If PETA wants to go around smearing the kindest and greatest we have, that's between them and the bird brains they represent.  But when people who know...

At the end of a meeting with President Donald Trump this fall about the Middle East peace process, attorney Alan Dershowitz turned the conversation to a matter closer to home: The prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, the Kosher meatpacking executive then serving a 27-year prison sentence for bank fraud. Rubashkin, whose kosher meat firm AgriProcessors was the subject of a Forward expose in 2006 over the mistreatment of its workers, has been a case célèbre in some circles since his conviction in 2010. Dershowitz is among Rubashkin’s most prominent supporters — and was probably the first to bring the matter...

SNIPPET: "Search at Grundy County plant called part of ongoing probe" SNIPPET: "But a source said the owner of the plant, which processes lamb and goat, was taken into custody at his home in Chicago. Documents and records were taken from the plant and from a Chicago travel agency on West Devon Avenue, also owned by the same person, the source said."

At 8 a.m. Sunday the population of Kinsman, Ill., stood at 109. An hour later it nearly doubled, as upwards of 100 federal agents and police swooped in on the tiny, rural community. And no one seems to know why. The law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, immigration officials and state police, surrounded an Islamic meat plant in Kinsman, cordoning off the area and briefly detaining the plant's handful of employees. The FBI isn't saying much, and the county sheriff is mum too, leaving Kinsman's residents mystified. The bust, in a town that has no local police force, involved dozens...

WATERLOO, Iowa — In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents. The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported. The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in nearby Postville in...

A proposal to prohibit local law enforcement officials from conducting raids on illegal immigrants in Des Moines was presented to at least one City Council member recently. Councilwoman Christine Hensley said Sunday that she spoke about six weeks ago with representatives of two immigration-rights groups that presented a plan that would block local city departments - including the police - from conducting raids on immigrants or inquiring about a person's immigration status. Aspects of the proposal, brought up Sunday at an immigration forum, are similar to a national trend of "sanctuary cities." "They're looking at ordinances that have been passed...

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...

About 70 Somali meatpacking workers returned to work Wednesday at a Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island after Omaha community representatives intervened to help narrow a culture gap. A delegation led by Mohamed Rage, chairman of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, met with company and union officials Tuesday to explain how union contracts and company policy conflict with Islamic prayer requirements. "Management was cordial and understanding," Rage said. Somali workers left their jobs at the Swift plant last week because they were unable to complete an evening prayer - one of the five prayers required each day of the...

Worthington's Hispanic community gathered by the hundreds Sunday for the first time since 230 workers were taken away Dec. 12 in a federal raid at the local meatpacking plant. They walked into Prairie Elementary School one or two families at a time, not for a rally against immigration laws, but to share food, see supportive faces and watch children who'd had a wretched holiday season get free toys. "I view this as the first step in the process of a whole community healing," said Sharon Johnson, coordinator of the Nobles County Integration Collaborative. The collaborative -- formed by six Worthington...

Federal agents raided meat processing plants in six states including Minnesota today and arrested an unknown number of suspected illegal immigrants in an identity theft investigation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the workers were being arrested on administrative immigration violations and in some cases, existing criminal arrest warrants stemming from a nearly yearlong investigation. The investigation indicated that large numbers of illegal immigrants may have used the Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens or residents to get jobs with Swift & Co. Immigration officials said they and the Federal Trade Commission had identified hundreds of potential victims. Six Swift...

Immigrants' firing leads to protest A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant said Monday that 15 immigrant women were fired last month after attending a protest for immigrant rights. He said they had been told that they would be terminated if they missed work on the day of the protest. But the workers and an activist working on their behalf said the women were given no such assurances. If the workers knew they would have been fired for attending the March 27 rally in Detroit, they never would have skipped the morning shift...

DODGE CITY - On Monday, John Martin, a meatpacker here, plans to skip work to attend a rally aimed at bolstering the call for immigration reform. "We want the work we do to be valued," he explained. "It's hard work in the plant." Fellow meatpacker David Gunion seconds that, wondering what would become of the plant without the workers, many of them immigrants. "Without us, the plant dies," he said. Fliers, e-mails and text messages are circulating like wildfire around southwest Kansas, calling on the zone's sizable Latino population to rally, skip work, skip school and boycott stores Monday to...

Several Democratic members of Congress called on the U.S. health secretary to immediately ban the use of carbon monoxide to preserve the bright red color of fresh meat until the practice is proven safe, according to a letter made public on Monday. The members of the House of Representatives urged Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to order the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to repeal its earlier decision that the practice is generally safe. Leavitt should at least order an aggressive nationwide campaign to inform consumers about the practice and caution them against relying on color rather than...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The integrity and competence of the U.S. Department of Agriculture were called into question Thursday by U.S. senators concerned with the USDA's failure for several years to investigate anti-competitive cases in the livestock and meat packing sectors. "It is totally unacceptable of our government to conduct business in this way," Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said at a Thursday hearing. He threatened to call USDA officials back up to Capitol Hill again if improvements aren't made. The Senate committee called the Thursday hearing to demand answers from the USDA over a recent Inspector General report charging...