Free Republic

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