Report outlines ICE abuses

Raids targeted immigrants, U.S. citizens, ignored employers

By Matthew Crow

Chairman of the National Commission on ICE Misconduct and President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Joseph Hanson

In response to raids at six Swift & Company meatpacking plants on December 12, 2006, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union did two things. It filed a class-action law suit against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and formed a National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of 4th Amendment Rights to report the ICE abuses.

The resulting report, titled “Raids on Workers: Destroying Our Rights” and released last Thursday in a telephonic press conference, is the culmination of two years of investigation, hearings in five cities and testimony from 59 witnesses. It documents raids from 2006 to 2008 and sites repeated violations of the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments; protection against illegal search and seizure, the right to due process, and the right to legal counsel, respectively.

“The report was written to be sure that there is a historical account of these practices,” said Chairman of the commission and President of UFCW Joseph Hanson.

In the Swift raids, ICE agents stormed the compounds and detained all workers, illegal or otherwise. According to the testimony, workers were held without food, water or access to restrooms, and were not allowed to make phone calls.

Michael Graves, a U.S. citizen and worker at a Swift plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, spoke out about his treatment. “They just held me there for eight hours,” he said. “No reason. No probable cause. It was like our plant was transformed into a prison or a detention center.”

This treatment was analogous to the experience of Swift workers at all of the plants raided that day, the vast majority of which were U.S. citizens. The broad sweep-ups were “used less as an effective law enforcement tool and more as a way to grab headlines and stir hysteria around immigration and immigrants,” the 80-page report states.

“It shows a law enforcement agency with really the most profound disrespect for our nation's laws and constitution,” said commission member Mary Bauer, Director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray, at a hearing in Boston, said to the commission: “We are a nation of laws and we need to make sure that all people are treated with dignity and fairness.”

Out of a total of 12,000 workers detained in the six Swift raids, ICE had obtained 133 warrants, on the basis of suspicion of identity theft.

'Constitution tossed aside'

Mayor John DeStefano Jr. of New Haven, Connecticut, told the commission of ICE agents entering homes without warrants, guns drawn “as if apprehending wanted murderers rather than potential administrative immigration law violators.”

The commission takes particular aim at the 287(g) agreements between federal and local law enforcement, which allows local police to enforce federal immigration laws.

“Personally, what I was most disturbed about was the racial profiling as a result of the 287(g) agreements,” said Professor of Law at UC-Davis and commission member Bill Ong Hing during the teleconference. “The racism that we saw that was inherent in these raids was awful. [The raids] set towns back years in terms of good relationships between local law enforcement and these communities.”

"Testimony also uncovered an absence of oversight by ICE over local law enforcement or their actions," the report says.

With just as many ICE agents storming the plants as worked in them, the cost of each raid was in the millions. The commission reports that for each arrest, the government paid over $13,000, which does not include the costs of trials and imprisonment. Unsurprisingly, since 2004, ICE’s budget has nearly doubled, going from $3.4 billion to $6 billion.

However, the commission does not call for an end to immigration raids. Rather, these types of raids need to be conducted in a way compliant with U.S. law, it states.

A week before the six Swift raids, another Swift facility was raided in Louisville, Kentuky, “but they did it the right way, they went after specific individuals; they didn’t close out the plant, herd all the workers, or come in with guns drawn,” Hanson said. "There's a right way to do things without violating people's rights."

Also, the commission concluded, the focus needs to be shifted from a "politically driven enforement policy" to one that concentrates more on employers.

"You have employers out there that absolutely abuse the system," said Ong Hing. "There needs to be a commitment to focus more on employers and not employees."