Washington Post: Putting ICE on Swift

ICE Sweep Was Largest Ever Against One Firm

 

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 14, 2006; A09

 

 

 

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 and company officials estimated that 30 to 40 percent of Swift's workers had questionable documents.

 

U.S. officials had identified 331 Swift workers who used false identities, 170 of whom were still employed by the company, before the raid. But without authorities' knowledge, Swift in recent weeks had questioned suspect employees, causing 400 to quit or be fired, according to a federal judge in Amarillo, Tex., who denied a motion by Swift last Thursday to block the raids.

 

Swift reported yesterday that all its facilities have resumed operations but that output will remain below normal "over the short-term." The company said it anticipates "no adverse long-term impacts." Plants were raided in Greeley; Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Tex.; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn.

 

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union filed an injunction in Colorado seeking the release of workers. It contends that they were interrogated and detained illegally, and planned to file more in other states, spokeswoman Jill Cashen said.

 

Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of San Bernardino, Calif., chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' committee on migration, said that raids are not "the most humane and effective approach" to the problem of illegal immigration, noting their traumatic impact on families and children. He called for an overhaul of immigration laws.

 

Chertoff acknowledged Swift's voluntary participation in a federal program that allows companies to electronically verify Social Security numbers, noting that the company was not charged Tuesday. But he said that the system does not detect identity theft, and that companies cannot rely on the "Basic Pilot" program as a "magic bullet" to satisfy the law if they see other signs of fraud.

 

Chertoff called for Congress to allow the Social Security Administration to identify and share information with enforcement agencies when numbers are used multiple times. Some Social Security numbers have been used at 200 workplaces, authorities said.

 

The CIS prefers that you call the files "misplaced".

Citizenship Agency Lost 111,000 Files

 

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 29, 2006;

 

 

 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has lost track of 111,000 files in 14 of the agency's busiest district offices and processed as many as 30,000 citizenship applications last year without the necessary files, congressional investigators reported yesterday.

 

The Government Accountability Office, Congress's audit arm, conducted the review at the request of Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) after U.S. authorities granted citizenship in 2002 to a man without checking his primary file. The file, which was lost, indicated ties to the militant Islamic group Hezbollah.

 

"It only takes one missing file of somebody with links to a terrorist organization to become an American citizen," said Grassley, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. "We can't afford to be handing out citizenship with blinders on."

 

Collins, head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, noted that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the U.S. legally, disappearing until the terrorist attacks. She called it "unthinkable" that the U.S. immigration system could still grant citizenship to a potential terrorist "simply because they can't find the person's file."

 

An agency official said workers probably checked most of the files but failed to make note of it.

 

The GAO report, dated Oct. 27 and released by the senators yesterday, underscored long-standing problems at the agency, which was created out of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and is expected to bear the brunt of administering new rules if Congress overhauls immigration policy.

 

The $1.8 billion agency handled 7.5 million applications for immigration benefits in 2005 but relies on paper files. The agency awarded a five-year, $150 million contract in August to begin digitizing 55 million "alien files," or A-files, but for now it still relies on paper files.

 

The GAO found that the agency's workers failed to record A-file use in processing 30,000 of 715,000 naturalization cases last year, or 4 percent of cases. The GAO also found that as of July 27, Citizenship and Immigration Services' electronic tracking system reported that 111,000 A-files were lost in the 14 offices that manage two-thirds of naturalization cases.

 

Steven J. Pecinovsky, an agency liaison to the GAO, said workers are not required to note that they have checked A-files but will be in the future. A 2005 internal audit found a much lower incidence of unchecked A-files than the GAO cited -- about 0.5 percent.

 

The GAO also cited internal audits that found that 21 percent of files were not where they were supposed to be in Immigration Services' San Diego office in 2005 and that 6 percent of files could not be found in the Los Angeles office earlier this year.