The plant employed juveniles, as young as 13. The EEOC is now investigating sexual harassment claims against women employees. Some workers were forced to work 17 hour shifts six days a week.
Federal justice and immigration officials, speaking on Thursday at a hearing in Washington of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee, said their investigations were continuing. A federal grand jury in Cedar Rapids is hearing evidence.
Hopefully, they'll be investigating the company, not just the immigrants.
Immigration authorities sent an immigrant in undercover to the plant before the raid. Here's one item he reported:
....the informant said a floor supervisor had blindfolded an immigrant with duct tape. “The floor supervisor then took one of the meat hooks and hit the Guatemalan with it,” the informant said, adding that the blow did not cause “serious injuries.”
From an underage worker named Elmer, who was forced to work 17 hour shifts and said the floor supervisors knew his real age:
Elmer L. said that he was clearing cow innards from the slaughter floor last Aug. 26 when a supervisor he described as a rabbi began yelling at him, then kicked him from behind. The blow caused a freshly-sharpened knife to fly up and cut his elbow.
He was sent to a hospital where doctors closed the laceration with eight stitches. But he said that when he returned, his elbow still stinging, to ask for some time off, his supervisor ordered him back to work.
The next day, as he was lifting a cow’s tongue, the stitches ruptured, Elmer L. said, and the wound bled again. He said he was given a bandage at the plant and sent back to work. The incident is confirmed in a worker’s injury report filed on Aug. 31, 2007, by Agriprocessors with the Iowa labor department.
Most of the workers are mired in deportation proceedings. Many will do jail time and then be deported. Some of those cooperating will receive four year "U" visas:
Most of the young immigrants have been released from detention but remain in deportation proceedings. Ms. Parras Konrad said she will ask immigration authorities to grant them special four-year temporary visas, known as U visas, which are offered to immigrants who assist in law enforcement investigations. Iowa labor officials are considering supporting some of those requests, Ms. Sheridan-Lucht said.
Agriprocessors, while not admitting wrongdoing and noting that no criminal actions have been filed against it, is changing its ways and hiring outside experts and compliance officers to overhaul its hiring and labor practices.
Mark Lauritsen, a vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to organize the plant, said he remained skeptical. “They are the poster child for how a rogue company can exploit a broken immigration system,” Mr. Lauritsen said.
The discussion of immigration reform tends to focus on a path to citizenship, employer sanctions for violating immigration laws and border security. Overlooked in the need for better laws to protect the workers.
Here's a January, 2008 report (pdf) by the Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, an initiative of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, on human rights violations perpetrated against immigrant and refugee families, workers and communities in the U.S.
[The report]documents over 100 stories of human rights violations from across the country between 2006 and 2007. They range from immigration raids and migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border to mounting detentions and deportations.
The report identifies five major trends of rights violations in immigration services and enforcement based on some 100 stories of abuse and 206 incidents of raids tracked through extensive documentation from newspaper articles, scholarly journals, reports, and interviews with affected persons and reporting by community groups. ....
Over-Raided, Under Siege concludes with a series of recommendations for Congress, state and
local governments, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement agencies to cease all policies, practices, measures and laws that violate international human rights norms and to protect and uphold the rights of all immigrant and refugee families, workers and communities and focus on addressing the root causes of migration.
Among the recommendations:
The U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) end immigration raids and collaboration with local, county and state police, as well as other government agencies.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) end the practice of jailing persons for mmigration status offenses and restore immigrants’ full due process rights and access to the courts.
The Social Security Administration stop sending Social Security no-match letters to
employers. To get updated information, simply send letters to employees at their home addresses.
The federal government ensure that labor laws protecting all workers, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, are enforced.
DHS end and rollback border militarization policies and strategies that have caused thousands of migrant deaths and countless violations of the human and civil rights of migrants, workers, people of color, youth, communities and Indigenous peoples at the border.
