U.S. criminalizes undocumented to attack workers' movement

In the biggest raid on a workplace in U.S. history, hundreds upon hundreds of Federal agents mobilized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement swooped down upon the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, on May 12 to try to seize some 697 undocumented workers for whom arrest warrants had been prepared. The close to 400 workers caught at the plant were not rounded up for deportation. Rather, this was part of a concerted campaign to criminalize the undocumented immigrant. Thus, the workers were criminally charged with "aggravated identity theft" and "Social Security fraud" for using other peoples' social security numbers or made up numbers.

Just as Katrina demonstrated the government's indifference towards the poor, primarily Black population of New Orleans, the anti-immigrant raids in Postville exposed this government's determination to run roughshod over the human rights of another significant segment of the U.S. population--the millions of undocumented who work in U.S. fields and factories, in construction, and in cleaning offices, hotels and homes. The immigrant without papers has become the new Other within our borders. The near police-state actions of the Federal government in Iowa resulted in the jailing of some 387 Guatemalan and Mexican workers, followed by rapid-fire Orwellian court proceedings and harsh sentencing. At the same time, Postville brought forth resistance to the unjust conditions of immigrant life and labor in this "land of the free."

Women led off the rally at San Francisco ICE headquarters on Aug. 22 demanding rights for immigrant workers.

On Sunday July 27, 1,000-plus marched in little Postville, opposing the police-state tactics used by the government against hundreds of Agriprocessors workers who continue to be imprisoned, protesting against the working conditions at the plant, and demanding legalization of undocumented workers.

Arrested workers were transported to the National Cattle Congress, a 60-acre cattle fairground that was transformed into a detention center. The next day began with hothouse, fraudulent legal procedures that led to prison terms. Erik Camayd-Freixas, one of the many Spanish language interpreters the government brought in, described the process:

"Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10. They appeared to be uniformly no more than 5 ft. tall, mostly illiterate Guatemalan peasants with Mayan last names, É some in tears, others with faces of worry, fear, and embarrassment. They all spoke Spanish, a few rather laboriously. It dawned on me that, aside from their Guatemalan or Mexican nationality, which was imposed on their people after independence, they too were Native Americans, in shackles. They stood out in stark racial contrast with the rest of us as they started their slow penguin march across the makeshift court." (For his full report, http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/14/opinion/14ed-camayd.pdf).

The preparations for the Postville Agriprocessors plant raid included a diabolical scheme to insure that the Guatemalan and Mexican working men and women would have no choice but to face months of jail time before deportation. The government would only agree to withdraw the trumped-up charge of "aggravated identity theft" if those arrested would agree to plead guilty to knowingly using a false social security number and serve five months in a U.S. jail, and then be immediately deported without a hearing. If any chose to not accept this plea agreement they would have had to remain in jail even longer, six to eight months awaiting trial, with no access to bail because they were undocumented. Even if found not guilty they would still be deported. And if they lost at trial, they would receive a two-year minimum sentence. No wonder they chose the plea agreement. It meant the least amount of jail time in this charade.

The whole procedure, from plea agreement to five month sentences, to being shipped off to various jails, was carried out in a rapid-fire four days. As Erik Camayd-Freixas put it, "The work had oddly resembled a judicial assembly line where the meatpackers were mass processed."

The result was devastation for the hundreds arrested, as well as for children and family members left in limbo. A third of Postville's population ceased to be a part of the community. Children disappeared from schools. Many families took refuge in St. Bridget's Catholic Church fearing to come out in face of the arrests and future deportation. However at the same time, there began a movement of resistance, starting with exposing Agriprocessors.

AGRIPROCESSORS, THE REAL CRIMINALS

Two groups of those arrested were released before the kangaroo-court proceedings--youth who were underage, and thus had been illegally hired to work in the plant, and women with children who needed to be cared for. The women still faced charges, and the youth and women still would come under deportation orders.

In Iowa, it is illegal for a company to employ anyone under 18 on the floor of a meatpacking plant. At least seventeen youth between 14 and 17 years of age were seized in the raid. Now in oral depositions the youth told their stories.

Elmer L., a Guatemalan young man who started working at the plant when he was 16, spoke of 17-hour days: "I worked from 6 in the morning until 11 at night. I slept from midnight until 5 in the morning--5 hours. . . .They did not pay me for all the overtime I worked. They told me if I did not work all that time, I would lose my job. My work was very hard because they didn't give me my breaks, and I wasn't getting very much sleep. I had to work to provide for my family. They told us they were going to call immigration if we complained about not getting our overtime pay and our breaks . . . I was very sad and I felt like I was a slave."

A 16-year-old young woman, Gilda O., spoke of the speed-up demands: "I worked at night. I started at 7:30 and I got off at five or six in the morning. I worked on line plucking feathers off the chickens. . . . When I started I could hardly keep my eyes open. But later I got more used to it. In the plant they made us hurry up as much as we possibly could."

Those quotes could have come right out of Marx's description in Capital of English factories of the mid-19th century.

Long before the Postville raid--not against the dreadful conditions on the slaughterhouse floor, but against the undocumented men and women who took these dangerous, exploitative jobs--Agriprocessors was already well known as a vile, unhealthy killing floor. As the NY Times noted:

"A slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, develop[ed] an ugly reputation for abusing animals and workers. Reports of dirty, dangerous conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant accumulate[d] for years, told by workers, union organizers, immigrant advocates and government investigators. A videotape by an animal-rights group show[ed] workers pulling the windpipes out of living cows. A woman with a deformed hand t[old] a reporter of cutting meat for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for wages that labor ex-perts call the lowest in the industry. This year, federal investigators amass[ed] evidence of rampant illegal hiring at the plant, which has been called 'a kosher "Jungle."'" ("'The Jungle Again,'" NY Times, August 1, 2008). But in our upside down world, it is the workers who are criminalized, not the company.

PERILS OF UNDOCUMENTED WOMEN

Terrible dangers especially await undocumented women coming to the United States. At Agriprocessors, it took the form of sexual harassment. If you wanted a shift change or a promotion, you had to grant sexual favors to this or that supervisor.

The terrible threat to the lives of undocumented women often begins far earlier. Rape has become commonplace on both sides of the Mexico-Arizona border. Rape is now considered "the price of admission" for women crossing the border illegally. According to Dr. Sylvanna Falc—n: "Anyone from coyotes to U.S. officials, they all have the upper hand here. . . . Our society takes rape seriously, but it doesn't take this type of rape seriously. In all of our national discourse around securing our borders, rarely, if ever, do you hear about any kind of protection for people who might be crossing. Largely, that's because the discussion has been framed around protecting us--protecting the U.S.--and once you get into that framework, what happens to the other person is not even on the radar." (Quoted in the Tucson Weekly, June 9, 2008.)

OPPRESSION AND REVOLT

Hundreds of new laws have been passed at the state and city levels seeking to restrict the opportunities and rights of undocumented immigrants. The draconian federal persecution and anti-immigrant state and local laws are capitalism's response to a new mass movement among immigrant workers, the high-point of which so far was on May 1, 2006. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants and their allies gave a new significance to May Day, whose origin was in Chicago of the 1880s, centered on the fight for a shorter working day.

The July 27 march in Postville, Iowa, brought people from a number of Midwest cities. The demonstration included dozens of undocumented women workers from the plant who were out of jail because they had to take care of young children. Required to wear electronic monitoring ankle bracelets openly, and with a future of jail and deportation, they were in the forefront of resistance. They were joined by a coalition of forces:

• Members of the St. Bridget's Catholic Church in Postville who have supported the undocumented workers and their families ever since the raids, providing shelter, food, financial and moral support.
• Rabbis and members of Jewish congregations who were outraged that Agriprocessors runs a kosher meatpacking plant in such a degrading manner. They were calling for the revision of kosher food certification to include standards of corporate ethics and treatment of workers. "I'm embarrassed and ashamed at the way Agriprocessors has treated its workers," said one Jewish activist. "I don't think it's kosher meat. I think they're pulling a farce on the Jews of this country."
• Latino activists expressing solidarity with the undocumented Latin American workers. Labor activists joined in as well, some from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, who had been trying to organize the plant for a number of years.

Today's persecution and criminalization of undocumented workers is trying to destroy the movement among immigrant workers, many of whom came north after they were forced off the land as a result of trade agreements like NAFTA. Previously businesses used undocumented workers in many areas like agriculture and construction and as strike-breakers. The new demagoguery is aimed at dividing workers in general and especially within immigrant communities between those who have documents and those who don't. Now is the time for the firmest international solidarity with immigrant workers, fighting the chauvinism, false patriotism and political manipulation that is growing in this demagogic electoral moment.

As we go to press, the ICE has mounted another massive and brutal raid in the small town of Laurel, Mississippi, at Howard Industries, where nearly half the 800 workers are Latino/a. There are reports of parents snatched by ICE agents and given no time to make arrangements for the care of their children left alone. Those arrested face not only federal laws, but a draconian Senate Bill 2988 that makes it a felony to work without authorization in Mississippi and imposes a one to five year prison sentence and fines of up to $10,000. This outrage must end!

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