Postville ICE Raid Remembrance May 12 -- Link Roundup

One year ago, on May 12, 2008 the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  389 workers were arrested, most from Guatemala.  After arrest, they were taken to the local fairground and held in shackles for three days without significant access to lawyers.   Under those circumstances, 297 signed plea bargains despite the speed and dubiousness of their arrest.  These were not arrests for undocumented status but for criminal charges of fraud due to the use of false social security numbers.  The fact that these were criminal charges was used by law enforcement to justify the speed and opacity of the raids.

During the hearings, workers were shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles.  They were processed in groups of ten.

According to one of the translators hired by the US government, many of the workers did not understand the nature of a plea bargain or the precise nature of a social security number.   Many workers thought they were being arrested for undocumented status rather than on criminal charges.

One of the translators hired by the US government describes the prosecutions:

"The purpose was for the attorney to explain the
uniform Plea Agreement that the government was offering. The explanation, which we repeated
over and over to each client, went like this. There are three possibilities. If you plead guilty to the
charge of “knowingly using a false Social Security number,” the government will withdraw the
heavier charge of “aggravated identity theft,” and you will serve 5 months in jail, be deported
without a hearing, and placed on supervised release for 3 years. If you plead not guilty, you
could wait in jail 6 to 8 months for a trial (without right of bail since you are on an immigration
detainer). Even if you win at trial, you will still be deported, and could end up waiting longer in
jail than if you just pled guilty. You would also risk losing at trial and receiving a 2-year
minimum sentence, before being deported. Some clients understood their “options” better than
others. 
That first interview, though, took three hours. The client, a Guatemalan peasant afraid for
his family, spent most of that time weeping at our table, in a corner of the crowded jailhouse
visiting room. How did he come here from Guatemala? “I walked.” What? “I walked for a
month and ten days until I crossed the river.” We understood immediately how desperate his
family’s situation was. He crossed alone, met other immigrants, and hitched a truck ride to
Dallas, then Postville, where he heard there was sure work. He slept in an apartment hallway
with other immigrants until employed. He had scarcely been working a couple of months when
he was arrested. Maybe he was lucky: another man who began that Monday had only been
working for 20 minutes. “I just wanted to work a year or two, save, and then go back to my
family, but it was not to be.” His case and that of a million others could simply be solved by a
temporary work permit as part of our much overdue immigration reform. “The Good Lord knows
I was just working and not doing anyone any harm.” This man, like many others, was in fact not guilty. “Knowingly” and “intent” are necessary elements of the charges, but most of the clients
we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served.
This worker simply had the papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read or write
Spanish, let alone English. But the lawyer still had to advise him that pleading guilty was in his
best interest. He was unable to make a decision. “You all do and undo,” he said. “So you can do
whatever you want with me.” To him we were part of the system keeping him from being
deported back to his country, where his children, wife, mother, and sister depended on him. He
was their sole support and did not know how they were going to make it with him in jail for 5
months. None of the “options” really mattered to him. Caught between despair and hopelessness,
he just wept. He had failed his family, and was devastated. I went for some napkins, but he
refused them. I offered him a cup of soda, which he superstitiously declined, saying it could be
“poisoned.” His Native American spirit was broken and he could no longer think. He stared for a
while at the signature page pretending to read it, although I knew he was actually praying for
guidance and protection. Before he signed with a scribble, he said: “God knows you are just
doing your job to support your families, and that job is to keep me from supporting mine.”

The report of this translator, Erik Camayd-Freixas, is attached to this story and well worth reading.

Children of the arrested workers came home from school to find that their parents were gone.  Other undocumented workers fled Postville.  Meanwhile, Agriprocessors held onto the last paychecks of their detained employees.

Many of the detained workers were Guatemalan; of those, many were indigenous Maya people.  Many had fled the poverty, political targeting and destabilization that came to Guatemala during the US-backed right-wing military campaign of the eighties and early nineties. 

According to Labor Notes, the raid broke up a unionization drive at the plant.  The raid also came just as the Iowa Department of Labor was investigator Agriprocessors for a dismaying array of labor violations, ranging from the employment of children as young as 13 on the killing floor to pressuring workers to rent apartments and buy property from plant administrators to the beating of a worker with a meathook. 

The undocumented status of their employees apparently came as no shock to Agriprocessors, since three former members of the Agriprocessors Human Resources division have recently pled guilty to knowingly accepting falsified papers.  A complaint before the court alleges that one employee of Agriprocessors, Elizabeth Freund, helped workers obtain false papers.  But this was no humanitarian gesture--when it became convenient, in 2007, Agriprocessors turned around and tried to fire some of its workers--possibly organizers--for submitting false social security numbers.  

During and after the raid, St. Bridget's Church in Postville worked to help those detained and their families and has continued to coordinate financial and legal aid efforts.  Sister Mary McCauley, who has been one of the coordinators of Postville relief work, writes, "I think the most important thing to convey to a person who was not there would be state of fear, trauma and heartache that pervaded our Church.  People had come to Postville with the hope that they might be able to provide for their families and if possible take a fist step toward legalization.  Their dreams were totally shattered.  I think it is very important for people to put a name and a face on the people who were a part of the raid.  It is my hope that the tragedy of Postville will serve as the impetus for immigration reform."

Further updates to come.

Account by interpreter of hearings after Postville raid