BY MAGGIE TROWE AND ELVIDIO MEJÍA
OMAHA, Nebraska - A group of Latino activists and others
organized a press conference here September 17 to protest a
new program by immigration police designed to deport
undocumented workers from meatpacking plants in Nebraska. The
program, called "Operation Prime Beef," was announced by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service in Nebraska the
previous week.
" `Operation Prime Beef' establishes a new standard of making a human being be unwanted, unappreciated, undesired, unwelcomed, and unloved," stated Father Stanley Kasun, associate pastor of St. Agnes and Our Lady of Guadalupe Roman Catholic Church in Omaha, at the press conference.
Through the new program the INS plans to subpoena employment records for more than 100 packing plants in Nebraska, and then turn over to the company names of workers whom they deem "illegal." Then the INS will visit the plants to interview, arrest, and deport the workers. INS officials aim to have the plan in full operation by the end of this year or in early 1999.
Another speaker at the protest press conference, Ben Salazar, is publisher of Nuestro Mundo, a Latino community newspaper. Salazar, whose paper has denounced the program, said it has racial overtones, targeting mostly Latino workers.
Others at the press conference included Lourdes Gouveia, associate professor of sociology and director of the Chicano/Latino Studies Program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Sarah Crawford, a member of the Nebraska Mexican American Commission. Michael Went, assistant deputy director of the INS in Nebraska, came to defend the government policy.
The INS fact sheet on "Operation Prime Beef" reads, "Instead of primarily arresting groups of undocumented aliens, as the INS has historically done, the agency is aiming to remove the magnet that initially draws them to the Midwest: employment." The statement calls the program a "partnership with top managers in the meat packing/processing industry."
This procedure is already in place in some Iowa plants, such as the Swift plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, where the INS regularly is allowed to inspect employee files.
Rito Rayas, who worked at the BeefAmerican plant in Norfolk, Nebraska, until it was shut down in July, explained in an October 11 interview that the INS arrested 110 workers at the MPS ham-processing plant last October, and 13 this year at the plant where he currently works.
Román García, 36, who works in a hide processing plant, said "Our bosses use the supervisors and the INS police to terrorize us." García said that his supervisor came to workers on their break to complain that they had missed some pieces when the line was going very fast. "The supervisor told us, `You are here to work, not to sleep on the line. If you don't want to work, you know where the door is, and I have dozens of applications on my desk of people waiting to take your job.' And we know if we complain, the INS will be waiting for us outside."
Kasun said several groups, including Nebraska Farm Workers Association, Nuestro Mundo, and the Latino Forum, are considering challenging Operation Prime Beef in a civil suit.