BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
AND BILL KALMAN
The U.S. government has escalated its crackdown on the rights of immigrant workers with raids in production plants throughout the country. As of the beginning of June, more than 1,200 people have been seized in 86 factories in New York City's garment industry over an eight-month period. A New York Times article described these raids as "the lmmigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) newly declared war." It said they were a "test case of a new strategy the agency hopes to use nationally."

In Florida 30 undocumented inmates were deported May 30. Earlier that day, immigration cops arrested six Argentine and Uruguayan airport workers at the Miami International Airport.

Meanwhile in 'April, federal agents arrested 47 poultry workers in Charles City, Iowa, and in May 63 more immigrants were seized from a meatpacking plant in Storm Lake, Iowa.

The stepped-up assault stems from the Clinton administration's national expansion of a "pilot program" initiated in California that requires employers to verify the legal status of job applicants. White House officials announced at a May 23 news conference that the INS will expand the program, which uses a computerized data system. Immigration officials declared they planned to have about 1,000 companies signed up for the "employee verification" plan.

"This is another step in the administration’s effort to reduce the illegal immigration magnet by making it harder for illegal aliens to obtain a job here," stated INS commissioner Doris Meissner at the news conference. "American jobs belong to American workers."

The program in California involves two cities and 234 companies, including Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland. The companies employ 80,000 workers.

The country’s four largest packinghouse companies, which employ 56,000 employees or 80 percent of the industry's workforce, signed on in late April. The companies are IBP Inc. of Dakota City, Nebraska; BeefAmerica of Omaha, Nebraska; Monfort Inc. of Greeley, Colorado; and the Excel Corporation in Wichita, Kansas. Five smaller meatpacking companies have also enrolled. The packing plants are spread out in 48 sites in 12 western and midwestern states: Washington, Idaho, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, California, and Minnesota.

Raids aim to terrorize workers
Some union officials and many workers say the verification program and factory raids are aimed at terrorizing immigrants into accepting below-minimum wages and dangerous working conditions.

"It's a gift to the employer," said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the immigration project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees in New York, which organizes 40,000 garment workers in the city.

María Aguirre, an immigrant who worked at a raided sweatshop in Manhattan, which produced blouses for a clothing line named after talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford, explained that garment bosses are demanding lower wage rates for job seekers who lack proper documentation.

"All week, I've been looking for work," she said at a protest in late May outside the factory. "Everywhere they ask for papers, papers, papers. Without papers, they pay $3, $2.75 an hour."

Immigrant workers in Storm Lake, Iowa, organized a community meeting of nearly 50 people May 17 to discuss the impact of two INS raids at IBP's pork packing plant there.

"It is almost as if it is a criminal act to be working," said a Latino worker at the meeting. The mid-May raids came a month after the INS raided at All-States Quality Foods, a chicken deboning plant in Charles City, Iowa, and detained more than 40 workers on allegations of forging immigration papers.

In 1995, more than 300 undocumented workers were deported from factories in Nebraska and Iowa.

In a recent victory for immigrant rights in Iowa, a jury in the city of Clarion convicted two bosses at a poultry plant of assault and false imprisonment of a Latino worker. Lucas Ortega, who speaks little English, was pulled from his bed in the early morning ofJune 11, 1995, by John Glessner and Myron Lawler, his bosses at the Boomsa egg plant.

They accused him of stealing a computer, then wrapped him in duct tape, slapped and punched him, dragged him to the plant, and locked him in a bathroom. They threatened him repeatedly, yelling, "What do you want to do, work or die?'' Still wearing the clothes he slept in, Ortega was put to work. After three hours, the plant managers turned Ortega over to the police. The two bosses each face up to 13 months in jail and $1 ,600 in fines.

Bill Kalman is a member of United Transportation Union Local 867 in Des Moines, Iowa. Richard McBride, member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1149 in Des Moines, contributed to this article.  
 
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