Vol. 71/No. 14      April 9, 2007

Since her arrest, Núñez has been held in a Des Moines jail. Hired by Swift in 2003, Núñez worked on the cut floor as a trimmer.

Earlier this month, another Swift worker from the Marshalltown plant, Lorena Andrade Rodríguez, was convicted on similar felony charges. The mother of two children, Rodríguez said she used another person’s identity “out of need” to support her family. Andrade is appealing the verdict.

Núñez was the subject of an article headlined, “Illegal Worker, Troubled Citizen and Stolen Name,” which was published on the front page of the March 22 New York Times. The article said that Núñez, and several other female immigrant workers arrested in the raids, are “resolved to fight the charges against them rather than make a deal with prosecutors that would lead to their deportation with no chance of legal return.”

Núñez was defended by Michael Mayer and Michael Said, two immigration attorneys based in Des Moines. Núñez’s three children are now reportedly under the care of her sister, who also works at the Swift plant.

In a related development, eight meat packers from the Swift plant in Cactus, Texas, pleaded guilty March 13 to felony charges stemming from the immigration raid of that plant.

The federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided six Swift plants nationwide in December, in the largest such raid ever against a single employer.

Of the nearly 300 workers arrested at the Cactus plant, 53 face criminal charges in a federal court in Amarillo, Texas.

One worker, who pleaded guilty to re-entering the United States without proper documentation after being deported, faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

On March 20, another five Swift workers from the Cactus plant pleaded guilty to felony charges of using false Social Security numbers and fake papers. They face a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. On the same day, six other workers pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts and were each sentenced to 100 days in jail, according to the Associated Press. Cases are still pending against the remaining 34 workers arrested in Cactus.

On February 26, four workers from the Swift plant in Louisville, Kentucky, were sentenced in federal court for using false papers. U.S. District Court Judge John Heyburn, sentenced each worker to five months in federal prison. After serving their sentences, each of the meat packers will be subject to deportation. The Louisville plant was the only Swift slaughterhouse that wasn’t raided in December. In that operation, which took place in October 2006, ICE agents arrested the meat packers while they were at work.

According to the ICE website, of the 1,297 workers arrested in the Swift raids, 649 have “been removed from the United States.” The countries of origin of the deported workers include Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru.
 
 
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