OMAHA, Neb. (By Oskar Garcia, AP) August
17, 2007 — The president of the Food and Commercial Workers union on
Thursday called for congressional hearings into tactics used by federal
officials during immigration raids last year at six Swift & Co. meatpacking
plants.
Union officials heard complaints from Swift
workers in plants raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in
December.
"No water, no food for hours standing up
there together. Worse than the animals that are sacrificed there every day,"
said Delphina Arias, 44, who works at the Cactus, Texas, Swift plant. "It
was depressing as a U.S. citizen and as a human being."
Joseph Hansen, president of the union, said
workers' rights are under attack and the union will defend them.
"At gunpoint, more than 12,000 workers were
herded together and systematically stripped of their rights," Hansen said.
"Workers were denied access to telephones, to bathrooms and legal counsel."
ICE officials investigating identity theft
arrested more than 1,200 workers at the Swift plants.
ICE spokesman Tim Counts said the union's
allegations were baseless.
"Each person was treated with respect and
was given full access to due process under the law," Counts said Thursday.
"People were allowed to use the bathrooms. They were allowed to use
telephones."
Counts said workers were allowed to use pay
phones on cafeteria walls as well as company phones provided by Swift.
"In many cases, our agents handed their own
cell phones to people who couldn't find a free phone," Counts said.
The union said it was planning to file a
federal lawsuit against ICE for what it called military tactics that
violated the workers' Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and
seizure. It plans to hold hearings around the county to catalog workers'
experiences during the raids.
"Work is not a crime. Workers are not
criminals. We do not leave our constitutional rights at the plant gate,"
Hansen said.
Hansen said he expects a lawsuit to be
filed by September.
"The civil search warrants gave us the
authority and the obligation to search the entire plant and question
everyone in the plant," Counts said. "The techniques that were used during
the Swift operation are those that have been used for decades by ICE and
other law enforcement agencies and have been upheld repeatedly by the
courts."
Besides the Texas plant, Swift plants were
also raided in Grand Island, Neb.; Greeley, Colo.; Hyrum, Utah;
Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn.
More than a dozen workers from five of the
plants on Thursday complained about unfair treatment during the raids.
Workers in the Utah plant are not covered by the union.
Orlando Nunez, 43, said he was walking in
the Grand Island plant with a friend who is white when both were stopped by
an ICE agent. Nunez, who is Hispanic and American Indian, said his friend
was allowed to leave immediately without being questioned, but he was not.
"(The agent) said he wasn't here for people
like him, he was here for people like me — people with dark skin, dark hair,
dark eyes," Nunez said.
Counts said workers were never separated by
race, only by self-reported legal status.
Mike Graves, 48, said there were obvious
racial overtones in the Marshalltown plant as federal agents separated
workers, letting some go immediately.
Graves said he was handcuffed for more than
8 hours and quizzed about the driving route from Iowa to Mississippi, where
his family is from.
"I'm a black U.S. citizen," Graves said.
"Been here all my life."
Others complained that federal agents
degraded them during the searches.
"We all got our rights violated," said
Sonia Mendoza, 30, who works in the Cactus plant. Mendoza said she was
patted down in front of others by a male ICE agent, and told there wasn't a
female agent available to search her when she asked for one.
Loida Cruz, 50, a Worthington plant worker,
said she was not given privacy while she changed her clothes and was forced
to use the bathroom in front of agents.
"They wouldn't let me close the stall
door," Cruz said.
Brazilian firm JBS S.A. acquired Swift from
a private equity firm for about $1.5 billion in July. The purchase made the
company the world's largest beef processor.
