Matt M. Dummermuth

Matt Dummermuth, who was recommended for the post by U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, began serving as U.S. Attorney on Jan. 30, 2007. He succeeded Chuck Larson, Sr., who retired in December 2006, and Judy Whetstine, who served immediately following Larson’s departure, but soon also announced her own retirement.

“It has been a rewarding challenge to seek justice each day in each case for every defendant, every victim, and every member of the public,” Dummermuth said. “I’m grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to pursue justice and uphold the rule of law. It has been a wonderful privilege to serve and protect the people of Iowa.”

During his tenure as U.S. Attorney, Dummermuth, who is a native of Elgin, served on two national groups that advise the U.S. Attorney General — the Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee and the Child Exploitation Working Group of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. These subcommittees mirrored two initiatives within the Northern District Office that Dummermuth considered to be top priorities. He led an anti-terrorism effort within his office and closely coordinated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies. The office also enhanced information flow with, and provided international and domestic terrorism training to, law enforcement at all levels.

Dummermuth is also credited with implementing a strong prosecution and prevention strategy for child exploitation crimes. The office has charged and convicted record numbers of defendants for child pornography production, distribution and possession as well as for enticement and travel-related child exploitation crimes. In addition to obtaining lengthy sentences in many of the cases, including 100 years for one such individual, Dummermuth spearheaded two Internet safety initiatives, and often traveled himself to present safety information to area middle school students.

Although his office will be known for these and the traditional drug trafficking, firearm and other violent offenses that are the standard within all U.S. Attorney Offices, he will always be best known for his role in the prosecution of more than 300 immigrant workers from the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville. Dummermuth led the worksite enforcement prosecution effort following the arrest of 389 plant workers. Under his direction the office prosecuted 305 of the workers for immigration and identity theft-related charges within days of their detention in a highly controversial process that quickly became known as “fast-tracking.”

Nearly a year following the May 2008 raid in Postville and subsequent guilty pleas, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that undocumented immigrants could not be charged with aggravated identity theft without proof that they had knowingly used another person’s documents. Although the decision did not address the situation that followed Postville, it did effectively end what many feared was becoming an unfair government tactic.

In addition to the immigrant workers, eight other management, administrative and supervisory employees at Agriprocessors — including the chief financial officer, controller, and human resources manager — pleaded guilty to bank fraud, harboring, or document fraud charges. Just earlier this month, a jury in South Dakota found Sholom Rubashkin, day-to-day manager at the plant and son of the company founder, guilty on 86 of a possible 91 charges ranging from fraud to money laundering.

Although Dummermuth was recommended by Grassley and later nominated by Pres. George W. Bush, he never faced U.S. Senate confirmation. He and his wife, Rebecca, are expecting their third child. He said that he has no immediate professional plans for the future, and that he plans to spend additional time with his family and working on his parents’ farm before making any decisions.

Stephanie Rose

A social justice organization has taken a stand against the woman nominated to be the next U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

Friends of Justice issued a statement Wednesday describing the nomination of Stephanie Rose for U.S. attorney as “just plain wrong.”

Rose, who has worked in the office since 1997 and currently serves as the deputy criminal chief, is tainted, according to the organization, due to her involvement in the prosecutions of hundreds of immigrants following a massive raid of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville in 2008.

…Rose helped execute the unprecedented use of expedited trials and exploding plea agreements to convict 306 undocumented workers at the Postville. At the time of the Postville Prosecutions, Rose was not a low ranking member of the office but was in a leadership position as third in charge in the office for criminal prosecutions. Earlier this year, Stephanie Rose was asked about her role at Postville. Even in hindsight, she defended the raid and prosecutions saying “executing the massive operation required amazing effort and a ton of good work.”

… We find it impossible to understand what grounds Ms Rose and her colleagues had for choosing to exercise their prosecutorial discretion in this case with such aggression and lack of respect for due process, other than the requirements of their own ambition. They brought the full force of the USA office to bear on the most vulnerable members of a community with full knowledge that the U.S. Department of Labor was conducting an ongoing investigation of child-labor and wage violations at the plant where these same workers were being victimized…

It is criticism that U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, who recommended Rose for the nomination, has heard and answered previously.

“We looked into this in great detail [while considering the recommendation of Rose for the U.S. attorney post],” Harkin told The Iowa Independent in April. “We contacted lawyers that were involved on the defense side during the hearings in Waterloo. The lawyers, who provided defense during that event, have come out with a letter in support of Rose’s nomination.”

The letter referenced by Harkin was signed by 11 defense attorneys who agreed that Rose took no part in the decisions to conduct the immigration raid in Postville or to fast-track the immigrant workers who were detained as a part of the raid.

…She did not make the decision to fast track these cases, nor did she have any part in how the individuals were to be housed. In addition, she did not make the decision regarding what charges were to be brought against these individuals. With the limited discretion that she had regarding the circumstances and particularly the plea agreements, Ms. Rose exercised her judgment admirably and very favorably to defendants.

Any criticism about Stephanie Rose apparently comes from those who have never had a criminal case with her, and instead represent a blanket disagreement with the Immigration policies and statutes of the United States.

Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a federal court interpreter who wrote an explosive essay condemning the handling of the prosecutions resulting from the Postville raid, vehemently disagrees with the defense lawyers who signed the letter in support of Rose.

He provided a brief to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday stating that the “Postville defense attorneys who sent a letter of support for AUSA Rose to Senator Harkin, who recommended her, have no specific knowledge of Rose’s participation in confidential decisions of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and are not in a position to vouch for her as though there had been no problems with the proceedings or their participation in the defense.”

Camayd-Freixas asserts that the defense attorneys who signed onto the letter were “severely criticized nationally by their colleagues for ineffective assistance of counsel, including taking on an average 17 defendants each, failing to provide accurate advice on immigration consequences, and failing to protect the human and due process rights of their clients.”

In his brief, Camayd-Freixas does fail to note that much of the criticism in the wake of the Postville raid and prosecutions was sparked by and nearly without fail reference his own published essay regarding what transpired and his theories as to why. Camayd-Freixas also pulls information from a wide variety of sources, including congressional testimony, to make his case that Rose’s involvement in the fast-track prosecutions was much more integral than has been described and that the overall process was one that usurped due process in favor of expediency.

Although President Obama has accepted Harkin’s recommendation and placed Rose on the nomination list, the Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet scheduled a hearing on her nomination. When the committee does take up the nomination, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley will be involved as a member with seniority.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa continues to be led by Matt Dummermuth, a man on the fringe of the national U.S. Attorney scandal who was nominated by then-President George W. Bush, but has never faced Senate confirmation.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly attributed a statement made about U.S. attorney nominee Stephanie Rose to a southern justice organization called Friends of Justice. A different organization also calling themselves Friends of Justice issued the statement on Wednesday night, not the nonprofit group organized in the wake of a 1999 Tulia drug sting in Texas, which denies it made the statement.

Postville had been known as a unique community for years. Home to the Kosher meatpacking company Agriprocessors, Inc., the city had a diverse population of Orthodox Jews, immigrants from Latin American countries, and native Iowans. Though the city always grappled with its disparate constituencies, the May 12, 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at Agriprocessors changed things there forever.

News coverage of the raid generated more calls for comprehensive immigration reform from leaders across the country, but one open question remains: Will the experiences of Postville change things anywhere else?

Postville, a human face

Although ICE had been conducting work site immigration raids for years, the massive raid in tiny Postville struck an emotional chord with people who typically approached the discussion from opposite ends of the spectrum. (At the time, it was the largest single-site immigration raid in the nation’s history.)

Later in the summer, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus traveled to the town to see it firsthand. U.S. Rep. Tom Latham (R-Ames), whose district includes Postville, hoped it would be a chance for more leaders to see a real-world example of U.S. immigration policy.

“The members of the Hispanic Caucus will have seen firsthand, number one, the effect of the meatpacking plant owners and, what appears to be, them knowingly having illegal people working there,” Latham said in a July interview with Iowa Independent. “They will see the impact and the consequences of that. Most importantly to me, they are going to see how devastating this was to the families who have been torn apart — the human impact on these people.”

Three members of the federal delegation that visited Postville were noticeably moved by the stories they heard. U.S. Rep. Joe Baca, a California Democrat, rose from his chair, crossed the room and hugged one immigrant woman who shared her experiences. U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, said, “I know this in all aspects of my life: This is a human crisis.”

Several Iowans delivered testimony to Congress about the raids including local attorneys, a court-hired translator who assisted with the criminal prosecutions of detainees, religious leaders and U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Cedar Falls), whose district borders Postville.

But a year later, the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform is still distant. Braley recently admitted that despite his wishes to the contrary, he does not expect significant immigration reform to go before Congress anytime soon.

Indeed, despite a massive demonstration in Postville, visits from congressional leaders, hundreds of prayer vigils, local calls for comprehensive reform, a Beltway regime change, and pressure from the various odd-bedfellows now working in concert to make good on the lessons of Postville, there are few policy improvements to show for all the effort.

Questioning ‘assembly-line justice’

The one aspect of Postville’s story that does seem to be having a national impact relates to the way detainees are prosecuted after a raid has happened, and the fight is being waged in the courts, not in Congress.

Most detained Agriprocessors workers were charged with aggravated identity theft, a criminal violation that carried a two-year federal prison term. The workers, who knew little or no English, were offered mass-produced plea deals on a lesser charge that carried only a five-month prison term. Legal representation was provided by criminal defense attorneys, hired by the government, who were charged with representing 10 or more individuals.

Although immigration attorneys outside the make-shift courtroom in Waterloo complained that they were not being allowed access to the detainees, federal officials quickly responded that criminal complaints trump administration (immigration-only) offenses. Even as they fled to other states, panicked residents of Postville told stories of inhumane detainee treatment and spoke of residential immigration sweeps.

Days later, when 76 percent of the 389 detained workers had signed the plea deals, federal officials came out swinging.

“It is unfortunate that those with their own agenda have spread misinformation — ignoring the fact that 297 people admitted their crimes and accepted the consequences of their actions. There have been no checkpoints, no random checks, and no house-to-house sweeps as have been rumored,” said Matt Dummermuth, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

Claude Arnold, special agent in charge of ICE’s Office of Investigations, also derided “the usual spate of false allegations and baseless rumors.”

Perhaps because of the humanitarian public relations fiasco that encompassed an earlier immigration raid in Marshalltown, federal officials began mounting a defense at a press conference the day after the raid. It was first announced at that event that several detainees had been released back into the community. The move, which was initially welcomed by human rights advocates, would later become a primary example of government cruelty. The detainees, released back into Postville due to medical conditions or to care for children, could not legally earn a living. And, despite the swiftness of the earlier plea arrangements, the wheels of justice moved slow for those left in limbo.

The undeniably efficient criminal proceedings that took place in the days following the raid — plea deals that have been labeled as coerced by some who witnessed them — lit an immediate firestorm against an already tainted Department of Justice. Following oversight hearings in their U.S. House committees, U.S. Reps. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) spoke out against such expedited court proceedings, labeling them “a kangaroo court.”

“The assembly-line justice that we heard about today denies people the opportunity to assert asylum claims or get help if they were subjected to human trafficking or other forms of abuse,” Sánchez said.

Immigration advocates had high hopes when the new Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, announced that all raids would be ceased while her department crafted a new policy. But as information about the new policy comes to light, it is not clear that much has changed.

Still, a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision calls into question many of the so-called “assembly line” convictions by narrowing the federal definition of aggravated identity theft. The court ruled unanimously that suspects must have knowingly used another person’s identity to be convicted of the aggravated crime.

Since most of the Postville workers signed plea agreements on lesser charges and waived their right to appeal, it is not known how many of their convictions will be revisited, though many were initially charged with the crime in question. Still, as Congress seems to wait for other issues to quiet down before tackling immigration, recognition of the lessons of Postville is welcome, no matter where it comes from.

Stephanie Rose

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin believes that recent criticism being placed at the feet of the woman he recommended to be the next U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa is severely misplaced.

The questions being raised about Stephanie Rose, a 12-year veteran prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office that Harkin recommended for promotion, stem from her involvement in the criminal prosecution of more than 300 immigrant detainees, taken from the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville during a May 2008 federal raid.

“We looked into this in great detail [while considering the recommendation of Rose for the U.S. Attorney post],” Harkin said by phone on Thursday. “We contacted lawyers that were involved on the defense side during the hearings in Waterloo. The lawyers, who provided defense during that event, have come out with a letter in support of Rose’s nomination.”

The letter, which was provided to the Iowa Independent by the senator’s staff, is dated April 17 and signed by 11 defense attorneys that represented detainees following the federal immigration raid at Agriprocessors in Postville. It is addressed to Harkin at his Washington, D.C., address and reads as follows:

As criminal defense attorneys who are members of the Criminal Justice Act panel here in the Northern District of Iowa, and who had all participated in the representation of individuals prosecuted last May as part of the Agriprocessors Plant raid, we feel compelled to write your office on behalf of the Stephanie Rose nomination for U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

During the process of our representation of Postville clients Stephanie Rose was the primary contact for defense attorneys. She worked incredibly long hours and exhibited a level of competence and ability that would be hard to overstate. She was there on the Cattle Congress grounds virtually around-the-clock and showed familiarity with a number of individual client circumstances when contacted by defense counsel to discuss potential plea alternatives.

She described the areas where the local U.S. Attorney’s Office was allowed to negotiate and vary from the plea proposals that had been approved at the national level. In those cases where adjustments could be made to accommodate particular circumstances, she did so in order to ensure that justice was done in each individual case.

Ms. Rose also ensured that defense counsel had complete access to their clients by acting as a buffer with Homeland Security, who were in charge of the housing and security of our clients. She further coordinated with the local jails that housed defendants to allow for maximum access by defense attorneys in order for us to provide complete representation.

Based upon our involvement in the Postville representation, it was not Stephanie Rose’s decision to conduct the Postville Raid. She was not involved in the major policy decisions that led to the raid. She did not make the decision to fast track these cases, nor did she have any part in how the individuals were to be housed. In addition, she did not make the decision regarding what charges were to be brought against these individuals. With the limited discretion that she had regarding the circumstances and particularly the plea agreements, Ms. Rose exercised her judgment admirably and very favorably to defendants.

Any criticism about Stephanie Rose apparently comes from those who have never had a criminal case with her, and instead represent a blanket disagreement with the Immigration policies and statutes of the United States.

(signed) Alfred E. Willett, Stephen A. Swift, Michael K. Lahammer, John D. Jacobsen, Brian D. Johnson, Chris Clausen, Rick L. Sole, John Bishop, Anne Laverty, David Mullin and Michael Lindeman

“These are the individuals who represented detainees from Agriprocessors and were actually involved in that process,” Harkin said. “They are giving Stephanie Rose the highest praise for how she conducted herself throughout the process in Waterloo.”

Harkin insists that Rose had no role in any major policy decisions related to the Postville raid.

“She was not involved in the decision to undertake the enforcement action,” he said. “She was not involved in the decision to temporarily house them at the fairgrounds. She had no role in the decision to use ‘fast track’ procedures, no role in deciding what criminal charges to bring, and no role in what plea agreements to offer.”

Rose, who has most recently been serving as deputy criminal chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, was called called upon to assist in the prosecution of the Agriprocessors detainees. According to information obtained by Harkin’s staff, all career prosecutors in the office were asked to assist. Rose was told roughly four weeks before the raid took place in Postville to clear her calendar, but was not given specifics of the case. It was not until shortly before the action that Rose, as well as other prosecutors, were given details.

Her participation in the aftermath of the raid was limited to 11 days — the criminal proceedings in the makeshift courtrooms on the Waterloo fairgrounds and follow-up meetings with detainees and their counsel. The plea agreements she presented were pre-written, and Rose had “extremely limited authority” to deviate from their terms. Harkin’s staff concluded that she did not have discretion to offer shorter prison sentences as a part of the plea agreements, even if she felt a shorter sentence was warranted.

Nearly 400 detainees were taken from Postville, driven about 80 miles to the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo and held in temporary bunkers there. The court, which has two primary offices in the state, created make-shift facilities within the fairgrounds so that defendants could be quickly charged, offered plea agreements and sentenced. Within 10 days, 76 percent of those detained had already been convicted of wrongdoing.

The speed of the convictions, which has been labeled as ‘fast-tracking’ by the U.S. Department of Justice, is just one aspect of the process that has drawn criticism. Some have charged that the workers, many of whom did not speak English, were denied an opportunity to discuss their case with an immigration attorney. Others have made charges concerning human rights violations. At least two individuals who took part in the process that began in Waterloo have taken a strong, if not belated, public stance against it.

“I show that the defendants, though not technically coerced, were the victims of systemic coercion,” wrote Peter Moyer, a judicial clerk for U.S. District Chief Judge Linda R. Reade.

Court interpreter Erik Camayd-Freixas wrote a 15-page essay based on his involvement in the prosecution of Agriprocessors detainees before testifying before a U.S. House immigration subcommittee.

“In my capacity as the court’s expert witness I observed that the arrest, prosecution and conviction of 297 undocumented workers from Postville was a process marred by irregularities at every step of the way, which combined to produce very lamentable results,” Camayd-Freixas told Congress.

Philadelphia attorney Dave Bennion and others who have come out against the recommendation appear to be frustrated not by those who participated in the process in Waterloo and later spoke out about it, but by individuals who participated and have not voiced objections. Bennion is particularly irked by reports that Rose viewed what transpired at the fairgrounds as successful.

“Anyone who is proud of what happened at Postville shouldn’t have a license to practice law, much less get a promotion out of it,” Bennion wrote on his blog.

Despite such criticisms, Harkin said he has no qualms about recommending Rose.

“I have the highest respect for Stephanie Rose and the highest confidence in her,” Harkin said. “Not only has she been an outstanding public prosecutor, but I believe she will be an outstanding U.S. Attorney.”

Harkin’s recommendation has been sent to the White House. If the Obama administration agrees, a notice will be sent to the U.S. Senate of Rose’s nomination for the position. Harkin and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley will have opportunity to file paperwork in relation to the nomination and then a Senate subcommittee can begin the confirmation process.

If confirmed, Rose will replace Matt Dummermuth, an attorney recommended by Grassley and appointed by then-President George W. Bush in January 2007. Although nominated by the Bush administration in December 2008, Dummermuth has never faced Senate confirmation.

Documents filed with the court indicate that U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and the federal agency are “currently investigating the pay practices at Agriprocessors, Inc.” and expect to file “an action against Agriprocessors, Inc.”

The nine men in question were detained in a May immigration raid at the kosher meatpacking plant in Postville. They entered guilty pleas to criminal charges and are now prisoners in Floria federal facilities. All nine are due to be deported from the U.S. on Oct. 10.

“The petitioner … is presently unable to bring the action [against Agriprocessors] because additional evidence from employees regarding hours they worked without pay is needed,” Andrea Christensen Luby, attorney for the agency, wrote in the motion filed Tuesday. “The payroll records of Agriprocessors, Inc. do not reflect all hours worked by the employees, and the testimony of employees is needed to establish the amount of back wages due the employees.”

If granted permission to interview the former employees, the agency plans to discuss their dates of employment; departments in which they worked; their unrecorded hours worked pre-shift, post-shift and pre- and post-lunch break; their wages paid; their job duties; the protective equipment and clothing needed to perform their duties; and the procedures and policies regarding obtaining, donning and doffing of the protective gear.

Because of an addition motion to expedite the court proceedings, Scoles nearly immediately granted the telephone hearing between representatives from the Labor Department and Jeffry A. Meyer, a New York-based attorney representing Agriprocessors.

Scoles has served as referring judge on at least four previous cases, ranging from 2004 to the present, that have involved Agriprocessors. To date his association with the quick criminal prosecution of immigration detainees at Agriprocessors has not been called into question in any other cases related to the meatpacking plant.

In August an attorney for Martin De La Rosa-Loera, a former supervisor at Agriprocessors who has pleaded guilty to encouraging illegal immigration, filed a motion that questioned Chief Judge Linda R. Reade’s participation. In addition to her leadership role in the more than 300 criminal cases, the attorney pointed to comments Reade made in the press as possible defense of the quick proceedings in makeshift courtrooms. Reade said Tuesday that she has not formed any opinions about the De La Rosa-Loera case and refused to recuse herself from the upcoming sentencing.

Prior to the raid Agriprocessors was the nation’s largest producer of kosher meat. The plant continues to struggle to rebuild its workforce and return to pre-raid levels of production. Officials with Agriprocessors could not be reached for immediate comment due to a Jewish holiday.

It remains unclear if the wage investigation by the Department of Labor began recently or was one of the items already under investigation prior to the May raid. If this investigation does lead to action, it would mark the third such ongoing government case against the meatpacking company.

As the nation considers and lawmakers decide if the E-Verify program, scheduled for reauthorization this November, is worth saving, eyes are turning to Iowa, a state that has weathered two unprecedented immigration raids in as many years.

A Tale of Two Meatpackers

It’s been relatively easy for advocates of immigration crackdown to point fingers at Postville’s kosher meatpacking plant Agriprocessors. Despite numerous written warnings from the Social Security Administration about submitted employee data not matching federal database information, company officials — like thousands of others across the U.S. — never opted to use the E-Verify program. Since making national headlines as the site of the nation’s largest single-location immigration raid on May 12, the company has since hired a staffing company that uses the online federal system to check workers’ eligibility.

Finger pointing at the management of Swift & Co., a meatpacking plant that operates in Iowa and other states, hasn’t been as clear cut.

On Dec. 12, 2006, in an event dubbed Operation Wagon Train, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided Swift plants in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas and Utah. A total of 1,282 workers were detained on immigration and criminal charges. Roughly 100 of those detained were workers at Swift’s Marshalltown plant. It remains the largest multiple work site sweep in ICE’s history and caught the meatpacker, one of a handful of companies that voluntarily used E-Verify to authorize workers, completely off guard.

On March 1, 2006, ICE presented a subpoena at the Marshalltown plant for the company’s I-9 employment verification forms. It wasn’t an unusual request and, as such, did not alert plant management of the already ongoing investigation and soon to be impending raid. The search warrant filed by ICE in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Iowa indicates that the agency believed 664 workers were illegal immigrants who had assumed the identities of U.S. citizens and thus thwarted the E-Verify system.

During the course of both investigations, ICE sent an undercover agent into the plants. On Aug. 22, 2006 the undercover agent at Swift recorded Braulio Pereyra-Gabino telling new employees in Spanish how to protect assumed identities. On Jan. 8 the undercover agent at Agriprocessors recorded a female human resources employee (unnamed in the search warrant) speaking in Spanish to a group of newly hired employees and joking about how the individuals should mark their employment verification forms. Pereyra-Gabino was convicted in May of harboring illegal aliens and sentenced last week to one year and one day in prison and a $2,000 fine. He was aquitted of false representation of a Social Security number and aggravated identity theft. At his trial it was revealed that one of the detained workers testified for the prosecution that she taped a conversation in which Pereyra-Gabino, knowing she was undocumented, told her how to obtain papers so she could work at Swift.

Another employee at Swift — Christopher Lamb, an assistant human resources manager — was also charged with harboring illegal aliens after a detainee who used a stolen identity agreed to cooperate with the ICE investigation. Alejandro Vazquez-Avina, according to court documents, had worked at the Marshalltown plant at various times since 2002. Since he had known Lamb for a number of years, Vazquez-Avina agreed to wear a wire and approach Lamb about once again working at Swift. Lamb did not directly hire Vazquez-Avina, but did offer advice as to how the man should react when he applied for employment at the plant. Lamb entered a guilty plea and was sentenced in March to 12 months probation.

Two lower-level members of management at Agriprocessors remain the only plant supervisors that have been charged with crimes in conjunction with the immigration raid there. Martin De La Rosa-Loera and Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza are both charged with aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identity documents and encouraging aliens to illegally reside in the U.S. Both have entered pleas of not guilty and are now remanded until their scheduled September trial dates.

Although court documents indicate that the raid on Agriprocessors resulted in the discovery of dozens of fraudulent permanent alien resident cards from the company’s human resources department, to date, no member of the Agriprocessors’ human resources department has been charged.

You’re Either With Us Or Against Us

Officials with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) seemed to be little taken aback by a recent blog posting by DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker. In the post, dated July 11, Baker lashed out at the professional organization for human resource executives.

…I suppose corporate hiring is easier if you can hire illegal workers, so perhaps I shouldn’t be suprised that SHRM want to kill a program that makes it harder to hire illegal workers.

SHRM says it doesn’t want to kill E-Verify. SHRM says it wants to replace E-Verify with a new, better program to prevent illegal hiring. A closer look shows that the SHRM alternative is doomed to fail — and will take years to do so. So, for a decade, while the SHRM alternative is failing, no one will have a good tool to actually prevent illegal hires. Which may be precisely what SHRM wants.

China Miner Gorman, acting president and chief executive officer for SHRM, wasted little time firing off a letter to Michael Chertoff, director of the Department of Homeland Security and Baker’s boss.

…DHS is attempting to discredit SHRM by asserting that our support for the New Employee Verification Act (NEVA) and our work with the bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), are nothing more than an elaborate plan to kill employment verification altogether. … SHRM and its members are on the front lines of employment verification every day. We know what works and what doesn’t — and E-Verify doesn’t work. E-Verify’s effectiveness has been called into question by a variety of organizations, businesses, the Government Accountability Office, Members of Congress and state governments. … DHS has chosen to use Executive Orders and legal maneuvers to force participation in E-Verify, while ignoring requests to discuss our concerns or modify its plans in any way.

Gorman goes on to document two 2007 requests by “Five of the nation’s leading human resources organizations” to meet with DHS officials and discuss ways to improve the E-Verify program. Both requests went unanswered, according to Gorman.

Questioning critics’ desire to change or avoid use of the DHS-administered program, however, is not something new to the government agency. In his own blog post in September 2007, Chertoff responded to an Illinois law that would prevent companies in that state from using E-Verify by asking, “Could it be that the Illinois state legislature wants to prevent businesses from using the best available tools to determine whether new employees are illegal aliens?”

In an October 1007 post, he took the Washington Post and New York Times to task for editorials critical of E-Verify. He describes the latter publication as “hyperventilating” about DHS immigration enforcement actions.

“People often wonder why it’s so difficult for the government to get a grip on illegal immigration,” Chertoff wrote. “But interest groups often work to slow or stop our efforts through lawsuits or political pressure. We need to decide as a nation if we’re going to be serious about solving this problem. It is up to Congress to enact legislation that will fix the problem comprehensively. Until then, we shouldn’t tie the hands of the men and women trying to enforce the law as it is.”

John Noll, legislative director for the Iowa council of SHRM and someone who is employed full-time as a human resources manager, said the motives behind the criticism of the E-Verify program were pure.

“SHRM believes in secured borders for our country and we believe in maintaining a legal workforce,” he said. “We believe E-Verify is at least a step in the right direction — there are some very good qualities to it. But we also believe that it just simply does not go far enough.”

Removing the requirement for paper employment verification forms, which can be easily altered and/or falsified, according to Noll, would be a big improvement.

“Currently, there is no way for an employer to verify that a person showing certain forms of identification are there person that they are claiming to be,” he said. “The database has not yet proven to be 100 percent accurate. I think the last percentage I saw was a 4 percent error rate, which represents roughly 6 million people within the country’s working population. … So, there are components we’d like to see added to it, especially before it becomes and permanent and mandatory tool.”

Those components, he said, are available in the alternative program that’s been introduced by the Republican from Texas.

“With NEVA, we do away with the paper aspect of verifying employment,” he said. “So we get further away from the possibility of being fooled by fake documents. The other piece that is of interest is the biometrics piece of verification. So that we can, hopefully, do away with the cases of stolen identity cases. With that piece, we can be much more sure that the person presenting himself is who he says he is.”

In lieu of relying on Social Security databases, NEVA would make use of an existing database used by about 90 percent of U.S. employers to check criminal backgrounds of new employees — the New Hires Registry operated in each state, established more than a decade ago as a part of federal welfare reform. After 11 years in existence, only about 10 percent of all U.S. employers use E-Verify. The NEVA program would also be able to “ping” data within the Social Security and Homeland Security. The proposed legislation also calls for a marketing campaign aimed at encouraging U.S. citizens to ensure their Social Security information is and remains up to date. Finally, the NEVA proposal calls for a moratorium of prosecution of employers who use the system, but unintentionally hire an illegal worker.

DHS, when faced with such criticism, is quick to point out that modifications and enhancements to the E-Verify program have been made. One piece that Noll said he had not yet seen in the system is photo verification. According to the government agency, there are now roughly 15 million photos included in the system.

Noll was hesitant to speculate on if usage of E-Verify would have prevented or lessened the immigration raid on Agriprocessors.

“It’s a tool,” he said. “And, as with any tool, it’s only as good as how it is used and monitored. My understanding, however, is that the Swift plants were using E-Verify and it did not help in their situation. Again, this is because the documents can be falsified, and E-Verify relies on documents. … I can’t say that it would have prevented what Agriprocessors went through and their workforce being illegal, but my experience based on Swift is that it did not help them.”

The Politics of Money

Erik Camayd-Freixas, one of the court appointed Spanish interpreters who translated the swift criminal proceedings that followed the raid on Agriprocessors, took a long look at what he describes as the economics behind the Postville event.

“At first sight it may seem absurd to take productive workers and keep them in jail at taxpayers’ expense,” he wrote in 15-page essay. “But the economics and politics of the matter are quite different from such rational assumptions.”

Camayd-Freixas examined ICE’s 2007 annual report which states that the agency grew to 16,500 employees and had a $5 billion annual budget. Under the umbrella of DHS since March 2003 the department describes itself as “a law enforcement agency for the post-9/11 era, to integrate enforcement authorities against criminal and terrorist activities, including the fights against human trafficking and smuggling, violent transnational gangs and sexual predators who prey on children.” Camayd-Freixas, already having stated his case that the criminal identity theft charges against the Postville workers were questionable, goes on to state his belief that such charges are necessary if ICE wishes to continue to earn its keep.

ICE documents report that in FY 2007 the agency’s human trafficking investigations results in 164 arrests and 91 convictions. The agency also launched 3,069 financial investigations in order to dismantle the schemes that criminal and terrorists organizations use to earn, move and store illicit funding. The annual report states that these investigations resulted in “significant increases in arrests.” In addition, the agency reports that it made 188 arrests and secured 127 convictions in national security investigations relating to intercepting illegal exports of weapons, military equipment and technology. In the realm of counterfeit goods and products, ICE made 235 arrests that resulted in 117 convictions. The Border Enforcement Security Task Forces were responsible for 526 criminal arrests and seizures of $2.5 million in cash and significant amounts of narcotics and weapons.

“The real numbers,” wrote Camayd-Freixas, “are in immigration: ‘In FY07, ICE removed 276,912 illegal aliens.’ ICE is under enormous pressure to turn out statistical figures that might justify a fair utilization of its capabilities, resources and ballooning budget. For example, the report boasts 102,777 cases ‘eliminated’ from the fugitive alien population in FY07, ‘quadrupling’ the previous year’s number, only to admit a page later than 73,284 were ‘resolved’ by simply ‘taking those cases off the books’ after determining that they ‘no longer met the definition of an ICE fugitive.’”

To justify the budget, he concludes, ICE is taking the low-lying fruit.

“Since FY06 ‘ICE has introduced an aggressive and effective campaign to enforce immigration law within the nation’s interior, with a top-level focus on criminal aliens, fugitive aliens and those who pose a threat to the safety of the American public and the stability of American communities,’” Camayd-Freixas wrote. “Yet as of Oct. 1, 2007, the ‘case backlog consisted of 594,756 ICE fugitive aliens.’ So again, why focus on illegal workers who pose no threat? Elementary: they are easy pickings. True criminal and fugitive aliens have to picked up one at a time, whereas raiding a slaughterhouse is like hitting a small jackpot. It beefs up the numbers.”

While the detained workers are often charged criminally and placed in federal facilities before they are deported, the company owners and members of upper management rarely face criminal charges. Instead, corporations are fined. The annual report states that “in FY07, ICE dramatically increased penalties against employers whose hiring processes violated the law, securing fines and judgments of more than $30 million.”

The whammy consists in beefing up an additional and meatier statistics showcased in the Report: “These incarcerated aliens have been involved in dangerous criminal activity such as murder, predatory sexual offenses, narcotics trafficking, alien smuggling and a host of other crimes.” Never mind the character assassination: next year when we read the FY08 report, we can all revel in the splendid job the agency is doing, keeping us safe, and blindly beef up its budget another billion. After all, they have already arrested 1,755 of these “criminals” in this May’s raids alone.

But Chertoff argues that the agency is doing what prosecutors have done for ages: starting at the bottom and working their way up.

“For those who say that we are only focusing on the illegal workers themselves, I point out that last year we had over 90 employers, or those in a supervisory chain who were convicted of crimes. We have had one CEO or President of a company sent to jail for 10 years,” Chertoff said in June during the State of Immigration Address. “We will continue to pursue employers. I know these cases take a little bit longer. There is a — it is always more difficult to work up the chain. I can tell you as an old organized crime prosecutor and as an old drug prosecutor, you always start with the bottom ring first, then you work your way up to the top ring.”

Chertoff ended his remarks by validating the need for the proposed $100 million budget for E-Verify — $17 million of that for program enhancements. The department also request $50 million in new funding that will be used “to develop an electronic information sharing and verification hub capability.” Overall the department is requesting a 6.8 percent increase in funding to $50.5 billion.

ICE has requested $5.7 billion in funding. Roughly $46 million will be used to “add 1,000 additional detention beds, staffing and associated costs required to meet the current demand generated by increase enforcement activities.”

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for using the E-Verify program does not yet have the resources to implement a mandatory screening, Richard Stana, director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office told a House Judiciary Subcommittee in June. He estimated that USCIS would need between $765 and $840 million if the program is to be implemented over four years. In addition, Stana said the Social Security Administration would require $281 million and at least 700 new employees.

The E-Verify program is scheduled for reauthorization in November. On July 31, the U.S. House passed what is believed to be a nonpartisan compromise between those who wish to see the program completely scrapped and those who want it to become both permanent and mandatory. The House legislation calls for a five-year extension of the program, combined with two government-generated impact reports. The legislation passed by the House has been sent to the Senate, where it is unclear when it will be discussed.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is one of 12 Republican senators who sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, encouraging him to bring reauthorization of E-Verify to the floor.

“Congress is running out of time to reauthorize and even enhance E-Verify,” Grassley said. “If this program expires, it gives employers even grater opportunity to hire illegal aliens. It’s time for the Majority Leader to act and ensure this tool is available for employers who want to do their part to comply with the law.”

My local Democratic club, and my county party, have been told to secure caucus sites for December 8th and 15th, and January 5th and 12th, along with our scheduled February 9th. The list of sites are to be submitted by June 1st, so it would seem these are the only possible 5 dates.

While Bowers thinks Michigan is bluffing, he still expects Iowa to move to January 7.Meanwhile, the Union-Leader reports that New Hampshire’s secretary of state is, so far, OK with the Florida move, thugh he isn’t setting the date yet.