Rubashkin, who is current facing a myriad of federal bank fraud and immigration-related charges, was initially allowed to post bail following his arrest in late October for conspiring in immigration-related offenses. As a condition of bail, Rubashkin and his wife surrendered their passports and he was required to wear an ankle tracking device.

Roughly two weeks later on Nov. 14, Rubashkin was arrested again, this time on multi-million dollar bank fraud charges. Despite offering the court $3.75 million for bail at a Nov. 20 detention hearing, the former chief executive was ordered to remain in federal custody by Scoles. Just this week the judge refused a request by Rubashkin’s attorneys to reconsider the decision to keep Rubashkin behind bars.

While Scoles took several factors into consideration when making his decision to keep Rubashkin in custody, his thoughts concerning Israel’s “Law of Return,” which provides citizenship to any Jew and members of his family who express desire to settle in the country, has drawn the most attention.

Today the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that seeks to stop the defamation of Jewish people, wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey in relation to the Rubashkin case and cautioning that the “Law of Return” should not be used as leverage to deny bail to Jewish defendants.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, signed the letter that was sent to Mukasey, an Orthodox Jew. Foxman noted that the court did not stipulate that Rubashkin had direct ties to Isreal as a basis for its consideration of the “Law of Return.”

“The government and the Detention Order appear to conclude that simply because [Rubashkin] is Jewish, and because Jews may have a claim on Israeli citizenship, his religion is relevant to a bail hearing,” wrote Foxman.

In his refusal to reconsider Scoles chided Rubashkin’s attorneys for fixating on his consideration of Israel’s “Law of Return” and not offering new information as to Rubashkin being a flight risk. The mere fact that Scoles did consider the Israeli law when making his detention order, however, has been enough to spark heated comments from the Jewish community.

The lawyers have indicated that they plant to appeal Scole’s latest decision to U.S. District Court Judge Linda Reade.

Foxman and the ADL is not asking for specifics in the Rubashkin case, but is hoping Mukasey will set policy that will prevent use of the “Law of Return” in detention hearings for Jews. Such direction from the U.S. Attorney General might place pressure on Reade to view Scoles decision to hold Rubashkin in custody pending a September 2009 trial date as discriminatory.

Prosecutors in the case have stood by their decision to include the Israeli law as one of their considerations for the court when determining Rubashkin’s risk of flight. They have claimed Rubashkin tampered with case evidence while out on bail at the time of his second arrest. The court was also told of large amounts of cash discovered in the Rubashkin home at the time of the arrest. The existance of two other former Agriprocessors supervisors, one Muslim and the other Jewish, who are named in federal complaints but have not been apprehended because they are believed to have fled to Israel have also been brought up by prosecutors.

Agriprocessors, once the nation’s largest supplier of kosher meat, was the site of a massive immigration raid on May 12. The company has struggled to be solvent since that time and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, in the wake of a $35 million lawsuit by one of its creditors. Rubashkin and several other members of plant management are facing charges ranging federal aiding and abetting illegal immigration to state child labor law violations.

It’s a story that’s been difficult to ignore and one that has drawn a worldwide audience. It seems odd, then, that a man who has charged himself with writing a theatrical production based on the events in Postville would have spent the last seven months, as he put it, “with his head in the sand.”

“I see this as being a microcosm of other things that are going on in the country and the world,” said Don Fried, an accomplished Colorado-based playwright and author.

Fried first heard of Postville several years ago, courtesy of a BBC interview with Stephen Bloom, a University of Iowa journalism professor and author of “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America,” published in 2000. Fried, who had worked internationally for roughly 30 years as an information technology expert, was in Zurich when he heard the interview and immediately wrote the basics down in his idea file.

After hearing Bloom talk about the book and the community of Postville, Fried said he knew the story offered several avenues for dramatic possibilities because of the cultural conflicts brewing in the community between the Hasidic Jews who founded a kosher meatpacking plant there, the immigrant workers who came to work at the plant and the native Iowa residents.

When he retired in September 2006 and embarked on a new career in the arts, he went back to school at the University of Colorado and began re-visiting the ideas he had filed away.

Although Fried began discussions with Bloom for the theatrical rights to the Postville book some time prior to the immigration raid, the two were in final negotiations when the event occurred. Fried was left with a monumental decision: Should he somehow incorporate the most recent events in Postville into the play he was writing, or should he ignore them entirely?

Don Fried

“As I was preparing for the first reading, I decided I couldn’t bury my head in the sand any longer and that I’d have to come to a decision,” he said. “How could I include what was going on and have it strengthen my theme instead of changing everything I’ve already done?

“I had consciously chosen to ignore the raid and its aftermath — fines, arrests, the meatpacking company going into receivership, and general uproar. But in the seven months since the raid, there has been ongoing news coverage, and I was becoming increasingly concerned that my play was being hijacked. People would expect to see the raid and its implications addressed.”

Fried, who has just finished the first half of the work and has given a first reading, said the overriding theme of his play is that change is an inextricable facet of life.

“What I wanted the play to be about is change,” he said. “Change is inevitable. Change hurts. People, often when they are in pain, react in ways that often turn out to be not the right way, but often there is nobody at fault. If you can learn to live [with change], you’ll learn to reach a new position where things are different, but you’ll get over it.”

Fried is currently toying with the idea of having one of the play’s discontented locals, a character who has not been happy about Jewish people coming to town and building a kosher meatpacking plant there, tip off the federal authorities and spark the immigration raid.

“But then, as the town starts to crater, that person and all the others begin to wonder what has been done — they’ve killed the goose that laid the golden egg,” he said. “My son, who is also playwright, said that this should be the third act. The Hasidim, who have been very isolationist all along, are now presented with a catalyst that shows them they have to deal more with the world.”

One thing Fried does not want the play to be is a tragedy. To keep the play from going that route, he thinks the Hasidim and the residents of Postville will reach some sort of an agreement where they are “not kissing each other on the lips” but have moved to a new position that is livable.

Regardless of how the play ultimately ends, Fried is hopeful a theater company in Iowa or a neighboring state will be interested in producing it.

“Of course, I’ll shop the play anywhere where there is a company that wants to put it on,” he said. “But I was thinking there might be interest in and around that area. It would be a good fit, as long as I could get people to understand that this is a fictional account. It’s no more about what actually happened than ‘The Cruicible’ is about what actually happened in the Salem witch trials.”

Don Fried, a resident of Niwot, Colorado, is co-author of “Ups & Downs: The (Mis)Adventures of a Crusty Old Fart and His Bouncy Son As They Trek Through the Alps.” In the first 24 months of his writing career, he has had four of his plays in production. Two more are scheduled for 2009. His play, “Shakespeare Incorporated,” was selected as one of three finalists in the 2009 Rocky Mountain Theatre Association Festival Playwriting Competition and was also selected as one of the winners of Paragon Theater’s Trench New Play Development Competition.

Todd Lundvall of The Vinton Eagle interviewed local Police Chief Jeff Tilson, who had a lot to say about the role his department has taken in what he describes as an aggressive fight against illegal immigration.

“The laws on the books work just fine,” Tilson told Lundvall. “We just have to enforce them. I always tell people that I cannot create an environment where crime can’t exist, but I can try to create one where crime won’t exist. We have taken a pretty aggressive stand on illegal immigration.”

Although Tilson declined to discuss the specifics of the ongoing Peony Restaurant case, he did say that the investigation that led to that raid, as well as every other federal immigration action in Vinton, was initiated by the local department. Because illegal entry into the U.S. is a crime and because such immigrants can bring “a whole bunch of other problems to the community” Tilson believes he and his department have an obligation to put a stop to such practices.

“Look at what happened to Postville; how widespread it became because nobody paid attention to it,” he said. “If workers are illegal, I want to catch them right at the offset.”

Jose Trujillo-Perez admitted in federal court in Sioux City that he transported five illegal aliens from Arizona to Iowa earlier this month. Trujillo-Perez was driving a van in Woodbury County on Nov. 5 when he was stopped by an Iowa State Patrol officer, who discovered the undocumented immigrants inside.

The man, who remains in custody pending sentencing, faces a possible maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Prior to this arrest, Trujillo-Perez has been arrested 12 times. Two of those arrest resulted in his deportation. He voluntarily left the country after the 10 other arrests.

The report, titled “The Annual Condition of Education Report for 2008,” shows that in the 2007-2008 school year there were more than 20,000 students for whom English was their second language. Three of every four English language learners identified their primary language as Spanish.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 120,000 people who classified themselves as Hispanic lived in Iowa last year, a 44 percent increase from 2000.

An analysis of the numbers by The Des Moines Register shows that the increasing number of immigrant families in Iowa is expected to reverse the declining enrollment numbers of Iowa public schools. The number of students has been falling for more than a decade, but in two years enrollment will jump to more than 479,000 students.

State education officials say the enrollment trend is spurred by climbing birth rates, particularly among Hispanic families.

“It is remarkable in this day and age,” said Judy Jeffrey, the state’s top education official.

Enrollment has eroded since its peak in the early 1970s. The 2007-08 school year marked 10 years in a row of declines, Iowa Department of Education figures show.

A turnaround could bolster the budgets of some school districts, but it also could tax teachers, who will face more students who do not speak English.

The overall percentage of minority students in Iowa is 14.4 percent, up from 3.6 percent in 2006-2007 and 7.7 percent in 1998.

“After having carefully considered all of the evidence and arguments of counsel, however, the court concludes that [Rubashkin] is a serious risk of flight,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Jon Scoles wrote in the detention order this afternoon. “The government has met its burden by a preponderance of the evidence that there is no condition or combination of conditions which will reasonably assure [Rubashkin's] appearance at the time of trial.”

Rubashkin, who was originally arrested on Oct. 30 on immigration-related federal charges, was released with an ankle tracking device on a $1 million bond. The former executive has been detained in the custody of the U.S. Marshal’s Office since his arrest last Friday on bank fraud.

Scoles, in making the decision to keep Rubashkin detained until trial, discussed the “substantial” evidence against Rubashkin as well as discoveries in the Rubashkin home of $20,000 in cash, several silver coins and passports. Scoles also said that Rubashkin’s ties to the community of Postville would become more murky as the Agriprocessors plant continues negotiations with potential purchasers.

Scoles also took into consideration Isreal’s “Law of Return,” which provides citizenship to any Jew and members of his family who express desire to settle in the country.

“At the time of hearing, the government proffered that two supervisors at Agriprocessors fled following the search on May 12, 2008,” wrote Scoles. “It is believed that Hosam Amara, a Muslim with Israeli citizenship, fled to Israel, possibly through Canada.”

Rubashkin presented the court with roughly 275 letters of support from “the Postville area and throughout the nation.” A total of 30 people in Postville indicated they would be willing to pledge their homes’ equity, a total of roughly $2 million, to be used to secure an appearance bond for Rubashkin. Two relatives also told the court they would be willing to offer their homes’ equity, totaling roughly $1.5 million, also to secure a bond. Finally, Rubashkin offered the court an additional $225,000 cash deposit.

The detention order does not specify what will happen in relation to the earlier bond posted by Rubashkin. A trial on the immigration-related charges is scheduled to begin Jan. 20. No trial date has yet been set for the charges of bank fraud.

Sholom’s older brother, Moshe Rubashkin, was sentenced in 2002 to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $225,000 in restitution for bank fraud. The case was linked to his ownership and operation of Montex Textiles, a Pennsylvania company. Moshe was also recently sentenced to 16 months for the company’s illegal storage of hazardous waste.

Last year, Agriprocessors executives agreed to pay $1.4 million to resolve allegations that the company participated in a scheme to hide another company’s assets during a bankruptcy.

Allou Distributors, a health and beauty distribution company owned by Herman Jacobowitz of New York, filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The filing came in the wake of a fire that destroyed Allou’s Brooklyn warehouse, a blaze eerily similar to the unexplained fire that gutted the Montex textile plant.

A trustee in the bankruptcy proceedings accused the Jacobowitz family of paying a total of $3.2 million to Agriprocessors and other Rubashkin entities for the sole purpose of hiding it from creditors. The trustee charged that that no services or products exchanged hands in the transaction.

When deposed in the case, Sholom Rubashkin said that his Postville real estate company, Nevel Properties, had given Allou nothing in return for the payments. Upon further questioning Rubashkin said that he hadn’t fully understood the question and promised to “get back to you on that.”

The attorney representing Rubashkin in the case was Bernard Feldman, the man who was named in September as the new chief executive officer of Agriprocessors.

Rubashkin later testified that Allou had sent payments to Agriprocessors in exchange for “surplus meat.”  He said that because the executive in charge of the account had “died at his desk” in 2003, the company could not provide details of the exchanges. Why Allou, a distributor of health and beauty products, would need millions of dollars of meat was not explained.

While never charged with wrongdoing, the Rubashkin family nonetheless agreed to settle the allegations by paying $1.4 million for disbursement by the trustee.

Jacobowitz was sentenced to 15 years in prison, ordered to pay restitution of $177 million and forfeit an additional $130 million. His siblings, Jacob and Aaron Jacobowitz, were each sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In 1995, Moshe and his father, Aaron, were found guilty of collecting union dues from their employees at the Cherry Hill Textile firm without sending the collected monies on to the United Production Workers Union. The National Labor Relations Board ordered the Rubashkins repay the money with interest.

Midwest Enterprise Group, a 527 with Democratic Party leanings, sent this flyer to residents in Iowa Senate District 8.

If immigration issues were a political football in this year’s state legislative races, then Senate District 8, an area that encompasses Howard, Chickasaw, Allamakee and Winneshiek counties in northeastern Iowa and includes the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, was the 50-yard line. It was in that race that Iowa Senate Minority Whip Mark Zieman lost his re-election bid to Mary Jo Wilhelm, a relatively unknown Democratic upstart. The defeat came amid whispers and campaign mailers about the immigration concerns surrounding Agriprocessors in Postville, Zieman’s hometown.

Zieman, owner of a trucking company that does business with Agriprocessors and one of the few sitting Iowa politicians who had taken campaign donations from executives at the plant, had to realize the political ramifications on the day of the raid. Perhaps he believed his standing as something of a political legacy — his father also represented the area in the Iowa Senate — or as a hometown prodigy would insulate him from direct attacks related to the issue of immigration.

The negative fliers use Zieman's comments to the Des Moines Register to paint the politicians as being soft on executives of corporations who hire undocumented workers.

If so, he could not have been more wrong.

Midwest Enterprise Group, a 527 advocacy group with Democratic ties, targeted Zieman with a mailer that highlighted Zieman’s own words in the Des Moines Register about the situation at the Postville Agriprocessors plant. As Iowa Workforce Development and the U.S. Department of Labor investigated allegations of child labor law violations and immigration documenation fraud at the plant, Zieman said he’d like the government agencies to point out plant deficiencies to Agriprocessors’ managers, to make sure such problems are corrected and “then leave them alone.”

“Is there some way to make this thing work? If there’s no way, so be it,” Zieman said. “But we owe it to the employees. If that plant isn’t there, all of a sudden getting a job around here gets quite a bit more difficult.”

Campaign Contributions

In 2000 and 2002 Zieman accepted a $1,000 campaign contribution from former Agriprocessors executive Sholom M. Rubashkin. Rubashkin, a son of company founder A. Aaron Rubashkin, has been arrested by federal authorities and released on bail while awaiting trail on charges that he conspired to harbor undocumented immigrants for profit, aided and abetted document fraud, and aided and abetted aggravated identity theft.

Although the Rubashkin family and Agriprocessors have given numerous campaign contributions to Iowa politicians, Zieman is the only current member of the Iowa legislature that had accepted such money. Former Iowa House Republicans Chuck Gipp and Leigh Rokow accepted $2,250 and $2,100 in campaign donations, respectively. The Republican Party of Iowa has also been a benefactor of the Rubashkin family, garnering $7,550 between 2000 and 2004.

Many other Republicans in Iowa, most of them candidates or sitting members of the U.S. Congress, accepted campaign contributions from either plant executives or the Rubashkin family:

• Bill Dix, U.S. House candidate — $1,500
• Chuck Grassley, U.S. Senate — $14,000
• Tom Latham, U.S. House — $2,000
• Stan Thompson, U.S. House candidate — $8,500
• Doug Gross, Iowa governor — $10,000
• Jim Nussle, U.S. House and Iowa governor — $32,500

In addition, a contribution of $5,000 was given in 2005 to a 527 group called Progress for Iowa. The group sought to influence local legislative elections for the purpose of electing more Republicans.

In early October Portfolio magazine published a profile of Agriprocessors that contained a photograph of family patriarch Aaron Rubashkin at his Brooklyn, N.Y., butcher shop. On the wall behind the desk there, according to the article, there is a photo of Aaron Rubashkin with Sen. Chuck Grassley. Grassley’s office is not aware of when or where this photograph was taken.

On the Democratic side, the Rubashkin family and the plant have donated a total of $18,000 between 2005 and 2007. Upon launching her unsuccessful bid for governor, Patty Judge was given $10,000 by Sholom Rubashkin and his wife, Leah. When her campaign merged with that of Chet Culver, the joint venture received $3,000 from Sholom. Culver has since taken $3,000 from his campaign fund and donated it to charity.

A corporate donation of $5,000 was also given to the Democratic Governors Association in February 2007.

U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, who was the only other politician with ties to Agriprocessors or the Rubashkin family that appeared on the November ballot, had little difficulty being re-elected to his seat. Agriprocessors sits in the far northeastern corner of Latham’s district — Iowa’s second largest with 28 counties.

If there is more political hay to be harvested in connection with Agriprocessors, it is likely to come during the next election cycle when Culver and Judge will again face the voters. There is little doubt that it will be a hotly contested race as Republicans seek to take control of Terrace Hill. The amount of impact Agriprocessors will have on the contest will most likely depend on the amount of headlines the immigration raid aftermath continues to make at that time.

Barring any new developments coming to light, Grassley, who hasn’t faced a significant opponent since John Culver in 1980, might suffer at worst the political equivalent of a mosquito bite — a nuisance, but far from a fatal blow.

Jewish rabbis, who provide the required religious-based cut and inspections that are a part of the kosher slaughter process, were not paid Friday, and it was not the first time time that the kosher slaughterers (shochtim) and rabbis at Agriprocessors have gone without compensation. Other employees did receive paychecks, although some voiced concern that the checks may not clear. The rabbis were asked for patience and promised payments as soon as possible.

According to a source who attended the meeting, the plant plans to concentrate on poultry production — particularly on chicken — in the near future. The plant’s beef line has operated only sporadically over the past two weeks.

The decision to focus on poultry is intended to provide liquidity to the failing meatpacker, and it is seen as a necessary step in the wake of employee losses that have left the plant with less than a third of its full-capacity workforce.

Friday’s meeting came in the wake of a motion filed in the Agriprocessors bankruptcy case by the meatpacker’s largest creditor, First Bank Business Capital of St. Louis, Mo., claiming that the company should have filed for bankruptcy in Iowa court rather than in New York, where the current case is pending. Attorneys for First Bank contend that Agriprocessors filed as an Iowa business with the Iowa Secretary of State, and they filed as an out-of-state business with the New York Secretary of State.

The court in New York is expected to hold hearings on the motion Monday morning.

Documents filed with the court show three companies with a significant secured interest in Agriprocessors. First Bank is the largest with $35 million. Chicago-based MetLife Agricultural Investments is owed $9.6 million and Minneapolis-based Farm Credit Leasing is owed $6 million.

In addition, Jacobson Staffing Company of Des Moines leads the list of 20 creditors with the largest in unsecured claims with just over $845,3000 in unpaid bills. Weyerhauser of Chicago is a close second with just over $806,900 in unsecured claims. Other notables on the list are Alliant Energy ($318,255); Nyemaster, Goode, West, Hansell & O’Brien law firm ($208,636); U.S.D.A. Food Safety and Inspection ($88,179); and Chicago attorney Thomas V. McQueen ($60,612). McQueen served as counsel for former Agriprocessors supervisor Martin De La Rosa-Loera in a federal immigration-related case.

The list of 20 creditors totals just under $5.6 million. Agriprocessors has estimated that it owes between $50 and $100 million.

A 46-page creditor listing that was filed by attorneys for Agriprocessors in conjunction with the bankruptcy contains creditors from 30 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, the document lists creditors from the nations of Canada and Isreal. Creditors range from the Brick City Inn in Clermont to the Diners Club in The Lakes, Nev. Within the bulk creditor listing, which does not provide dollar amount owed to the creditors, both company founder Abraham Aaron Rubashkin and former executive officer Sholom M. Rubashkin are listed.

GAL Investments, a Postville property management company owned by Gabay Menachem, is one of the companies on the bulk list facing financial demise due to dependency on the Agriprocessors. Although the company has no direct management ties to Agriprocessors, its business was providing housing to rental customers in Postville. Since Agriprocessors was the largest employer in the area — definitely the largest by far for Postville — Menachem’s business depended on employees from the meatpacking plant needing lodging.

Last week, Menachem noted that up to 90 percent of his tenants had not paid their rents. His company, like the others in Postville that had organized to serve or had adapted to serve needs related to the meatpacking plant, has undergone difficult financial times since the May 12 immigration raid at the plant. The latest round of hardship, which includes Jacobson Staffing ending assignments with nearly half the Agriprocessors workforce, however, may be the final blow.

The rural electric cooperative that serves Postville turned off power to many of Menachem’s units this past week for non-payment. On Friday, many of the units without power had bright orange tags from the City of Postville warning that within a minimum of 24 hours water would be cut off if bills were not paid. Given that the electricity to the units also provided heat, the Postville Water Department was likely doing Menachem a favor by reducing the chance for broken water pipes.

“I couldn’t give you an exact figure as to the number of rental properties in town that are vacant,” Jeff Abbas of KPVL Radio said Friday. “I think I can safely say that two-thirds are empty.”

Abbas and other community leaders have been working to ensure that those left in town have basic necessities. Pauluans were thankful for warm winter coats. Some from the tropical island were hoping for monetary help so they could return to their homeland. Other individuals of varying nationalities sought refuge in a building with heat for a night, but many brave the elements as they try to figure out what comes next.

For his part, Menachem has tried to keep the wolves at bay. He argued with the electrical company, explaining that some of the units in jeopardy contained children. When the electrical company could no longer continue to offer their services without payment, Menachem moved families to other units which still had heat and power. Since many, if not all, of the properties have past due utility bills, however, it remains unclear how long such temporary shelters will last.

This week, former Agriprocessors executive officer Sholom M. Rubashkin, son of company founder A. Aaron Rubashkin, was arrested by federal authorities and will begin his own legal proceedings amid identity theft and immigration-related allegations. Within hours of Rubashkin’s arrest a financial institution cried foul on company management, claiming a $35 million loan was in default. Then more than 400 workers, brought into Postville by a staffing agency, learned that they were no longer working at the plant.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver looked beyond the immediate and past news headlines to the lesson he hopes all state employers have learned from Postville.

“As Governor, I’ve worked hard to attract, retain and grow businesses, both large and small, across the state, including the creation of thousands of new ‘green jobs’ in Iowa,” Culver told the Iowa Independent. “At the same time, I expect every Iowa business to follow the law when it comes to the hiring and treatment of their employees.

“I have been concerned about the practices of Agriprocessors, not only as a result of federal raids earlier this year but because of state sanctions the company has faced on issues ranging from the health and safety of workers to their impact on water quality. No company is above the law. But if any thinks that they are, they will be held accountable.”

James Carstensen, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA), said the action taken by federal authorities reinforces Latham’s “strong belief that no person is above the laws of our country.”

“If someone is found to have violated the law,” said Carstensen, “they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) also expressed his appreciation that there would be consequences for members of Agriprocessors management if they are found guilty of usurping the law.

“I’m glad to see that investigations into Agriprocessors are continuing and that federal charges were filed today,” Braley said. “We must enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees, and today’s charges are a significant step towards holding key management employees at Agriprocessors accountable. There should be consequences for those who broke the law, and I hope today’s charges will bring us one step closer to justice.”

Plant Future Even More Tenuous

Although it has hardly been a secret that Agriprocessors has had difficulty meeting financial obligations since the immigration raid, the plant’s immediate financial situation has further degraded since Rubashkin’s arrest in Postville Thursday morning.

On Friday U.S. District Judge Linda Reade provided a St. Louis liquidation firm a certain amount of interest in Agriprocessors’ Postville plant and a smaller, but similar kosher meatpacking operation in Gordon, Neb. Reade deemed the move necessary due to dire circumstances regarding the operation’s existing stock and livestock and a pending lawsuit by First Bank Business Capital, a bank that had loaned the company at least $35 million. In court documents filed Thursday, the bank contends that Agriprocessors is in default on the loan and that it should be allowed to sell any existing collateral.

The ruling by Reade allows Atec Liquidations to maintain conditions — such as keeping electrical power in the plant — so that any existing meat stores can be preserved and so that a possible million chickens and chicks can be fed.

It is unclear how the pending lawsuit by the bank will immediately affect the plant, although more will be known after a hearing scheduled for Wednesday. It is also unclear how the court will handle this suit in relation to the earlier suit filed by a Kansas City-based design firm for non-payment of invoices shortly after after the raid.

What is very clear is that the Postville plant, which has never been able to re-establish a stable workforce since the raid, is now in an even deeper hole. Jacobson Staffing, an employment agency that has effectively been serving as a human resources department for Agriprocessors since the raid, pulled all of its workers from the plant. Roughly 450 employees were formally notified this week that they should no longer report to work at Agriprocessors. An official with Jacobson would only cite a “communication breakdown” as a reason for the decision.

Just as First Bank Business Capital is not the first to bring a lawsuit for non-payment against Agriprocessors and its management, Jacobson is not the first staffing company to pull workers from the Postville facility. Waterloo-based Labor Ready pulled temporary workers from the plant in early summer after its employees had worked roughly 10 days. Labor Ready cited safety concerns.

Agriprocessors had also been using the staffing agency One Force to identify potential workers. It is unknown if One Force has kept a relationship with the plant, but on Saturday morning the company maintained online employment advertisements for the Postville facility.

The plant’s beef line ceased production either Sunday or Monday of this week, although poultry kills continued on some level. On Wednesday, sources in Postville reported seeing trucks load roughly 250 cattle that had been held in an outdoor pen and drive away from the plant. In the week prior, inspectors from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources discovered a cow skull, hide and two dismembered legs in the plant’s wastewater lagoon.  Management was not cited for a violation because, according to an Iowa DNR spokesman, “it was not standard operating procedure but did not pose a significant environmental risk.”

Since the May 12 immigration raid Agriprocessors has:

• been fined $47,750 by the Iowa Division of Labor Services for numerous health and safety violations.
• had two middle-management supervisors arrested by federal authorities (both later pleaded guilty) for encouraging illegal immigration.
• hired a high-profile, New York-based public relations firm that was caught impersonating members of the Jewish community.
• been the subject of an informal hearing by members of the U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
• said tentative relationship with Jewish labor force is “off limits.”
• been cited by the Iowa Division of Labor Services for 31 new and repeat safety violations.
• come under additional scrutiny for treatment of livestock.
• been charged by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office with more than 9,000 violations of state child labor laws.
• had two human resources employees arrested by federal authorities on immigration-related criminal charges. (One has pleaded guilty while the other awaits trial.)
• has been assessed nearly $10 million in civil penalties by the state of Iowa for wage law violations.