Immigration Law

Immigration Agents Arrest Nearly 300 At Pilgrim's Pride Plants

By Robert Kraft

The Dallas Morning News reports today that immigration agents raided several companies across the country, and arrested quite a few people for identity theft. Especially hard-hit was a Pilgrim's Pride plant in East Texas. Here are excerpts from the story:

Federal immigration officials on Wednesday arrested more than 280 workers employed at Pilgrim's Pride poultry plants in five states, including Texas, on suspicion of committing identity theft. The crackdown is part of a widening criminal investigation involving workers at the world's largest poultry processor.

"This case is a good example of our efforts to prosecute identity theft that harms credit and the good name of U.S. citizens," said Julie Myers, assistant secretary for the U.S. Homeland Security Department, in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

"We have cooperated fully with the government," said Ray Atkinson, a Pilgrim's Pride spokesman, at corporate headquarters in Pittsburg, Texas.

Pilgrim's Pride also participates in a federal government program to voluntarily check Social Security numbers against workers' names in two government databases, Mr. Atkinson said. The program is known as E-Verify. It has been criticized as error-prone and because it can't detect workers who are using authentic Social Security numbers connected to a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident.

"Unfortunately, it does not detect ID theft situations," Mr. Atkinson said of E-Verify.

Identity fraud is a felony under federal law, and a growing problem as federal immigration efforts have intensified and workers in the U.S. illegally have looked for ways to avoid detection. Some U.S. citizens, and legal residents, rent or share their Social Security numbers, making detection even more arduous.

In Houston, Dallas and Washington, D.C., advocates for those detained denounced the law enforcement round-ups. Douglas Rivlin of the National Immigration Forum noted the U.S. arrival on Tuesday of Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI and the pontiff's message to President Bush on immigration.

"At the same moment that Pope Benedict XVI was admonishing President Bush that the U.S. must treat immigrants with dignity and humanity, the Bush administration was rounding up immigrant workers in raids in at least five states across the country," Mr. Rivlin said in a prepared statement. "What a black eye for the president and for the United States."

Pilgrim's Pride officials have been activists for a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. An attempt at such reform failed last year in Congress. It would have provided a path to citizenship for some of the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants, a guest worker program and toughened enforcement against employers.

Full post as published by Immigration Law Answers Blog on April 17, 2008 (boomark / email).