Blackshirts and a constitutional crisis

Is the federal government going to war against employers? Or is just one employer to blame?

(MEATPOULTRY.com, August 01, 2008)

by Steve Bjerklie

Jim Benzoni thinks that what happened at the Agriprocessors kosher beef plant in Postville, Iowa, this past spring isn’t just a sign of the depth of the immigration and labor issues facing the meat industry, although it is surely that, too. He thinks that when 900 agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) of the Department of Homeland Security, dressed in black from their steel-toed boots to their bullet-proof vests, descended on the Agriprocessors plant to round up hundreds of suspected illegal aliens, what actually happened was nothing short of a constitutional crisis -- and he thinks the meat industry needs to do something about that very, very soon.

"Everyone knew that plant had issues for years," he told MEAT&POULTRY from his law office in Des Moines, Iowa, where he and his partners are representing many of the 386 workers rounded up by ICE during the May 12 raid, which was the largest such single-site raid in U.S. history. "Agriprocessors was in a class by itself when it came to abusing the system and exploiting people who are here only for the chance to build a better life, like anyone would be. The Department of Labor had been quietly building a case against Agriprocessors for years. What ICE did was go in and stomp all over that investigation. They trashed it. And this is all about politics, all about appealing to the nativist, racist Rush Limbaugh crowd."

Benzoni said he understands and respects the predicament many large U.S. meat and poultry companies find themselves in when it comes to labor -- he has worked with IBP and Tyson in the past, in fact. "I give Tyson and IBP a lot of credit for looking out for their workers, for trying to stay away from shady labor operators," he commented. "It’s pure economics. The employers need workers. The workers need jobs, and the home countries need the money the workers send back home. The system can work for everyone -- but not when ICE and its blackshirts with M-16s come down like the Gestapo and start throwing people into buses."

He said more than 300 cases were decided in court in less than five days. "It was railroading. They just hammered these cases through, and the sentence was exactly the same for every single person -- five months in jail and then a warning to get out of here. They decided to mass produce criminal justice. Well, that’s not justice. In fact, it’s the opposite of what American law is supposed to be all about."

In the course of a 30 minute interview, Benzoni worked up a righteous anger. With ICE gone rogue, he said, "so many employers need to be truly alarmed. But the meat industry is at the forefront." His advice? "There needs to be a concerted push by the employers in this industry to raise the alarm on the constitutional issues involved here, and to do so on humanitarian grounds. Otherwise it just sounds like greedy employers talking who want workers for cheap. That’s not what this is about at all. This is about a government agency that’s out of control and trampling on the rights of people and companies. The industry needs to push this in Congress. It’s gone beyond some employers breaking the law by inadvertently hiring improperly documented people. We’ve got the federal government ignoring the U.S. Constitution."

Meanwhile, the aftermath of the Postville raid has brought to light some ugly information. There’s strong evidence that Agriprocessors violated child labor laws and anecdotal evidence that OSHA regulations were all but ignored by the plant’s management. Reports are surfacing that a human-resources manager at the company was selling false immigration documents, loaning the money in a kind of indentured servitude arrangement, to employees who couldn’t afford the asking price.

Benzoni said he doesn’t believe the owners’ argument that executives were duped by employees carrying fake papers. He’s angriest, though, at ICE and the Dept. of Homeland Security, which he calls "the worst-run department in the government. Everything is dictated from the top, and everything is enforcement-oriented. To treat these people who were working at Agriprocessors in good faith as part of the terrorist problem totally misses the point."

Unfortunately, he concludes, the point will be missed again -- unless the meat industry’s leadership stirs into action and soon.

For more information, visit: benzoni.lawoffice.com/

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