In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.
Title: Raid Logic
Author: Beth Hoffman
Date: Mar. 15, 2007
The Martinez's apartment in Logan, Utah, is tidy, with beige walls and beige couches and a prominent 19-inch color TV blasting Spanish-language telenovelas.
Children crawl across the ragged wall-to-wall carpeting; the phone rings and electronic toys beep. The scene is chaotic, the kids somewhat out of control, and Ana Martinez, a stout young woman of 23, and her sister Paula are clearly in over their heads.
With five members of their family still in detention since the raid on undocumented meatpacking workers in Hyrum last December, the two now care for five children, three of whom are under the age of 2.
Ana's mother, husband, aunt, cousin and sister were five of nearly 160 taken into custody early on Dec. 12, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a meatpacking plant in Hyrum. The raid targeted one of six Swift meatpacking plants across the country stormed by ICE in what was named Operation Wagon Train, the grand finale of a 10-month long "identity theft" investigation by the department. All told, 1,297 workers from various plants were taken into custody by ICE, the largest investigative branch of the Department of Homeland Security.
Rolando Murillo is an insurance agent in Logan and board member of the Latin American Educational and Cultural Association (ACELA), a group that has been working with many of the families of detainees. Murillo knows many of those in detention, he says, because most of them purchased insurance from him.
"Almost all of those workers carried proper car insurance on their cars. They wanted to be living within the law as much as was possible in their circumstance," Murillo said. He says that, in addition to the numerous workers arrested while working in the plant that morning, others were taken off the streets of Hyrum. One group of undocumented workers, he claims, were driven directly to Mexico that day and dropped off. They phoned their families in Utah to tell them of their whereabouts.
Ana, however, did not work at the plant and therefore was not taken into custody, although she, too, is undocumented. Her sister Paula, on the other hand, worked at the Swift-owned Miller Processing Plant and was initially detained. As a single parent of two children, Paula was later released for "humanitarian reasons," a rationale for which ICE claims it released more than 100 detainees across the country. But today, more than three months after the raid, all five of Ana's relatives are still in detention—three in Logan and two in Arizona—and their futures remain unclear.
"Threat to Community Safety"?
ICE currently has 27,500 funded beds at centers throughout the country for detention purposes. The American Bar Association estimates the cost of detention at $90/day per detainee—meaning that U.S. taxpayers are spending almost $2.5 million daily to hold undocumented immigrants and other "noncitizens who pose a threat to community safety or national security."
In 2005, ICE was given $14.2 million by Congress to explore other less-costly alternatives to detention. And, although a few other methods were employed by the department—including the release of detainees on bond and electronic monitoring systems—it appears that with the Swift raids, ICE has returned to a policy of broader use of detention. In the few cases where bail has been set by immigration judges to release those held, it is rumored that ICE has appealed, asking for bail to be set higher or not set at all.
Ana and Paula now spend all day, every day, watching the family's children and attempting to uncover new information about their detained family members. The two no longer can work full time. Both fear leaving the house, and Paula has lost her job at the plant. They are waiting to hear if their relatives will be charged with crimes such as forgery and theft, as some detained in the raids have been.
The Swift meatpacking raids were, according to ICE, conducted as part of a "massive identity-theft scheme that has victimized large numbers of U.S. citizens and lawful U.S. residents." ICE quantifies that large number as "hundreds." But the result of such theft is unclear, because those who work under false Social Security numbers are not the problem. It is people using false numbers and documents to obtain loans and credit which they then default on who create difficulties for identity-theft victims. Others, like Ana's husband who allegedly used a stolen Social Security to work at the Swift meatpacking plant, do not affect one's credit rating or tax return or retirement payments. In fact, those who use false Social Security numbers pay tax on those numbers. Ana claims her husband paid $300 in taxes every two weeks, or $7,200 a year—almost twice the equivalent cost of one student in the Utah school system.
Money, Money, Money
What happens to those "overpaid" taxes?
Bob Sullivan, who reports identity theft issues for Red Tape, MSNBC's "effort to unmask government bureaucracy, corporate sneakiness and outright scam artists," claims that the nearly 9 million people who pay taxes each year using incorrect Social Security numbers, misspelled names or incorrect birth dates create what the IRS calls a "no-match" problem. Money is collected in such cases, but instead of placing it in the account of the owner of the Social Security number, the IRS places the wage credits in what is known as an "Earnings Suspense File."
Created in 1984, it's now estimated this fund has generated more than $500 billion dollars, with over 50 percent of the fund coming from those working in the agricultural and restaurant industries.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed in 1986, mandates that employers demand some form of identification when hiring, and penalizes businesses hiring undocumented immigrants. But instead of limiting the number of undocumented workers in the country, the result, says watchdog website ConsumerAffairs.com, was a rise in multiple filings using the same number. The use of fake numbers also rose, as did the new, blooming industry of creating and distributing stolen and fraudulent Social Security numbers.
Why would people like the Martinez family break the law to come to the United States to work for $12 an hour cutting up cattle carcasses?
Why pay, as Ana Martinez did, more than $3,000 to a "coyote" to walk across the desert without food or water, to come to a place where they then live as invisible workers with no identity of their own? Why do people risk their lives, and the lives of their children, to come to a place where they can make a total of approximately $1,000 a month after taxes?
"In El Salvador," Ana says of her home country, "a person earns an average salary of $100 a month. If a person is living in El Salvador and only earning $100 a month, how are they going to better themselves and provide the necessities for their family?"
In a place like Logan, where the December unemployment rate stood at 1.8 percent the very month of the raids—with a 2 percent unemployment rate for all of Utah—there are simply not that many Loganites willing to wrap meat onto Styrofoam trays in a wet, cold plant.
A current lawsuit in Texas against Swift meatpacking filed days after the raid alleges the company knowingly used undocumented immigrant labor to drive down wages. Documented workers at the Cactus, Texas, plant allegedly made $20 an hour when the plant first opened. Lawyers at Heygood, Orr, Reyes and Bartolomei, which represents the workers, alleges workers today are offered $12 to $13 an hour for the same work.
For its part, Swift & Company denies the allegations in a blistering response. "These are opportunistic plaintiffs attempting to exploit current events," said Sean McHugh, vice president for company investor relations and public relations. "I'll also characterize the claims as groundless, as evidenced by the absence of even a single fact in the complaint for support of their allegations."
It's questionable whether ICE or the U.S. government in general is actually interested in finding and prosecuting businesses and individuals providing Social Security numbers, not just those using numbers to find work.
ICE claims December's Operation Wagon Train "uncovered criminal organizations around the country that traffic in genuine birth certificates and Social Security cards belonging to U.S. citizens."
ICE's website goes on to state that "several" arrests have been made in Minnesota, Texas, Utah and Puerto Rico, a number that seems unimpressive in light of the massive resources ICE has at its disposal. The Christian Science Monitor reported two days after the raids that a "three-pack"—a driver's license, Social Security card and a permanent-resident card—could be purchased off the streets for as little as $160 in Arizona. Likewise, the Houston Chronicle last year reported that a Social Security number could be purchased at a local flea market for as little as $30.
"It Will Hurt"
The U.S. government has made available to businesses a new Internet-based program called Basic Pilot. Easy to use and free, the program reportedly checks Social Security numbers with names and birth dates and, within 24 hours, sends back confirmation of an individual's ability to work legally. Implemented in 2003, Congress passed the Basic Pilot Program Extension and Expansion Act requiring that all states be able to use the program. However, the program is still not mandated for any U.S. businesses, and the program cannot be used retroactively to check the validity of already employed workers.
According to ICE, if convicted of using a false Social Security number, Martinez family members could face a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, an amount that could never be collected from immigrants with no savings, no jobs and, now, no possibility of entering the United States legally because of felony charges on their records. At the same estimated cost of $90 per day of detention, each conviction will cost more than $160,000 to taxpayers for the duration of a five-year imprisonment for each immigrant—never mind the cost of court trials to place otherwise law-abiding individuals in prison.
While some anti-immigration groups believe a roundup of all 8 to 12 million undocumented workers currently in the United States (estimates vary widely) is possible, those more based in reality are simply asking for immigration reform. Archie Archuleta, a community leader and critic of current immigration law, says that as long as the government ignores the need for immigration reform, arresting people en masse and separating families, will continue.
"Every country has the right to determine who enters and who does not enter the country. But when you set up laws that you do not enforce and wink your eye at all those who are undocumented that enter to work and then think that you can pick on them afterwards, it is not humane. It is not just. ... And this in a state that really cares for family unity. People have to be appalled."
Theresa Martinez, a professor of sociology at the University of Utah, adds that the immigration situation today reminds her of historical periods she teaches about in university classes—the era following the stock market crash in the 1920s, and in the 1950s, when the Braceros program ended, when Latino workers (even U.S. citizens) were deported.
"If we as American citizens are willing to hire undocumented immigrants and benefit from the cheaper costs of goods and services their labor provides, it seems only reasonable that we be responsible on our end to immigrant laborers and their children. Otherwise, we are simply creating a class of servants to do our work while we refuse to allow immigrants to better their lives."
Because of the informal and often frightening circumstances in which many undocumented workers live, working conditions and wages are typically substandard. Individuals in such conditions basically have no rights—no mandatory health care, no safety standards or compensation, and no limits on work hours.
The immigration issue is perhaps a far more emotional and pressing situation than most realize. Ana, like thousands of other immigrants living in the United States, now has children who were born here. In fact, an estimated 380,000 children a year are born to undocumented immigrants. Because she knows the poverty and lack of opportunity in her home country of El Salvador all too well, Ana is considering leaving her children behind with friends who are here legally if she and the rest of the family are deported.
"I cannot support my children as a single, undocumented mother," she says. "But leaving them here is the responsible thing to do. Yes, it will hurt, but I have no choice. I have to give them opportunities. In El Salvador, life is so ugly, and they will suffer so much."
Looking for a Fix
If Ana's sentiment is at all common, the mass deportation of undocumented workers could mean thousands of children growing up in the United States without parents, meaning a generation of orphans living with distant relatives and family friends.
Of course, the deportation of their parents—and their potential tax revenue—would also mean less funding for schools and health care without relieving the burden on the actual systems providing those services. The irony of such deportations is that the absence of tax revenue created by the departure of these undocumented workers will leave funding for public institutions that much more depleted, costing everyone far more in the process, but most of all children who may grow up without their parents' presence.
Or, as an alternative, the United States could opt for a more equitable system in which those without full, legal documentation are given certain allowances and privileges to work within the system, and to participate in the community at every level, from paying taxes on up.
Regardless of what happens, one conclusion seems certain: U.S. immigration policy needs fixing.
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