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Swift. On December 12, 2006, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency mounted its largest-ever workplace raid, targeting Swift meatpacking plants, including one in Greeley, Colorado where 1,280 workers were arrested. Since the raids, Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan, Colorado has been complaining of labor shortages.

California-based Foster Farms announced plans to open a 1,200-employee poultry processing plant in the area. The Cargill human resources manager predicted that, if Cargill cannot fill 200 job vacancies, Foster Farms would be unlikely to fill 1,200. Local work force experts disagreed, noting that chicken processing appeals more to women than beef processing, where starting wages are $12 an hour.

A Greeley Tribune editorial on April 16, 2008 concluded that a Foster Farms plant would be "a mixed blessing - good for Weld's agricultural community but doubtful for the long-term health of Greeley. The worst-case scenario would be a foul- smelling plant near the downtown area that would attract unskilled workers who would need the help of government and charitable organizations to get by, and strain an already-burdened school system. . . . The Greeley area has been working hard to grow beyond being known as just the stinky feedlot and meat-processing center of the Front Range."

The Wall Street Journal on June 6, 2008 reported that the Swift plant in Cactus, Texas, which was also raided on December 12, 2006, has turned to Burmese refugees to replace unauthorized workers. In FY07, ICE arrested about 4,000 workers at US work sites, up from 400 in FY02.

The US accepted a total of 41,300 refugees in FY06 and 48,300 in FY07. Most are resettled in cities, where relatives and NGOs help them to begin new lives. The Swift plant in Cactus, population 2,500, recruited a few Burmese refugees employed by a Tyson plant in Amarillo and paid bonuses to current employees of up to $1,500 to encourage them to bring their friends and relatives to Cactus from Houston and other cities.

The influx of Burmese helped the Swift plant to raise productivity by operating closer to capacity, but also imposed new demands on local schools and health care facilities. Swift reluctantly agreed to pay for two Burmese translators to help local agencies serving the Burmese and their families and to buy 50 acres of land for affordable housing. Swift stopped offering referral bonuses to give Cactus more time to adjust to the Burmese, and hopes that tensions will ease when the new housing is built.

AgriProcessors. ICE raided kosher meat plant AgriProcessors in Postville, Iowa on May 12, 2008 and arrested 389 of the 800 workers; 290 of those arrested were from Guatemala, and most had no US criminal record.

ICE announced that 306 of those detained faced criminal charges, ranging from aggravated identity theft to false use of Social Security numbers. Federal prosecutors threatened those who used others' identities with felony identity theft charges, which carry a two-year minimum prison sentence.

Within a week, 297 of those arrested pleaded guilty and 270 were sentenced in a few days to five months in federal prison for working with false documents. Immigration judges at the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo worked from 8am to 10pm, drawing criticism from lawyers who warned of a rush to judgment and the "criminalization" of immigration law.

AgriProcessors has been cited numerous times for food safety, environmental, labor and animal cruelty violations. However, no company executives were charged. ICE, saying it filed criminal charges against 90 supervisors around the US in FY07, said: "Developing sufficient evidence against employers requires complex, white-collar crime investigations that can take years to bear fruit." If no-match enforcement were in place, Department of Homeland Security says that it could target employers as well as migrants.

The US Department of Labor was reportedly investigating the employment of children at AgriProcessors before the May 12, 2008 raid; ICE apprehended 12 teens aged 15-17.

When ICE conducts raids, it usually detains all persons present, citing a 1984 US Supreme Court decision that found "factory surveys" to check for unauthorized workers constitutional. In that case, workers were free to continue working or to leave the work place while agents sought unauthorized workers.

This raises the question of whether ICE can detain all workers in a workplace that has some unauthorized workers? In April 2008, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law sued ICE for unlawfully detaining US citizens and legal immigrants while searching for unauthorized workers at Micro Solutions Enterprises, claiming "false imprisonment" and "detention without justification" and seeking $5,000 in damages for each of the 100 legal workers detained while ICE questioned workers at the recycler of used toner and ink cartridges in Van Nuys, California.

HRCL Director Peter Schey says it is unconstitutional to detain a mixed group of legal and unauthorized workers in order to find the unauthorized. ICE responds that it has the authority to question "all the people inside" a workplace, including US citizens, and that it tries to work "quickly and efficiently" to avoid detaining legal workers too long.

ICE says that its three principal targets for enforcement are unauthorized workers using the identities of legal immigrants and US citizens, work sites such as airports that are vulnerable to terrorism, and "egregious employers" who knowingly hire illegal workers.

Smithfield. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union has been trying to organize workers at Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, the world's largest, with 4,650 hourly employees. On October 17, 2007, Smithfield sued the UFCW and other supporters of the unionization effort under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, alleging that they conspired in an "unlawful scheme to extort an agreement from Smithfield" beginning in 2006.

A federal judge in June 2007 dismissed an effort by the UFCW to have the RICO charges dismissed, agreeing instead with Smithfield that the effort to inflict "financial and reputational losses" was properly subject to a RICO trial.

Emily Bazar, "Citizens sue after being detained in workplace," USA Today, June 25, 2008. Miriam Jordan, "Factories Turn to Refugee Workers," Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2008. David Pitt, "Immigration raid spurs calls for action vs. owners," AP, June 2, 2008. Julia Preston, "270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push," New York Times, May 24, 2008. Rob Reuteman, "Hiring woes at Cargill tied to tougher laws," Rocky Mountain News (Denver), May 10, 2008.