GREELEY, Colo. -- Weld County Social Services was gearing up Wednesday for an expected influx of cases after hundreds of workers at the Swift & Co. Packing plant were arrested in a nationwide ID theft crackdown.
Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents raided six Swift & Co. Plants Tuesday, looking for illegal immigrants working at the plants.
At least 800 workers at the Greeley plant are identified as illegal immigrants; 300 of them will be deported within the week, said Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck.
Swift had been tipped to the raid earlier, but it caught Weld County Social Services by surprise. The agency is responsible for the welfare of families and children in the county and it expected many families would be affected by the loss of income.
"Our wish would have been they would have let us know beforehand," said Judy Griego, director of Weld County Social Services, speaking to the Greeley Tribune. "We have kind of collapsed around this situation internally. Frankly, we don't know how many kids are involved in this now. It's kind of guesswork."
The top priority, Griego told the newspaper, is to find relatives or friends of detained parents. They would be first-choice caretakers, while the county would provide "wraparound services" such as emergency food or financial support.
All foster-care facilities in Weld and Larimer counties were put on alert by Weld County commissioners.
Weld County merchants expected to feel the economic blow from the raid as well.
"Quite honestly, you're looking at two weeks before Christmas, and there is buying power leaving the economy," said Sarah macquiddy, president of the Greeley Chamber of Commerce. "I'm sure that Swift will be able to survive this. But if they don't, it's really sad. The issue being made out of the illegal aliens is minuscule compared to the impact that Swift has on our economy."
Buck said that the raid adversely affects many families, who were working to put their children through school in Colorado, but there are other victims involved.
"It is a difficult day in Greeley. But it's also been a difficult day around the country as people's identities have been stolen and they've had to go and clean up their credit. And they've suffered great harm also," Buck said.
He said while some of the cases will take months to progress, others may be quickly processed.
Not all of those suspected to be illegal immigrants will be deported because federal authorities just don't have resources to go after them all at one time, Buck said.
Buck also speculated that the raid was delayed one day after ICE officials learned that Japanese officials were touring the plant on Monday, investigating beef recently shipped to Japan from the plant that did not have the proper documentation.
Federal officials would not confirm the report but emphasized the raid was the result of complaints of identity theft throughout the United States.
"The strong point here is that a lot of U.S. citizens and U.S. residents have been victimized ... By a large-scale identify theft scheme," said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE public affairs officer.
Gonzalez said that other plants in the raid included beef plants in Grand Island, Neb., Cactus, Texas and Hyrum, Utah, and pork plants in Marshalltown, Iowa and Worthington, Minn. Operations at all six plants have been temporarily suspended.
ICE said the workers were arrested on administrative immigration violations and in some cases, existing criminal arrest warrants stemming from a 10-month investigation dubbed Operation Wagon Train.
ICE Chief Julie L. Myers told reporters in Washington that agents had uncovered a scheme in which illegal immigrants and others had stolen or bought the identities and Social Security numbers of hundreds of U.S. citizens and lawful residents to get jobs with Greeley-based meat processor Swift & Co.
"Swift has never condoned the employment of unauthorized workers, nor have we ever knowingly hired such individuals," Swift & Co. President and CEO Sam Rovit said in a written statement.
ICE officials planned a Wednesday morning news conference in Washington to further explain their investigation.
Swift had known about the investigation into its workers for months.
Rovit said the company learned of the federal investigation last March, but had been "rebuffed repeatedly" when it offered to cooperate. Rovit said the company had participated since 1997 in a federal program known as Basic Pilot, which allows employers to use a federal database to verify documents presented by job-seekers.
While the federal program confirms a Social Security number is valid, it does not detect identity theft.
Buck said he's known about the raid since last Thursday.
"Immigration authorities came to me and asked me if I would help them receive arrest warrants for 25 individuals at the Swift plant here in Greeley, and they would execute those warrants. So we went to the courts late (Monday) and received those warrants for identity theft," Buck said.
Buck said it would be an "injustice" if Swift management employees were not prosecuted for any possible involvement in the case. He said he didn't know whether any Swift employees were accused of helping the suspected illegal immigrants get stolen identities.
"But if they helped, they should be held accountable," Buck said.
He said he suspects Swift may face charges about its hiring practices.
Background On Swift
The plants in the raid represent all of Swift's domestic beef processing capacity and 77 percent of its pork processing capacity.
"Today's action at Swift will have a strong ripple effect on the rest of the livestock industry. Weld County is the most profitable agricultural county in Colorado, with over $1 billion in agricultural sales. Today's move by ICE will greatly impact the economy there," said Sen. Ken Salazar.
Since 1997, Swift has been using a government pilot program that confirms whether Social Security numbers are valid. Company officials have previously said one shortcoming may be the program's ability to detect when two people are trying to use the same number.
No charges had been filed against the company.
"Swift believes that today's actions by the government violate the agreements associated with the company's participation over the past 10 years in the federal government's basic pilot worker authorization program and raise serious questions as to the government's possible violation of individual workers' civil rights," the company said in a statement.
Swift & Co. Describes itself as an $8 billion business and the world's second-largest meat processing company. In Hyrum, Utah, where city Administrator Brent Jensen said the plant employs more than 1,000 workers, the company can process up to 2,200 cattle a day, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
"Since the inception of the basic pilot program in 1997, every single one of Swift's new domestic hires, including those being interviewed today by ICE officials, has duly completed I-9 forms and has received work authorization through the government's basic pilot program. Swift has played by the rules and relied in good faith on a program explicitly held out by the president of the United States as an effective tool to help employers comply with applicable immigration laws," said Rovit.
Myers said immigration officials were "looking very aggressively" at who may have sold the identities to the workers in several cases. She said ICE had uncovered several different rings that may have provided illegal documents.
Some immigrants targeted had genuine U.S. birth certificates and others had other kinds of false identification, Myers said.
"The significance is that we're serious about work site enforcement and that those who steal identities of U.S. citizens will not escape enforcement," Myers said.
Reaction From Rep. Tom Tancredo
"I congratulate all law enforcement agencies involved in the successful raid," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, an outspoken advocate of stricter immigration laws. "My hope at this point is that the U.S. government has the courage to prosecute the Swift & Company executives who may have been complicit in their hiring."
"When something of this scale happens, it's pretty likely that the plant managers were aware of it, often with the consent of management," Tancredo said.
ICE officials have established a hot line for family member of workers who may have been detained. That toll-free number is 1-866-341-3858.
