Audit flags potential fake worker documents at Fiesta Foods (The Spokesman-Review)

Audit flags potential fake worker documents at Fiesta Foods

May 5, 2011
Compiled from wire reports

YAKIMA, Wash. – At least 24 current and former employees of Fiesta Foods in Yakima were recently identified by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as carrying potentially fake documentation, a company attorney said Wednesday. ICE notified Fiesta Foods in April of the results of an employment audit conducted over several previous months, Julie Pace, a Phoenix-based attorney working for the company, said in a telephone interview. As a result of the audit, the grocer on April 26 fired some employees, said Pace, declining to specify how many were let go. She said others identified as potentially illegal are formally contesting ICE’s challenge, though Pace wouldn’t say how many are in this category. ICE has not accused the company of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

Police chief: ICE ordered illegal immigrant released (Standard Speaker)

Police chief: ICE ordered illegal immigrant released
By TOM RAGAN (Staff Writer)
Published: May 4, 2011

Beaver Meadows police apprehended a man who has been living in the United States illegally for the past six years during a traffic stop.

However, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not grant a detainer to Chief Michael Morresi and ordered that 30-year-old Oswaldo Tlalmis-Perez be released.

Morresi said he stopped the vehicle after it was observed traveling 56 mph on state Route 93, which has a 35-mph limit within borough limits.

According to the chief, Tlalmis-Perez produced a Mexican registration card as identification. Morresi contacted ICE, which confirmed he was an illegal immigrant in this country for six years after getting an interpreter from Miami to talk to the man.

Morresi said ICE had him conduct four hours of processing and then decided not to issue a detainer and ordered Tlalmis-Perez released at the Luzerne County line. Morresi said he followed orders after citing Tlalmis-Perez for driving at an unsafe speed and driving without a driver's license.

The owner of the car, Edgardo Laurelno-Molina of Emerald Court in Hazleton, was cited for permitted violation of title or allowing an unlicensed driver to use his car.

Morresi said he wondered why ICE took up four hours of his time before ordering him to release the illegal immigrant.

State Pulls Out of Controversial Immigration Program (Chicago News Cooperative)

State Pulls Out of Controversial Immigration Program

by KARI LYDERSEN | May 4, 2011

Governor Pat Quinn is ending Illinois’s participation in a controversial federal immigration program meant to deport immigrants guilty of serious crimes, which has resulted in the detention of mostly immigrants convicted of no crimes or minor offenses.

Illinois is the first state in the nation to agree to participate and then withdraw from the Secure Communities program, which obligates local law enforcement agencies to share fingerprints of anyone arrested with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

As the Chicago News Cooperative reported in March, ICE officials and contractors had aggressively pushed to implement the program in Chicago despite county and city ordinances that appear to prohibit city and county law enforcement agencies from participating.

Quinn’s announcement came as the state legislature was scheduled today to debate and vote on the Smart Enforcement Act, which would have allowed counties to opt out of the program, require an accounting of its cost to local law enforcement agencies and mandate it only be used for immigrants with serious criminal convictions. Senate president John Cullerton and House Speaker Mike Madigan on Saturday attended an immigrants rights rally centered on the Smart Enforcement Act and the Illinois DREAM Act, also scheduled for a vote today, which would provide scholarships for undocumented students at no expense to taxpayers.

ICE officials have said state and local participation in Secure Communities is mandatory and plan to implement the program nationwide. But Quinn said in a statement today that the agency has not answered state and local officials’ questions about the high number of immigrants detained after being arrested for often minor offenses, including traffic stops. ICE statistics show that in Illinois more than three quarters of those targeted for deportation through the program were convicted of no crimes or minor misdemeanors.

“Secure Communities as it has been implemented has turned into a program that is indiscriminately destroying families,” said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which obtained internal ICE documents showing how ICE officials strategized to convince Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and Mayor Richard M. Daley to cooperate with the program.

The Illinois State Police in November 2009 signed a memorandum of agreement with ICE that laid the groundwork for individuals counties to be enrolled. In November 2010 Quinn ordered the program suspended, with no more counties enrolling. Now the 26 participating counties — including every county surrounding Cook — will be “de-activated.”

“After review, we were not satisfied, and determined that ICE’s ongoing implementation of Secure Communities is flawed,” said Quinn in a statement. “ICE has been informed that ISP (the Illinois State Police) is ending its participation in the Secure Communities program. ISP will continue working with the FBI and ICE to facilitate removal of criminals with undocumented status who are convicted of serious crimes.”

ICE officials were upset that Washington D.C. opted out of the program and New York State also refused to participate, testing ICE assertions that the program is mandatory, as revealed in documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and Benjamin Cardozo Law School. The Illinois coalition received and analyzed the Illinois documents.

NDLON legal affairs director Chris Newman said other states will be closely watching what happens in Illinois, amidst growing national discontent over the program.

“The simple fact is DHS cannot make law and policy by decree,” said Newman, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part. “We can’t take DHS at its word when they say it’s mandatory. That’s their opinion.”

Sex trade kidnapping victims rescued from Chandler drop house (AZFamily.com)

Sex trade kidnapping victims rescued from Chandler drop house
by Tyler Baldwin
azfamily.com
Posted on May 4, 2011 at 5:57 PM

CHANDLER, Ariz. – The Department of Public Safety raids a drop house in Chandler finding close to a dozen kidnapping victims inside.

Some of the victims were bound for the sex trade industry, according to investigators.

An email from a concerned family in Florida asking for help initiated the investigation. Thanks to the efforts of the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, that email made its way to the DPS IMPACT Team. The email claimed a family member was being held for ransom somewhere in the Phoenix area.

Less than 24 hours later, the DPS IMPACT team was able to track the kidnapping victim down.

The victims were being held inside a home near Chandler Heights and McQueen.

Officers found 10 victims and six suspects. According to investigators, it’s possible the human smugglers were not only holding the victims for ransom but they were looking to make extra cash by entering the female victims into the sex trade industry.

Some of the victims had been there for weeks.

The house is right in the middle of an upscale suburban neighborhood. Detectives say this is the new standard for drop houses. The troubled housing market has allowed these so-called coyotes to move into neighborhoods like this and set up shop.

3TV talked to people who live next door and they had no idea what was going on.

The suspects now face kidnapping, extortion and human smuggling charges. The victims, who are Guatemalan immigrants, will be handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Agents grill Chipotle staff as probe widens (Reuters c/o Chicago Tribune)

Agents grill Chipotle staff as probe widens
Lisa Baertlein
Reuters
May 4, 2011

LOS ANGELES - Immigration agents descended on Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants on Tuesday, interviewing employees in about two dozen restaurants in Los Angeles, Atlanta and other cities.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents also interviewed workers in Minnesota and Washington, D.C., said Robert Luskin, Chipotle's outside counsel and a partner at Patton Boggs in the capital.

Luskin said ICE gave Chipotle enough advance notice of the interviews by plain-clothed agents that the company had the opportunity to send a note to employees telling them it wanted them to cooperate.

Roughly 500 undocumented workers have been fired as a result of ICE audits of the chain's hiring paperwork in Minnesota, Virginia and Washington, D.C., and Tuesday's move by ICE suggests the government interest could be expanding.

Chipotle co-Chief Executive Monty Moran said on April 20 that the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. requested documents related to the ICE audits.

That request came hours after a Reuters story quoting fired immigrant workers who said that Chipotle -- one of the highest-profile employers to fall under the scrutiny of ICE -- ignored signs that pointed to the illegal status of some of its workers.

"We've got nothing to hide," Chipotle attorney Luskin said. "We're absolutely convinced that nobody did anything wrong."

He added that Tuesday's action by ICE "doesn't signal a broader or more serious or more substantial investigation" and that he had no reason to expect that the investigation would be confined to audit areas.

ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett did not respond to requests for comment.

ENFORCEMENT SHIFT

U.S. immigration enforcement has shifted considerably in recent years. Notably, the Obama administration is cracking down on employers rather than illegal workers.

Carl Shusterman, a former prosecutor for ICE's predecessor agency, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said interviews like the ones ICE conducted at Chipotle on Tuesday show how the administration is ratcheting up pressure. He also acknowledged that the tactic could scare off undocumented workers.

"I would imagine what happens is that the people who are illegal will never come to work again," said Shusterman, who now is in private practice in Los Angeles.

Chipotle has won plaudits from Wall Street for its seemingly uncanny ability to hold down labor costs -- a major factor behind its six-fold increase in share price since late 2008, in the depths of the recession.

The immigration probe -- as well as the simultaneous criminal investigation -- into its hiring practices may inflate costs in the long run if it leads to more mass firings. That could be bad news for Chipotle, which like other restaurants, now is grappling with rising prices for everything from beef to produce.

It is also a blow to the reputation of a restaurant chain that prides itself on serving "Food with Integrity."

Should the investigations uncover widespread abuse of immigration laws, co-Chief Executives Steve Ells and Monty Moran could face criticism for allowing the practice to spread through the company's roughly 1,100 U.S. restaurants. Unlike many rivals, Chipotle owns and operates its restaurants and is ultimately responsible for hiring.

The U.S. fast-food industry historically has offered relatively low pay and paltry benefits to legal workers and, as a result, has struggled with high employee turnover.

Experts say restaurant owners are attracted to illegal laborers because they work hard, are loyal and will go the extra mile to hold down a job.

It is hard to know the extent of hiring of illegal immigrants in restaurants. But immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- account for about a quarter of workers in the restaurant and food services industry and their numbers have climbed in recent years.