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1 immigration tip led to 1,200 arrests

U.S. says firm's bosses hid illegal workers; company investigating


08:28 PM CDT on Friday, April 21, 2006

By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT and DIANE JENNINGS / The Dallas Morning News 

The largest immigration workplace raid in U.S. history began with an insider's tip: Male Hispanic workers at an upstate New York plant were observed ripping up their W-2 tax forms, and a manager confided they were illegal immigrants with bogus Social Security numbers who did not intend to file tax returns. 

That tipster's phone call in February 2005 to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Latham, N.Y., launched a national investigation. It used a confidential informant wearing a wire and covert surveillance of the company's plants and houses where illegal workers slept on mattresses packed tightly together on the floor. 

The payoff came this week when authorities nabbed nearly 1,200 IFCO Systems workers in 26 states on immigration violations - including 93 in Dallas. And federal authorities, laying out details of their investigation in a 26-page affidavit, charged seven of the Houston-based company's current and former managers with harboring illegal immigrants. 

Some of those managers, accused of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and ferrying them from Texas to New York, could face years in prison and huge fines if convicted. And IFCO, a division of a Dutch company, could see forfeiture of its assets. 

"I never thought it would get this big," Peter Smith, the ICE special-agent-in-charge in Buffalo, N.Y., said Friday. 

With that initial tip, ICE investigators thought they might uncover 25 or 30 illegal workers at IFCO's plant in Guilderland, N.Y. But upon learning that IFCO employed 5,800 workers at dozens of U.S. locations, Mr. Smith said an ICE supervisor suggested it might make sense for investigators nationwide to check the company's other plants. 

"I think this is the direction all our worksite enforcement investigations will be going in the future," Mr. Smith said. "Not only do you go after the aliens and the local business, but let's take a look at what they are doing nationally and who's directing them." 

Using techniques more familiar to ICE's narcotics and national security investigations than to worksite enforcement, the agency placed a confidential informant into IFCO's Guilderland plant, taping in-person and phone conversations with managers. 
IFCO investigating 

IFCO, which distributes pallets to grocers and retailers nationwide, said the activities detailed by the government "are counter to everything we stand for." 

"We are very disturbed by these allegations and have immediately begun a thorough investigation of the facts," the company said in a statement. 

The government in its affidavit contends that several IFCO managers knowingly hired illegal immigrants with fake ID, transporting them to and from work every day and ensuring they could cash their paychecks at a local bank without identification. 

In Guiderland, the illegal workers were housed at three rental homes near the company's plant.Mattresses for as many as 14 people were squeezed into one three-bedroom house, Mr. Smith said. 

As for the pay, a former IFCO bookkeeper told federal investigators that the "Mexican workers" in Guilderland were underpaid for their overtime, according to the federal affidavit. 

IFCO was warned at least 13 times in 2004 and 2005 by the Social Security Administration that more than 1,000 employee Social Security numbers didn't match agency records, an indication of possible irregularities. In fact, 53 percent of the workers on IFCO's 2005 payroll had invalid Social Security numbers, federal officials say. 
More access sought 

Currently, law enforcement is not allowed to gain access to Social Security records. That has to change, said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. 

The IFCO case, he noted, was based on a tip. "We need to be able to go proactively and spot that kind of widespread abuse and not really just have to wait for tips," Mr. Chertoff said Thursday. 

With Congress considering a major overhaul of immigration laws, the Bush administration is asking lawmakers to permit the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Treasury to access Social Security databases. A measure pending before the Senate would allow limited access to Social Security no-match data. 

But civil libertarians still have significant concerns, saying the administration is requesting near unbridled access to taxpayers' most sensitive data. 

Columbia University law professor Ted Ruthizer, a former president of American Immigration Lawyers Association, described the IFCO case as outside the standard for companies skirting immigration law. "If the allegations are true, it's pretty bad stuff," he said. 

"This does seem like certainly much more the exception than the rule." 

But Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., who's pressing for increased enforcement, disagreed. "I think it's going on throughout the country that I have no doubt," he said. "And it's helpful that they are going to make a case out of this." 
2 Dallas facilities 

IFCO has two facilities in West Dallas, both barebones industrial buildings surrounded by mountains of wood pallets. 

The Singleton Boulevard facility was open for business Friday, and general manager Darren Kaats said he didn't expect that to change. A dry erase board on the wall of his office listed company goals for April - one goalwas to process 8,420 pallets per day; another was to keep morale up. 

"I've got a long way to go on that deal," he said ruefully of the latter goal. 

Like Mr. Kaats, officials at another IFCO west Dallas facility also declined to comment on the raids. 

But one worker recounted what happened Wednesday. He said he was puzzled when he saw dozens of officers pouring into the building. 

Then he looked down and saw his assistant lying on the ground. 

The man, who did not identify himself, said he didn't know whether company officials knew some workers were in the country illegally, but co-workers often are aware of their status. 

Though he thinks illegal immigrants shouldn't be employed, he admitted it was difficult seeing colleagues hauled away. 

Conditions at the facility are not bad, he said. "It's hot - it's a pallet company. But they're good people" to work for. 

David Porter, a sales representative at Champion Waste Services, whose offices are located next door to one of the IFCO facilities, watched one raid unfold Wednesday and estimated 45 armed officers participated. 

"It was pretty wild," Mr. Porter said. "A lot of guns come out of holsters and everybody went to running." 
'Reign of terror' 

The arrests, carried out in 26 states over an eight-hour period Wednesday, were coordinated out of a special command center established at ICE headquarters in Washington. 

In Oklahoma City, where 50 IFCO workers were apprehended, the head of the Latino Community Development Agency said the raid only fueled a "reign of terror" spreading through the Hispanic community as the immigration debate continues. 

Patricia Fennell said she has heard that the Oklahoma City raid may have affected about 40 families. 

She said she believes many of the families who lost their breadwinners to deportation have U.S.-born children who may soon need public assistance because of what she termed a short-sighted enforcement effort. 

In Dallas, at Carmen's Mexican Cafe near one of the IFCO facilities, owner Rosa Barajas said she knew many of the workers rounded up. 

"Immigration is doing the right thing," she said. "They're doing their job; there's nothing wrong with that." 

But, she added, she felt sorry for the detainees. "We're going to miss them."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042206dnnatimmigraid.2178f81a.html