Panel to examine agency involved in Swift raids
The group of experts and leaders in law, labor and civil rights includes former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and will be led by Joseph Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. They plan to report any findings of misconduct to Congress this summer.
"Everything that I learned in grade school and high school ... is being trampled on by ICE and it just needs exposure," Hansen said Friday.
The group plans to hold hearings across the country to investigate how ICE conducts operations at workplaces and the consequences they have on workers' lives.
The first hearing was planned for Monday in Washington, where group members expected to hear testimony from immigration experts and workers who were in Swift plants during raids in 2006.
Hansen said he invited Julie Myers, director of ICE, to Monday's hearing.
ICE spokeswoman Pat Reilly said she could not confirm whether Myers was invited or planned to attend the hearing, but said the agency's policies protect its officers and would hold up against the scrutiny of any group.
"They know that they are in the spotlight," Reilly said. "The standards protect them."
Vilsack said he hoped to investigate allegations of ICE agents violating constitutional rights of workers and suggest possible changes to ICE policy.
"Many of the misdeeds that we'll be able to identify and talk about did not occur to people who weren't properly here; they occurred to people who were legally here all their lives, people who were born here or people who immigrated properly to this country," Vilsack said. "That's what concerns me."
ICE officials investigating identity theft arrested 1,297 workers at six plants during the Swift operation, but union officials have said that more than 12,000 workers were detained against their will. Swift has estimated the financial impact at up to $50 million.
Hansen's union filed a federal suit against ICE in September, accusing the agency of mishandling the Swift raids and seeking an order to stop what it called illegal workplace raids. The case is still pending in federal court in Amarillo, Texas.
The raids were in Marshalltown, Ia., and in Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas; Greeley, Colo.; Hyrum, Utah; and Worthington, Minn.
