ALL COUNTIES: Below is a recent article about a Federal raid at Smithfield Foods.
Illegal Immigration is a growing problem for NC. Our state ranks among the friendliest for fake documentation and labor enforcement. After the Georgia crackdown on employers that hire illegal aliens, many of those aliens migrated from GA to NC to seek employment.
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JOHNSTON COUNTY: Federal immigration agents conducted raids Wednesday at a Smithfield Foods, Inc. slaughterhouse and in neighborhoods in four surrounding counties, arresting 28 people suspected of identity theft, authorities said.
Smithfield spokesman Dennis Pittman said company officials learned about the raid not long before federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived at about 4 a.m. to remove some workers from the world's largest hog-processing plant.
"We were told that they would be coming in. We didn't know for sure how many folks they would be getting," Pittman said. "We couldn't even tell our staff."
ICE arrested 28 people suspected of ties to identity theft in Bladen, Cumberland, Hoke and Robeson counties, said ICE spokesman Richard Rocha in Washington, D.C. Of those, 25 were Mexican, two Guatemalan and one Honduran, he said. Thirteen were women, and 15 were men.
Eight were arrested at the plant, while the rest were arrested at homes, Rocha said.
In January, immigration agents arrested 21 plant employees. Smithfield also sent letters to between 500 and 600 employees whose Social Security numbers, names or other personal information couldn't be verified. The company also fired about 50 workers, saying they had provided false information.
That led to a walkout in which about 1,000 workers, most of them Hispanic, left in protest. They were supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which has tried to organize the plant for more than a decade.
Smithfield agreed to re-hire the fired workers and letter recipients, who received a grace period to resolve discrepancies in their identity information. When that time expired, Smithfield officials said about 300 workers quietly left their jobs or stopped showing up for work.
"Work-site law enforcement and other ICE actions around identity and immigration issues are a symptom of a failed immigration system and no substitute for comprehensive reform," the union said, in a statement Wednesday. "They represent a form of political theater that ends in real human tragedy – the devastation of communities, breakup of families and the defilement of fundamental American values."
Rocha said identity theft causes serious problems for victims, who could find it "more difficult to get a loan, buy a home or gain employment."
About 5,000 employees slaughter up to 32,000 hogs a day at the plant, located about 80 miles south of Raleigh.
CUMBERLAND COUNTY: Cumberland County Sheriff Earl "Moose" Butler wants to join the effort to identify illegal immigrants who break the law.
Butler has applied to participate in a federally funded program that provides training for law enforcement. The program helps identify, process and detain people arrested and found to be in the U.S. illegally.
The training is provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sheriff Butler said he would like six or seven detention center deputies to receive the five-week training.
The county's request to participate in the program could take two years for approval, authorities said.
Mecklenburg, Gaston, Alamance and Cabarrus counties in North Carolina already participate in the program.
The Criminal Alien Program (CAP) focuses on identifying criminal aliens who are incarcerated within federal, state and local facilities thereby ensuring that they are not released into the community by securing a final order of removal prior to the termination of their sentence. The identification and processing of incarcerated criminal aliens prior to release reduces the overall cost and burden to the federal government as the number of aliens detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), upon expiration of sentence will be minimized.
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