ice

Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") raided the Del Monte plant in Northeast Portland yesterday, detaining 165 workers, including a few from the staffing agency (whose offices were on-site!) for knowingly employing workers with fraudulent documents. Del Monte has released a statement claiming that they are cooperating with investigators and stating, brashly, that "Fresh Del Monte does not employ this labor force." In other words, if you contract out your Human Resources department, you can claim you don't employ your employees. I think Congress has a loophole to close.

Most of those detained will be housed in the immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, which was apparently cleared out last week in preparation for the raid. The timing of the clearing of the detention facility combined with the fact that the American Immigration Lawyers Association is holding its annual conference in Orlando, Florida this week (about as far away as one can get without leaving the country) lead local immigration attorneys to presume as early as last week that ICE was planning a raid in the Northwest.

Something needs to be done with the immigration problem here in the United States, but as long as ICE keeps staging these useless red-meat raids while Congress lets companies like Del Monte off the hook, it'll be business as usual indefinitely. Like Mr. Freeman says, if a few CEOs spent some time in jail for labor violations, this problem would dry up.


In other...ummm...weird news, President Bush apparently got his watch snatched on his recent trip to Albania. The indispensable Crooks and Liars has the video (which I haven't been able to watch yet...stupid internets).