Thread by @NicoletteGlazer

Over 40 workers arrested during 7 August 2019 Mississippi #ICERaids have now been charged in federal court for being in the country illegally but NO company, or corporate officer, director, manager, owner has been charged so far.
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Wow! the details ...
usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

1/ As you may remember this was the largest single state #ICERaid ever conducted (and one of the biggest one in the last 5 years or so) which resulted in 638 noncitizens arrested at 7 food processing plants in MS. About 300 remain in ICE custody in Jena LA & in MS.

2/ The whole thing apparently started this last Feb with a pretty common occurrence: an informant who had previously provided "reliable info to LEA" told ICE officer that almost all the work force at P H Food was "illegal". What happened is anything but ordinary or common ...

3/ confidential informant (CI) apparently went to ICE to report on 2 specific individual employees of P H Food (MX nationals) whom he reported as "being illegally" in the country & employed at P H Food using false names (at least dis what the search warrant affidavit attributes)

4/ ICE of course ran checks on the two & determined that that they had previously been deported, reentered and (at least one of them) assumed the identity of an United States Citizen.

5/ NOTE: I will not identify anyone by name & will not post link to warrant coz in their infinite wisdom ICE identified USC & ppl who may be victims of identity theft by name, DOB, & almost full address. NOT Appropriate, boys!

So, I will quote from court doc w/ no identifiers.

6/ This is the first think that blew my mind!

In warrant HSI ofcr recounts the following about the United States citizen whose identity had been appropriated: He "was issued a US Passport Card on July 1, 2010" meaning after that date EVERYONE in ICE CBP, etc. knew he was USC

7/ But wait for it! ... "this same US citizen "was ARRESTED on October 13, 2012 & February 26, 2013 by the ICE office of investigations in El Paso, TX. At the time of [EACH of] these arrests, ICE agents determined that [he] was a US Citizen"

Pause for a minute!

8/ ICE HSI -- not CBP-- continued to arrest (not just stop, detain) a United States citizen near the border with full knowledge that he was an American citizen. Sounds familiar? Well, it should!

But, what business does ICE "arresting" US citizen? NONE

9/ Now the arrest warrant states that after each arrest this American citizen was photographed (& fingerprinted, the whole enchilada) and his "photos from these encounters (the ICE arrests!!!) were also found in ICE databases." Uhuh!

now me thinking they are going after this guy

10/ ... for either conspiracy, harboring or transportation or something bc they go one about him and name him in at least two paragraph. But the admission -- as a matter of fact-- is just damn chilling! Stalin has nothing on ICE, I/m telling ya!

11/ But back to the #ICERaids. The 'investigative' techniques described by ICE are to same extent 'nothing new here, next' and some are just WOW! (honestly some of the things described I have never heard of ...

12/ the 1st person they nabbed (the one on which the CI spilled the beans) was by making a pretextual traffic stop in front of the plant when the car was not even driven by the subject. They had photos and knew it but basically pulled the dude & when he could not produce proof...

13/ ... of insurance!!! they made him call the subject so that he could come out of the plant and arrested him. Sounds like he was deported after that.

14/ Now the way the search warrant reads connecting the dots and putting together this behemoth of a #ICERaid did not happen until May '19 ( not buying it but) It went something like this ...

15/ ICE goes after 2nd person reported by confidential informant in Feb & arresting him in April. In his possessions they find paycheck from P H Foods. 🙀 Then in May ERO get called to pick up a MX citzn arrested by local police for DUI & during processing he tells them ...

16/ ... "I have worked for P H Food for last 5 yrs using the name of XX based on a Cal ID bought for $150" ... only then ICE goes 🙀🙀 P H Food is employing ppl in violation of IRCA!!! Do they arrest owner! Of course no.

17/ What they do instead is, they pull the quarterly wages reports submitted for the arrested Mex citizen using the fake Cal ID number and find out that another company J J Enterprises is claiming him as an employee under the name of USC. (I promise I will connect the cucumbers)

18 (I have to admit by that time in reading the warrant I had the visual of two ICE officers burred deep in the basement of ERO in Jackson MS who were serving some desk time for unspecified minor work related infraction and were really working it to score brownie points w brass)

19/ So, ICE calls in their old friend the Confidential Informant back to office to pick his brain about P H Food. And only at that 2nd interview (remember the 1st one was coz he had a beef to settle w two dudes, ERO took care of them for him) CI is allegedly telling ERO ...

20/ ... that P H Food employs 240 and he just happens to suspect that exactly 224 of them are "suspected illegal workers" and then goes in details about who owns, runs company and how. He tells them that ppl use their real names w fake SSNs. He also connect another plant owned.

21/ So it is pretty obvious that the CI is a insider, perhaps a manager or a former manager, who has a score to settle with owner and a female secretary who allegedly does the i9 forms and retains them in her computer. At this point my 'there is something hinky-meter' is on 🔥

22/ So ERO has P H Food, they have A B Food, they have J J Entrprises (which is also registered an operates in MS as J J pountry) and finds out that J J Enterprises is also operating as a payroll company for these food processing plants.

23/ Basically food processing plants, according to search warrant, know that ppl they are employing are undocumented, know of their legal duties to verify, but farm the verification process to a third party (an unrelated payroll company) so that they have plausible deniability

24/ Well as an aside. This defense is not gonna fly bc IRCA paced obligation to verify employment eligibility on 'employer'. So far, Im not aware of any state of fed court that have found that payroll company or PEO is a 'co-employer' & share statutory duties vs employees.

24/ But that brings us to e-Verify & then some. Ya'll see Mississippi it turns out is a mandatory e-Verify jurisdiction! per MS 71-11-3 all employers in the state are required to use e-Verify. The search warrant documents that targeted companies did not use e-Verify to scores of

25/ ... of workers and ran e-verify for ppl using false identity, and knowingly did not input A-numbers in e-verify where they knew that their workers were in immigration proceedings. You would think w/ this ERO will be running to district court to file indictments. Nah-Nah!

26/ U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst in an interview, tells reporters that HSI is "investigating" and will soon be presenting their findings & (evidence from May) soon to AUSA ... but they rushed to arrest 700 ppl/ charged 40! clarionledger.com/videos/news/po… via @clarionledger

27/ Fair warning! From now on this thread may get a bit difficult to process without your blood boiling so, not for the faint in heart or ppl w/out conscience.
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(if you are getting off. thank you for stopping by. If you want to continue: hold your collective noses ...)

28/ Did you know what Miss Statutory Code section 71-11-3 says? Well let me walk you through (I did not know either!)

... deep breath! Here we go!

29/ Employers in Mississippi "shall only hire employees who are legal citizens of the United States of America or are legal aliens."

What the f"ck is "**legal** citizen of the USA"?!?

Earth to Mississippi: there is no such a thing as "illegal US citizen"!

30/ same state statute contains the following criminal provision:
"It shall be a felony for any person to accept or perform employment for compensation knowing or in reckless disregard that the person is an unauthorized alien ..." w penalty of fine & jail of 1 to 5 years.

31/ I am not a Miss attorney but reading this provision it appears that it penalizes both working while undocumented and employing undocumented noncitizens. This is a clearly improper attempt to preempt INA and IRCA! Federal law does not criminalize working without EAD!

32/ Federal law imposes fines and criminal penalties on employers not on the undocumented workers. An empty pronouncement by sec. 71-11-3(b)(ii) that "his section shall not be construed as an attempt to preempt federal law" is simply not enough!

33/ In Chamb of Comrc v Whiting SCOTUS sided w Arizona helding that a state can impose mandat e-verify req & that state licensing laws are not expressly preempted by 1324a(h)(2) which prohibited states from imposing civil or crim sanctions on those who employed unauthoriz workers

34/ Here, there is a possibility that after the non-citizens are prosecuted by the Fed Govt they can still face state felony charges and possible 1 to 5 years under section 71-11-3 for accepting work while knowing they are not emloyment eligible. But this is not all. Oh No!

35/ There is a kicker: those charged working w/out EAD are subject to "a rebuttable presumption that a defendant who has entered and remains in the United States unlawfully is deemed at risk of flight for purposes of bail determination"! Meaning no bail! WTF!

36/ hey #immigrationtwitter, would conviction for 71-11-3 be an aggravated felony? could it be construed as a theft or fraud?

37/ But back to the #ICERaids and the search warrant ...
There is one aspect of the facts in the search warrant that is just bone chilling if you're an immigration atty ... and it has to do w ICE use of GPS data collected through ISAP.

38/ Just as a background for those not versed w ISAP: ICE routinely places new arrivals who pass credible fear determination or subject to an order of removal on 'Alternatives to Detention (ATD) basically ankle monitoring for ppl over 18.

39/ ADP operates under the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) which is ran by a private company BI Inc. Basically ppl are tracked & supervised via a combination of home & office visits, tel reporting, alert response, court tracking, and GPS technology.

40/ ERO determines frequency of home visits, types of technology, telephonic, GPS or SmartLink, court and alert management. BI Inc. provides the technology and the non-citizen pays a monthly fee. It is used w varying frequency based on field office.

41/ GPS monitoring under ISAP requires no less 3 satellites to locate an ankle unit. When a participant is within range of more than 3 satellites a GPS unit give more accurate data regarding the participant's location, which the ADP officer can track via their smart phone. Scary?

42/ This one is not from a SCI-FI it is from a court filed search warrant: READ!
"SmartLink enables ATD offcers and case specialists [to] verify a participant's [asylum seeker w/ ankle monitor] identity, determine their location, and quickly collect status change information."

43/ So after ERO zoomed in onto P H Food they used GPS data collected on ADP participants in the Jackson filed office and big tech identified all 13 workers that worked there and the 18 workers who were still working there in mid July 2019 ... and went after them.

44/ Then it appears that they tracked the daily activities of all ADP participants to locate their place of employment; sifted the ones without EADs and zoomed on the 7 plants raided on 7 August 2019 as they had recurring undocumented workers.

45/ According to DHS since 2002 they have recorded about "350 encounters or arrests" of undocumented immigrants around the country who acknowledged working for either Koch Food or Peco Foods plants in Mississippi.

46/ So if anyone is keeping score: No company or corporate honcho has been charged. But 40 undocumented workers have been accused and will face criminal charges for either illegally reentering or failing to depart the U.S. This is just the first wave.
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This America in 2019!

47. Thank you @mle_goldman for this

https://twitter.com/mle_goldman/status/1163221895497392128