Insider's tip led to crackdown on illegal workers

[WhiteTara]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14400740.htm
I wonder if this was coincidental and done for show for the hardliners...definitely will backfire with the recent immigrant population.

WASHINGTON - 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 utilized 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. And federal authorities, laying out details of their investigation in a 26-page affidavit, charged seven of the Houston-headquartered company's current and former managers with harboring illegal immigrants.
snip
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.

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

[Frustratedlady]

1. Does This Administration Follow Up On Anything?

"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."

Is this administration so inept, they can't follow up on irregularities like this? I'd think 53% would be a large enough flag to alert officials.

[Igel]

5. Does the SSA forward the information to somebody

that can enforce the old INS rules?

SSA doesn't do that kind of enforcement, and if privacy or due-process laws say they can't forward the information without authorization from a court or the people involved, there's no legal way for the appropriate enforcement folk to get the info.

When I handled I-9s for my employer, I always had the problem that there was no way to check the SSN/TIN for employees. If I was notified about irregularities by the SSA, I missed it; they may not have bothered with small employers, or when there were just a few 'irregularities'.

[Kagemusha]

2. Uh, law enforcement has to get access to SS records?...

Ummmm...

No comment.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

3. It depends on whose palms are being greased...

Iowa Beef Processors (IBP on those boxes of meat, now owned by Tyson) came close to destroying Sioux City, Iowa with it's illegal workers and foremen/supervisors telling illegals who were going home to Mexico to live like kings on their $1500 they saved up over six months, to just give them a call or letter for when they wanted to come back up to the IBP, Dakota City, Neb. plant (just 14 miles or so west of Sioux City) and work their old jobs. Meth, crank, crack, heroin followed? them to Sioux City and the adjoining communities, even up to Sioux Falls, SD, 75 miles north. The cops "woke up" to that pipeline about 10 years late, despite many being busted by the backwater sheriffs between Sioux City, Ia, and Sioux Falls,SD.


PS: In other words, they knew of the problem, but IBP had the lobbyists in Congress.

[Ian David]

4. Tyson Foods are big Republican donors

$83,594 to Democrats
$143,469 to Republicans
$0 to Others
$227,062 in Total Contributions

http://www.buyblue.org/node/4937/view/summary

[Blue_Tires]

6. another example of

the laws not applying to big business/political donors....