Immigrant raid halted in 2000 on election fear, ex-agent says

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/2011...

Federal authorities could have spared Postville a great deal of upheaval if they had gone ahead with a planned 2000 immigration raid there instead of waiting nearly eight years to deal with a blatant case of illegal hiring, a retired federal agent says.

Estela Biesemeyer said last week that she and other immigration agents were poised to raid the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in late summer 2000, but their bosses canceled the action because of fears it might affect the presidential election.

Agency administrators were concerned about political blow-back from the raid, because they had heard the plant's owners were friends with
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, she said. Lieberman was the Democrats' vice presidential candidate that year.

The result of the cancellation, she said, was that the kosher meatpacking plant was allowed to expand dramatically, hiring hundreds more illegal immigrants. By the time authorities launched a huge raid there in 2008, the plant was Postville's dominant economic support, and its ensuing bankruptcy threw the town into a tailspin.

Rumors have long swirled that immigration officials knew about the plant's illegal work force but put off action for years. Confirmation came this summer in "Train to Nowhere," a book about immigration
written by former Des Moines Register reporter Colleen Krantz.

Disgusting, but if the agent had been a whistle blower, she'd have been fired and nailed to a tree.