Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

12/6/00 News Report -- The Omaha World-Herald

In an unprecedented case in Nebraska, federal officials have reached into the upper levels of an Omaha meatpacking company to arrest managers suspected of helping to smuggle undocumented workers into the state.

Those charged in a criminal warrant include the vice president of human resources, the personnel manager and the production manager of Nebraska Beef near 35th and L Streets.

Three others charged in the alleged conspiracy were described as recruiters. Two are based in Texas, and the other lives in Omaha.

All six are alleged to have participated in a scheme to transport undocumented workers from Texas and Mexico, to arrange temporary housing and to point them toward fake work documents.

Although officials from other companies have been fined administratively for hiring undocumented workers, federal agents said at a press conference Tuesday that the case is unique in that managers allegedly helped smuggle the workers here and are to be prosecuted criminally.

"Now we have agents of a company who used their role for whatever gain," said Art Moreno, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The company itself has not been charged.

Officials of Nebraska Beef did not return messages left at the plant Tuesday.

Mike Wellman, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, which will prosecute the six, said the case marked the first time he knows of that federal agents have gone "as high up the ladder" in Nebraska with criminal charges.

"We haven't seen this type of scheme before," Wellman said, "not on this level."

Such cases have been prosecuted elsewhere in the nation but not in Nebraska or Iowa, said Alonzo Martinez, a local INS official working on the investigation dubbed "Operation Putnam."

Wellman declined to say whether other arrests might be forthcoming. He said similar investigations are under way in the state, but he would not provide details.

The three managers and the three recruiters named as defendants in the federal criminal complaint were identified as: Mario Villareal-Carrillo, 32, vice president of human resources; Julian Martinez, 61, personnel manager; Tony N. Joy, 38, production manager; Jose De Jesus Quezada-Neri, 39, of El Paso, Texas; Angelica Quezada, age unknown, of El Paso; Dionicio Labra, 44, of Omaha.

A federal affidavit signed by a special agent of the INS said that Quezada-Neri is a recruiter in Texas for Nebraska Beef and that he was assisted in his role by Angelina Quezada, believed to be his wife, and by Labra.

All six were officially charged with being part of a conspiracy to knowingly bring undocumented Mexican citizens from Texas to work in Omaha. If convicted, each faces 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 or both.

Villareal-Carrillo, Labra and Martinez were arrested Tuesday and are to appear today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen Jaudzemis.

The Quezadas, who live in Texas, and Joy, who was away from his home in Oakland, Iowa, were expected to be in custody soon.

Also Tuesday, 191 lower-level workers at Nebraska Beef were detained during a raid at the plant. They were not charged in the criminal warrant, but they are suspected of working without proper documentation and face administrative proceedings to remove them from the United States.

Investigators were trying to determine Tuesday how many of those workers - which included about 25 women and seven minors - might have been lured to the plant in the alleged smuggling operation, said Jerry Heinauer, director of the INS in Omaha.

He said the INS would begin returning the 191, who are mostly Mexican nationals, to their native country as early as today.

About 9 a.m. Tuesday, more than 100 federal agents from the INS, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Marshal Service and the Omaha Police Department helped seal off all entrances to the plant and helped patrol the surroundings while workers were asked to produce documentation that they were in the country legally.

"They left meat and everything on the lines," said Ed Reyes, one of the workers who was allowed to leave after showing identification. "I think it's wrong."

The raid signaled a resurrection of the type of raids that had been on hold for the past few years. Those military-style raids had been largely suspended in the Midlands because the INS had turned to a program that used the power of subpoena to examine employee documents. While less intrusive, that program, Operation Vanguard, drew intense criticism.

On Tuesday, Reyes and other workers lingered outside in the cold while co-workers in white hard hats peered down at the commotion from a second-floor cafeteria.

By late morning, a Good Life Transportation Inc. bus had taken the first load of suspected undocumented workers to the Army Reserve Training Center in Council Bluffs, where they were to be detained. Three other buses were waiting in the parking lot.

Moreno said the workers would be allowed to contact family members. If the workers cannot produce proper documentation, Moreno said, the government will begin proceedings to remove them from the country.

Reyes and others said the raid caught them by surprise.

"They rustled everybody into the cafeteria," Reyes said. "They asked for IDs and started getting them one by one. They've got people up there handcuffed."

Rocky Speed, another employee, said some tried to run. "I don't know how far they got."

Moreno said that he knew of no one who ran from the plant or of anyone who was injured.

Robert Rogers said he had just pulled his "gut truck" onto the premises when an agent told him to park it. "They said no one can come in or out."

After he explained that the cattle parts would freeze if he did not transport them to their destination, Rogers was allowed to continue. He said he was never asked to produce identification.

"They didn't ask me," said Rogers, who is black and has worked for the company for about two months. "I guess maybe because I don't look Mexican. I don't know. But I thought that was kind of strange."

Moreno said Tuesday's raid was the culmination of a yearlong investigation and of information that the INS had received that Nebraska Beef was employing undocumented workers.

Moreno said that while work-site raids had been at least temporarily curtailed in the state, they had not been completely abolished. He said it is against federal immigration law to work in the country with false documentation.

The last major raid of an Omaha meatpacking plant, according to World-Herald records, appears to have been in the summer of 1997 at Greater Omaha Packing Co.

Similar raids were suspended while the INS implemented "Operation Prime Beef," a program in which the INS subpoenaed employee records.

Operation Prime Beef evolved into Operation Vanguard. The program relied on detailed examination of employee records.

Under the program, about 20percent of the work force at the meatpacking plants investigated were found to have discrepancies in their paperwork. That translated into 4,762 employees. Those workers were notified that they were to be interviewed. Many left the plants before the INS conducted the interviews.

The operation found that 21 percent of the Nebraska Beef's work force had "questionable" employment records. About 345 employees of 1,626 who were checked had red flags such as a false Social Security number or the wrong Social Security number.

Vanguard had been highly criticized by the workers, plants, the Latino community and Nebraska's congressional delegation. They said the program had depleted the work force at packing plants, had depressed prices for livestock and had increased demand for subsistence benefits from such places as food pantries and emergency shelters.

Operation Vanguard was suspended in the summer of 1999 after the Social Security Administration objected to the use of Social Security numbers.

Nebraska Beef Operating Co. began processing meat in the plant in the fall of 1995 in a building formerly occupied by Union Packing Co.