Butchering Statutes: the Postville Raid and the Misinterpretation of Federal Criminal Law
| Publication year | 2009 |
| Citation | Vol. 32 No. 03 |
I. Introduction
On Monday, May 12, 2008, at approximately 10:00 a.m., the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (Homeland Security), led an immigration raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc., meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, executing 697 criminal arrest warrants.(fn1) Nearly 400 employees were arrested on suspected immigration violations and taken into custody.(fn2) Those arrested were transported to a temporary detention facility at the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds (Cattle Congress), a 60-acre facility leased by the federal government for the raid, in Waterloo, Iowa,(fn3) about 75 miles southeast of Postville. Over a period of twelve days, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa (USAO) pursued criminal complaints against approximately 300 migrant workers, and the federal district court sentenced them to federal prison terms to be immediately followed by removal to their countries of origin.(fn4) The raid at Postville remains the nation's largest criminal immigration raid.(fn5)
I aim to provide a detailed and accurate account of the investigation of Agriprocessors, the raid, the criminal prosecutions, the sentencings, and the aftermath. In so doing, I argue that a confluence of factors explain the defining features of the raid, namely, the number of individuals arrested and the accelerated criminal proceedings that followed. Specifically, the accelerated process was premised upon two flawed interpretations of federal law, without which the guilty pleas and removal orders could not have been so quickly achieved, if achieved at all. First, the USAO employed § 1028A(a)(1) of Title 18, aggravated identity theft, which imposes a mandatory and consecutive two-year sentence to any defendant convicted under it, largely to leverage expedited plea agreements. However, the interpretation advanced by the USAO, although it prevails in the federal circuit that includes Postville, is erroneous. A proper interpretation of the statute requires the Government to prove that the defendant knew that the identity he stole belonged to another actual person. The text of the statute, the statute's structure, the legislative history, and Supreme Court precedent for similarly structured statutes each compel the conclusion that the knowledge requirement applies to each element of the crime.
Second, the district court improperly applied § 1228(c)(5) of Title 8, which permits a federal district court to enter an order of removal against an alien criminal defendant as part of a plea agreement with the Government. The statute applies only to defendants who are lawfully admitted to the United States and are subsequently convicted of aggravated felonies. The Agriprocessors defendants were, by the terms of their plea agreements, never lawfully admitted to the United States; therefore, the judicial removal statute could not have applied to them.
These two misinterpretations are likely to persist because the interests of defendants, Congress, the Department of Justice, and the federal courts militate against properly interpreting the statutes. The undocumented migrant worker is especially vulnerable to § 1028A(a)(1) because a conviction under the statute is premised upon the concurrent conviction of a federal felony, and because the mandatory and consecutive two-year sentence it imposes is exceedingly more severe than what a first-time offender might expect for the underlying felony alone under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (Sentencing Guidelines or USSG). In other words, the incentive to challenge the Government's interpretation of § 1028A(a)(1) is small if the charge can be avoided by pleading guilty only to the underlying felony. Congress cannot be relied upon to limit criminal liability; the DOJ will not advocate interpretations that limit its prosecutorial leverage; and the federal courts have no incentive to adopt interpretations, against the wishes of the parties, that put further burdens on their dockets.
Rectifications of these misinterpretations are likely to diminish the feasibility of future raids followed by imprisonment. First, the proper interpretation of § 1028A(a)(1), especially in the migrant worker context, saddles the Government with the difficult task of proving the defendant-employee knew that the means of identification he used belonged to another person. Second, the proper interpretation of § 1228(c)(5) prohibits the Government from seeking a prison sentence, followed by removal, in a single proceeding for a defendant who was never lawfully admitted to the United States. For such defendants, the Government would have to seek removal in a separate proceeding before an immigration judge, bearing greater costs following the criminal proceeding.
This Article is structured as follows. In Part II, I begin with an account of Agriprocessors' prior legal troubles, which explains how it became such a politically attractive target. Next, I describe how the investigation of Agriprocessors led to a raid seeking to execute nearly 700 criminal arrest warrants. In Part III, I describe the causes of the accelerated criminal process that resulted in nearly 300 guilty pleas and sentencings in the span of twelve days. In Part IV, I argue that the accelerated process was premised upon the flawed interpretations of § 1028A(a)(1), the aggravated identity theft statute, and § 1228(c)(5), the judicial removal statute. In Part V, I argue that these mistaken applications of federal law are prone to repetition. In Part VI, I argue that rectifications of these misinterpretations are likely to diminish the feasibility of future raids followed by imprisonment.
II. The Size of the Raid
1. The Rise of Enforcement
ICE's increased commitment to enforcement led, in part, to the raid and criminal prosecutions of the Agriprocessors defendants. As funding for ICE has increased, its appetite for criminal enforcement has likewise increased. In its first year of operations, fiscal year 2003, ICE enjoyed a budget of approximately $3.62 billion.(fn6) By February of 2008, ICE requested from Congress an increase in its budget to nearly $5.7 billion.(fn7) Today it boasts over 16,500 employees.(fn8) It "is the largest investigative arm of [Homeland Security] with a mission to protect America and uphold public safety."(fn9) Consistent with this mission, in 2007, ICE
In the strategy's first year, ICE made 863 criminal arrests in worksite enforcement operations.(fn11) By comparison, during the strategy's second year, the Agriprocessors raid alone resulted in more than 300 criminal arrests.(fn12) Just a month before the raid, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on behalf of ICE, affirmed ICE's commitment to criminal worksite enforcement actions, arguing that "[t]hese are the kinds of cases that have a high impact on those who would hire and employ undocumented and illegal aliens often facilitated through identity theft and document fraud."(fn13) ICE acknowledged that the Agriprocessors raid was a specific instance of the larger strategy. With regard to the raid, an ICE spokesman stated that "ICE is committed to enforcing the nation's immigration law in the workplace to maintain the integrity of the immigration system ... ."(fn14)
2. Agriprocessors' Legal Woes
Agriprocessors' prior history with government regulators and its own employees is also relevant to understanding the raid. Agriprocessors had run afoul of government regulators in the past for a variety of alleged violations. In 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency sued Agriprocessors in the federal district court for the Northern District of Iowa (district court), alleging that the meatpacker exceeded federal limits on pollutants that it discharged into Postville's waste-water treatment system.(fn15) Agriprocessors settled the suit nearly two years later, agreeing to pay almost $600,000.(fn16) In 2004, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) began an investigation into allegations of animal cruelty at the Postville plant, specifically responding to allegations that Agriprocessors was slaughtering cattle in an unnecessarily painful manner.(fn17) The resulting report by the USDA confirmed that Agriprocessors had violated federal animal cruelty laws; however, the USAO declined to pursue a criminal action against the plant.(fn18)
The State of Iowa also became involved. In early 2008, the State cited Agriprocessors for thirty-nine occupational health and safety violations, proposing fines of $182,000.(fn19) Days after these citations, the USDA also cited Agriprocessors for elevated levels of salmonella in its poultry products.(fn20)
These confrontations with federal and state regulators were joined by complaints from the company's employees. In March of 2007, current...
To continue reading
Request your trial