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| Didn't Postville workers' families suffer too? Photo: Stephen Mally/NY Times |
On December 20 President Trump commuted the 27-year prison
sentence of former kosher meatpacking magnate Sholom Rubashkin for bank fraud.
Rubashkin had headed the Agriprocessors Inc. company, whose plant in Postville,
Iowa, was the scene of a massive military-style workplace
raid in May 2008. Federal agents arrested 389 immigrant workers, including
18 ranging in age from 13 to 17; most of the detained workers spent five
months in prison on charges related to their immigration status and were then
deported. The raid took place as the United Food and Commercial Workers
(UFCW) was trying to organize
the plant.
Rubashkin had a number of prominent supporters, including
more than 30 current members
of Congress from both mainstream parties. His backers noted that
Rubashkin’s sentence was exceptionally severe, raising suspicions that it was
influenced by his ethnic background—he’s a member of the Jewish Hasidic
Chabad-Lubavitch group. They also stressed his close relationship with an autistic
son. There are certainly reasons to question the length of Rubashkin’s
sentence, but we have to wonder why so little is said about his mostly Latino
former employees, who were subjected to multiple labor violations at the plant
and then jailed and exiled for the supposed crime of working to support
themselves and their families. And what about the suffering of their
children? As for Rubashkin’s sympathizers in Congress, they can take the time
to write letters supporting commutation of one man’s prison sentence but
apparently can’t be bothered to pass
legislation for nearly 700,000 current DACA recipients, who are now losing their protection from
deportation at a rate of 122 each day.—TPOI editor
President Commutes Sentence of Iowa Meatpacking Executive
By Mitch Smith, New York Times
December 20, 2017
President Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison sentence of
Sholom Rubashkin, whose Iowa meatpacking plant was the target of a huge
immigration raid in 2008, and whose 27-year prison sentence angered many
Orthodox Jews.
Mr. Rubashkin made national headlines nine years ago after
federal agents arrived by helicopter at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville,
Iowa, and detained nearly 400 undocumented immigrants, including several
children, who were working there. Mr. Rubashkin was the company’s chief
executive, and the plant had been the largest kosher meatpacking operation in
the country. He was later convicted of bank fraud in federal court.[…]
Read the full article:
Republicans are misleading everyone — including themselves —
about how long they have to fix DACA
How the DACA deadline actually works — and why Trump and
Congress can’t just punt on it.
By Dara Lind, Vox
December 20, 2017
Congress is moving to clear off most of its urgent business
before leaving for the holidays, with one exception: a bill that would address
the 690,000 unauthorized immigrants protected from deportation under the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
GOP leadership has refused to concede it was a priority. And
Democrats — for whom a DACA fix once seemed important enough to withhold votes
on key spending bills, potentially risking a government shutdown on Friday —
appear to be backing down.
So if DACA doesn’t need to be taken care of now, when does
Congress need to act on it?[...]
Read the full article:
