Jan 5, 2007 2:57 pm US/Mountain
Charges Mount After Swift Immigration Raids
GREELEY, Colo. (AP) ―
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About 1,000 ICE officials raided Swift & Co. plants in six states.
CBS
About 220 of the nearly 1,300
Swift & Co. employees detained during
immigration raids in six states last month face identity theft or other criminal charges, immigration officials said Friday.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had initially said 65 of the 1,282 employees rounded up on Dec. 12 faced criminal charges.
Immigration charges are considered administrative, rather than criminal.
Neither Swift & Co. nor any current or former management officials face charges, Swift CEO Sam Rovit said Friday.
ICE spokesman Tim Counts said the investigation is still under way.
Swift said Thursday the raids, which halted operations at the plants for six to seven hours, could cost the company up to $30 million in its current fiscal year as it tries to replace lost workers.
While all six plants resumed operations the same day of the arrests, none are back to pre-raid production levels. Swift has not said when operations might be back to full speed or how much operations have been reduced.
Swift spokesman Sean McHugh said the company was not disclosing its production levels for competitive reasons.
During a conference call Friday with analysts, Rovit said initiatives taken by the company since last year to tighten operations and examine costs will have a "significant offsetting effect" to the cost of the ICE raids.
The plants that were raided were in Greeley; Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn., representing all of Swift's domestic beef processing capacity and 77 percent of its pork processing capacity.
Swift, with more than $9 billion in annual sales, describes itself as the world's second-largest processor of fresh beef and pork products.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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