Postville, IA – Lawyers for an indicted eastern Iowa slaughterhouse executive filed a lawsuit Friday demanding government accounts of how a May 2008 immigration raid was planned and executed.
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Attorneys for Sholom Rubashkin, the former executive at Agriprocessors Inc., sued U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for “the immediate processing and release of agency records” related to the controversial raid.
Rubashkin is scheduled to stand trial Oct. 13 on charges of bank, mail and wire fraud, money laundering, and failing to pay cattle providers on time. Another trial will deal with allegations of harboring illegal immigrants.
The former plant executive was arrested last year after immigration agents raided his plant and detained 389 illegal workers.
Rubashkin has pleaded not guilty and vowed to fight the allegations in court.
The lawsuit alleges ICE officials failed to comply with records request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
Rubashkin’s lawyers said they requested documents explaining how the raid was planned, organized and executed. They also sought information on how the operation was justified, and any “evaluation, comment, question, or concern as to the successes or failures of the raid.”
Defense lawyers sent three follow-up letters asking ICE officials about the open records request over a 132-day period, according to the lawsuit. ICE officials allegedly said they were still trying to comply with the large request.
“Despite several requests for production of the information sought, it is apparent ICE will not honor Sholom Rubashkin’s FOIA requests without legal pressure,” Rubashkin lawyers Guy Cook and F. Montgomery Brown wrote in the lawsuit.
An ICE spokesman did not immediately return a phone message.
Plainly, Sholom Rubashkin is being railroaded. The entire case, literally every last aspect, was intended to destroy Agriproccessors. The immigration raids against Swift meat packers, which resulted in finding more than 1,000 illegal aliens, far more than at Agriprocessors, did not have the malicious intent seen at Postville. When the full truth is revealed, Rubashkin will unbelievably be exonerated.
You can be sure it was the teamsters that incited PETA and thereby the gov’t against rubashkin. They will accuse him of everything in the hope something sticks.
of money as well to compensate him
We just finished Rosh Hashana. We forget that Hashem punishes us Midah K’neges Midah ………..
The local newspaper in Iowa asked for some of these records shortly after the raid, specifically those regarding the cost of the raid. The raid cost 5 million dollars. The subsequent imprisonment of 370 persons for 5 months each on immigration charges 154 people/years at 30K per year is another 4.63 million. These charges were eventually overturned after the Government spent 10 million dollars to bankrupt the largest employer and tax payer in Allamakee county. The results? 389 minor non-violent offenders were incarcerated, 25 million dollars (payroll alone, not counting animals and raw materials) was taken out of the economy, causing 100 more families to seek public assistance. The most unsettling item still remains, that several months after the Rubashkin raid, the ICE deleted all the information on it’s web site that refererred to the Dec12, 2006 raid on 5 Swift Beef and Pork facilities netting 1300 illegals. Despite the fact that every aspect of the swift raid was bigger and the ICE referred to it as the “largest raid of it’s kind” Rubashkin soon took it’s place as “the largest raid of it’s kind.” While this might technically be correct with Rubashkin being the largest single site raid, the raid on Swift or the May 2006 raid on IFCO facilities in 26 states also netting 1300 illegals were obviously much larger in all aspects. The question remains: why were those illegals simply deported and not tried like the Rubashkin arrestees, resulting in the governments “largest prosecution of illegals…” which was subsequently overturned, and why did ICE remove all the information concerning the Swift “operation wagon train” raid from it’s website.