No immigration agents descended on Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in Vernon. No one was arrested or deported. There were no frantic scenes of desperate workers fleeing la migra through the gritty streets of the industrial suburb southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
For more than 200 Overhill workers, however, the effect was devastating: All lost steady jobs last month and now find themselves in a precarious employment market, without severance pay or medical insurance. It wasn't a hot tip or an undercover informant that helped seal their fates, but a computer check of Social Security numbers.
"A desktop raid" is how the workers' representative, John M. Grant, vice president of Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, described the scenario.
Overhill, a $200-million-a-year company that provides frozen meals for clients such as American Airlines, Panda Express, Safeway and Jenny Craig, says it had no choice: An Internal Revenue Service audit found that 260 workers had provided "invalid or fraudulent" Social Security numbers. The government took no action against the workers. But Overhill did: All of the employees were fired May 31.
The dispute underscores some of the complex issues facing President Obama as he tries to make good on his pledge to overhaul the nation's "broken" immigration system. Like agriculture, the food-processing and preparation sectors rely heavily on immigrant labor, much of it illegal.
The White House has already scaled back the Bush administration's controversial practice of work-site raids. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has vowed to shift the emphasis to employers who hire illegal workers. Audits of employers' records are an essential tool in such cases.
But the Overhill case illustrates how desktop raids can ravage immigrant families, even without arrests and deportation. Employers facing stiff fines and potential prison terms for hiring illegal immigrants may decide to fire employees who have suspect paperwork.
"We killed ourselves on the assembly lines for years, many of us have injuries from repetitive motion," said Bohemia Agustiano, 38, a mother of four from Huntington Park. "Now we're worth nothing. We're out on the streets. This is unjust, no one should be treated this way."
Overhill says it gave the workers 30 days to correct the problem with the IRS and provide the company with verification, but none did so.
