Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that this episode contains some graphic descriptions of butchering and the meatpacking process, as well as some horrific treatment of animals and people. So, you might want to hold off on this one, at least until you finish your lunch. Listener discretion is advised.
The Swift meatpacking plant near Cactus is effectively shut down tonight. The fallout continues in Worthington after Tuesday's raid on a meatpacking plant. Swift and Company owns the plants where nearly 1,300 employees were arrested in six different states. Over 200 who were taken into custody remain in detention centers here in Colorado. They're families and friends who've been completely in the dark about their loved ones' whereabouts since the raid yesterday morning.
For the 13,000 employees of the Swift and Company Meatpacking Plants, Tuesday, December 12, 2006 was supposed to be just another day. Show up to work, punch the time clock, butcher some animals, go home to the family, have some dinner, maybe watch a little TV, put the kids to bed, fall asleep, and then do it all over again the next day.
But it became very apparent early in the morning shift that Tuesday, December 12th was going to be different. At about 8 a.m., vans and buses containing 1,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents backed by local police units and riot gear simultaneously descended upon six different meatpacking plants in Colorado, Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Utah, and Iowa.
They formed a perimeter around the factories, blocked all the exits, and then stormed through the doors, weapons raised, shouting orders. Activity on the plant's kill floors and assembly lines came to a halt. The employees were rounded up and taken to a central area, like a cafeteria, where they were separated on the basis of their skin color. Light-skinned to the left, dark-skinned to the right.
That way, the ICE agents could more quickly decipher which workers were in the country illegally. Those that tried to resist were sprayed with some kind of chemical weapon. Everybody else was handcuffed with plastic until ICE were able to confirm their citizenship. Those that could prove their legal status were free to go home. Those that could not would be detained and deported. The entire process lasted about six to eight hours.
And judging by the descriptions of ICE's treatment of the workers that surfaced afterwards, it was anything but friendly. A factory worker in Minnesota named Veronica told the Star Tribune, Another worker named Anna spoke with the Herald Journal. She recalled agents throwing food on the ground and making the detainees pick it up.
Anna also claimed that a group of 40 workers were sharing one toilet between them and that it was prevented from flushing. "They closed the water off so that we couldn't flush the water, because they said they were going to punish us because we kept crying and talking, and they didn't give us any toilet paper." Apart from the intimidation tactics employed by ICE during the raid, there was a reason the workers were crying. For many of them, this was the end of the line.
They knew that they would be bussed away to God knows where. They knew that they might never see their families again, and many of them wouldn't. At the end of the day, across the six raids, named Operation Wagon Train, in total, almost 1,300 Swift & Company employees were arrested and transported to various detention centers out of state. From there, almost all of the detainees were deported to their home countries, mostly Mexico and Guatemala.
The families left behind were given a 1-800 number to call and nothing else. It's disgusting. That's how I'm feeling right now. Disgusting. All these people are hard workers. The least they should do is let the families know where they're at and where they're going and what's going to happen with them. What is my baby supposed to do without a dad? Many of the communities affected by the raids were appalled.
Swift and company officials, the workers union, and religious leaders denounced the federal government's actions. Children were left without fathers or mothers, sometimes both. Breadwinners had vanished overnight. Families had been destroyed. Many of the remaining immigrants found help and shelter at their local churches. Some fled the country on their own accord while others went into hiding, fearing that the long arm of the law would soon return for them. It was abject terror.
Mission accomplished, I guess. Meanwhile, others in the community felt that the raids were justified. It just aggravates me when they say, oh, we're not illegal or we're not illegal for a human. Well, yeah, you're human, but if you're here illegally, you are a criminal. So, they don't need to be here. You heard the man. You weren't lucky enough to be born on this side of the imaginary line. Time for you to go. I'm sorry. Don't cry. It's not your fault. It's not something that you can control.
In fact, the gentleman in that clip had no control over where he was born either, even though it appears to be what he is most proud of. To be honest, it's probably the only thing he has to be proud of. So cut him some slack, will you? And heed his advice. You're a criminal. Take your hungry baby back to wherever it is you came from and find a different way to feed it. It's not his problem.
Oh, and don't you even think about taking his job again, even though it's not a job he would ever want. Not in a million years. Not for what you're getting paid at least. Are you kidding? This man is a red-blooded, God-fearing American. The only time he is interested in handling cheap food is when he is shoveling it into his mouth.
all the while ignoring the fact that it is his demand for that cheap food and your employer's demand for cheap labor that requires your presence in his country in the first place. But he doesn't want to think about it like that. It makes his brain hurt. So just get out. Go back to your country so that this man can go back to supporting the troops who have sacrificed everything for these sweet American freedoms that are unfortunately not afforded to you.
Those are his freedoms, and he will continue getting angry when his fellow citizens exercise those very same freedoms. No kneeling on the football field, please. It's disrespectful to the flag, he screams, in between sips of an American flag-themed Budweiser can while he remains seated in his favorite recliner during the national anthem. What time does the game start again? Even if that's how everyone felt, and it wasn't,
Even if many of the workers were illegal, and they were, many onlookers felt that the swift raids had been needlessly callous. Just a month earlier, as part of the same operation, ICE agents had calmly walked into a Louisville meatpacking plant owned by the same company and apprehended four suspects without flexing a muscle. It all just seemed so unnecessary. But according to the Secretary of Homeland Security at the time, Michael Chertoff, it wasn't.
because Operation Wagon Train was targeted at a massive use of document fraud to support illegal work in the workplace. The investigation began in February of this year. The evidence we uncovered indicates that hundreds of SWIFT workers illegally assumed the identities of U.S. citizens using stolen or fraudulently acquired Social Security numbers and other identity documents, which they used to get jobs at SWIFT facilities.
Apparently, Swift & Company was a giant hotbed of identity theft. Some workers had been using the social security numbers and birth certificates of unsuspecting American citizens to gain employment. No doubt a serious offense, and one that should be actively pursued. But how many of the 1,282 workers who were arrested on administrative immigration violations were also charged with identity theft-related crimes?
Of the 1,282 workers who were arrested on administrative immigration violations, approximately 65 were also charged with identity theft-related charges. Those are criminal charges. 65 across six states. That's a number that kind of undermines the Department of Homeland Security's stated purpose of the coordinated raids and fails to justify such elevated actions.
Later, the ICE director at the time, Julie Myers, offered some additional insight. Quote, Fair point, except no charges were filed against Swift for hiring illegal workers because the company had acted by the book, even going so far as to participate in the Bush administration's basic pilot program that checked the validity of social security numbers for prospective employees.
In fact, Swift and Company had been conducting more thorough checks of its Latino hires years earlier, but was slapped with a fine by the Justice Department for digging too deep and running afoul of anti-discrimination laws. The company also knew that raids were coming and never tipped off its employees per request from the feds. What else were they supposed to do?
A year after the raids, after struggling to replace the 10% of its workforce that had been lost, Swift & Company was sold to a Brazilian firm, and many of the illegal workers who were deported had already snuck back into the United States and found different jobs, back to square one. So remind me again, what was the point? Why did this happen? Robert McCormick, an immigration attorney in Greeley, Colorado, told The Nation magazine why he thought that this had happened. Quote,
This is indeed a declaration of war on the immigrant community. This is about Republicans trying to appease their core block of supporters. Yeah, some people got a big kick out of this, but I think most Americans were revolted by it. Here in town, a lot of people have said they want no part of it. And others, I assure you, are going to wind up very ashamed of it. Operation Wagon Train and the swift raids ushered the United States into a new era of immigration enforcement.
A new era that was less about law and order, and more about politics and pandering. Less about negotiation, and more about punishment. More raids and more violence, with no solutions to the underlying causes. The broken system remained in place, and the worst was yet to come. A massive immigration raid on a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa devastates a small community and uncovers more than just undocumented workers on this episode of Swindled.
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Rolling into Postville, with its fewer than 2,500 people, it seems like any other small eastern Iowa town. But a look down Lawler Street, with its Mexican restaurant, kosher grocery, nearby Guatemalan store, and more, reveals why it's called hometown to the world. Diversity is probably the last thing you expect to find in northeastern Iowa, but it did exist in a small town named Postville.
thanks to a unique resident business named AgriProcessors. AgriProcessors is a kosher meatpacking plant that started in 1987. And they first of all had many people from the Ukraine, from Russia working there, and then gradually people from Mexico and Guatemala came in. Not only did the low-skilled jobs at the slaughterhouse attract immigrants looking for opportunity,
But because of the kosher nature of the business, Postville became home to a relatively large community of Hasidic Jews, many of which had come from New York in the late 80s after a well-respected grocery store owner from Brooklyn named Aaron Raboshkin purchased the dormant slaughterhouse that eventually became Agri-Processors, which eventually became Postville's largest employer.
Aaron's son, Shalom Rabashkin, was placed in charge of the factory's daily operations in 1992. Shalom and his other family members that worked at the plant ensured that agri-processors adhered to the laws of kosher outlined in the Torah. For one, only land animals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves are permitted for consumption. That means no meat from hares, pigs, or camels.
And two, the Torah forbids the consumption of meat that is "torn by beast" which means the animals must be killed in a ritual slaughter by a pious Jew of good character, usually a rabbi. With a large razor-sharp knife, the rabbi makes a single cut across the throat of the animal which is supposed to result in instant death and allow it to bleed out without any unnecessary suffering. Results may vary.
Agri-Processors was successful almost immediately. Every week the factory was shipping more than 1.5 million pounds of cattle, chicken, lamb, and turkey to grocery stores across the U.S. The company became the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the nation. Annual sales topped $300 million, accounting for more than 60% of the entire niche market. As a result, the town of Postville was thriving.
Thanks to the Roboshkins and agri-processors, the population of Postville had almost doubled, seemingly overnight. There were a few growing pains, as to be expected, in such a sudden and drastic clash of cultures. But over time, the native Iowans, the Guatemalans, the Mexicans, and the Orthodox Jews were embraced by the community and made themselves at home. Iowa proved to be the ideal location for a slaughterhouse.
The land was cheap, so were transportation costs, the cows were nearby, and there were fewer unions and government watchdogs looking over your shoulder. However, in 2004, agri-processors did land on the radar of one animal rights group, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA.
An undercover investigator for PETA had infiltrated AgriProcesses for seven weeks and released a secret video recording of the company's supposedly more humane, kosher way of butchering. Again, I'm warning you, this is not an easy listen. In the four-minute video, which was released on PETA's website in December 2004,
Cattle are seen stumbling around in their own blood with their throats cut, slamming their heads into the wall after being dumped onto the kill floor by the restraining device that held them in place for the ritualistic slice. You can see the cows attempt to bellow as factory workers begin ripping out their tracheas and esophagi with meat hooks and knives. Some of the animals remained obviously conscious, desperately trying to stand up for almost three minutes while the dismemberment was taking place.
One especially large piece of shit factory worker is shown in the video kicking blood in the face of a dying cow. These acts of extreme cruelty caught the attention of rabbis, scholars, and animal welfare experts. Even Dr. Temple Grandin, the world's foremost expert on slaughter methods, told Iowa's Globe Gazette, quote,
I couldn't believe it. I've been in at least 30 other kosher slaughter plants and I had never seen that kind of procedure done before. I've seen kosher slaughter really done right. So the problem here is not kosher slaughter. The problem here is a plant that is doing everything wrong. They can do wrong. All the while, the independent in-house federal inspectors who could have interfered were asleep at the wheel.
Literally. An internal report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that government inspectors at agri-processors had been found sleeping at work, playing video games, and accepting meat bribes from plant managers to look the other way. Ultimately, the USDA determined that agri-processors had engaged in "acts of inhumane slaughter" and ordered the plant to immediately put a stop to certain procedures.
But other than that slap on the wrist and the boycott of Roboshkin meat from a small group of conservative Jews, nothing came of the controversy. Nobody was fired. Nobody was meaningfully disciplined. Business continued as usual, for a while at least. Less than a year and a half later, even more disturbing revelations about agri-processors surfaced.
On May 26, 2006, the Jewish Daily Forward published a report detailing the horrors of the working conditions for the humans at the plant. Immigrant employees were working 10-12 hour shifts, 6 days a week, for as little as $6.25 an hour, the lowest pay of any slaughterhouse in the nation, not to mention a complete lack of health care options.
But that doesn't mean there weren't career growth opportunities available at agri-processors. Au contraire. For better shifts and higher pay, supervisors were open to accepting bribes. Female workers had additional options. They were given the opportunity to provide sexual favors to their bosses, which would often take place at work in the supervisor's office. Which, to be honest, doesn't sound very kosher to me.
especially after it was revealed that many of the workers at the plant were underage, some as young as 14 years old. Agri-processors apparently had no qualms hiring children, giving them very little in terms of safety training, and then tossing them the keys to the meat grinder, which to no surprise resulted in numerous and significant injuries. Some of the workers were missing fingers, some were missing hands, others entire arms,
and yet many of them returned to the factory floor because as one employee told the forward, he was "hoping to collect enough to pay off his debts back home." Outside of the factory, the workers were living in squalor, huddled together in mobile homes and tiny apartments owned by the Ryboshkin family that featured plumbing and heating that was non-operational.
Another perk of working for AgriProcessors is that the company provided access to automobiles that the employees could basically rent to own. Of course, by the time the note was paid off, the employee had paid hundreds, if not thousands of dollars more than the vehicle was worth. But who's counting?
The foreword compared the environment and agri-processors to the world Upton Sinclair wrote about in his seminal work, The Jungle, and referred to the semi-indentured employees as, quote, the impoverished humans who do the factory's dirty work. Mark Gray, a professor at the University of Northern Iowa, expressed his concerns about the working conditions at the plant to the publication, quote,
The bottom line here is that I'm not sure these devout Jews are using Jewish ethics to treat their workers. And the truth was that those workers had nowhere to turn and no one to talk to about the mistreatment and exploitation because a large percentage of them were undocumented. Efforts to unionize had failed due to fears of being fired or deported.
and a little dissuasion from Postville Mayor Robert Penrod, who allegedly accepted some kind of payment from Shalom Raboshkin, certainly didn't help their cause. On March 20, 2008, the Iowa Occupational Health and Safety Agency cited agri-processors with 39 new health and safety violations for the plant's poor working conditions. The proposed fine for all 39 violations totaled $180,000.
For a company of its size, the penalty was the equivalent of a minor traffic citation. But AgriProcessors wasn't entirely in the clear. That same month, the Social Security Administration delivered a stack of no-match letters to AgriProcessors, alerting the company's managers that the social security numbers reported by some of their employees did not match the people they were actually paying.
To put it another way, the federal government was aware that there was a high probability that AgriProcessors was employing illegal and underage workers. What happened next was something that the town of Postville would never be able to forget. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
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For years and years, meatpacking plants like AgriProcessors have been hiring thousands of undocumented workers. It's been one of the worst kept secrets in the state. All the prospective employee needed to do was show up at the employment window with a fake social security card, and he'd be working on the kill floor within hours. Politicians, managers, owners, workers, locals, all knew this.
The only way the meatpacking industry could operate in Iowa was this way, since fewer and fewer Iowans wanted to work for minimum wage, doing such backbreaking work with such few benefits, if any. The question wasn't whether the raids were going to happen, it was when. For the 800 employees of the agri-processors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, Monday, May 12, 2008 was supposed to be just another day.
show up to work, punch the time clock, butcher some animals, go home to the family, have some dinner, maybe watch a little TV, put the kids to bed, fall asleep, and then do it all over again the next day. But at around 10 a.m., the townspeople of Postville saw something they were not accustomed to seeing in their neck of the woods. Black Hawk helicopters circling above,
Vans and buses containing 600 ICE agents outfitted with combat fatigues and automatic weapons speeding down the road. Almost 400 employees of agri-processors were led out of the plant into waiting buses.
290 Guatemalans, 93 Mexicans, 2 Israelis, and 4 Ukrainians were transported to the fairgrounds at the National Cattle Congress in nearby Waterloo where a makeshift courtroom had been constructed on the dance floor of the Electric Park Ballroom. In groups of 10, the detainees appeared in front of a judge where they faced charges related to identity theft.
Most pleaded guilty and were sentenced to five months in a U.S. prison before deportation. Juveniles, adults with disabilities, and single mothers were released back into post-fill with ankle monitors tracking their every move. It was the largest single immigration raid in the country. 700 warrants, 300 arrests. Agri-processors, a kosher meatpacking plant, lost three-quarters of its workforce.
And tiny Postville, Iowa. Postville, Iowa was no longer the hometown to the world. Postville, Iowa was now home to the single largest immigration raid in United States history.
This morning at 10:00 a.m., agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with assistance from federal and state agencies, entered AgriProcessors, Inc. in Postville, Iowa, as part of an ongoing investigation involving employees at AgriProcessors, Inc. Those agents are executing a criminal search warrant for evidence relating to aggravated identity theft,
fraudulent use of social security numbers and other crimes, as well as a civil search warrant for people illegally in the United States. Families of the deportees were left without answers, without spouses, without parents. Those that weren't too afraid to show their faces in public found solace at their houses of worship where they were provided a hot meal and an opportunity to plead with their God.
Sister Mary McCauley from the St. Bridget Catholic Church in Postville was one of the first to arrive at the scene of the raid that day and one of the first to open her doors to those affected. I always say to people, we saw that evening humanity at its best and we also saw it at its worst because we saw what happens when the law of the land does not keep up with the need of the land. And so we saw families separated. We saw people separated.
fearing that they would never again see their mother or father or espouse, thinking they will never again see their spouse or little children. For others, like Dawn Hernandez, who was inspired by the raid to run for Postville City Council,
there are some images from that day that are simply unshakable. There was a five-year-old little girl, she was a kindergartner, and it was her birthday that day. She had on her little happy birthday hat and her little backpack on her back and was just sitting there. And that's the most painful memory for me to this day, even though it wasn't family, just that image of a five-year-old child not knowing if she had parents to go home to on her birthday. The entire community was in shock. While some Postville residents stayed behind to lend a helping hand,
Others took to the streets to voice their frustration and concern. ...for the raid that took place today in Postville. The National Cattle Congress behind me is the intake point. Everyone arrested is brought here to get their photograph taken and get fingerprinted. Now to show their dislike of today's events, about a
100 people gathered with signs and flags around 8 o'clock this evening. What was supposed to be a silent vigil quickly turned into a very loud, but for the most part, very peaceful protest. Protesters chanted things like, ICE GO HOME, WE NEED OUR PARENTS, AND SHAME ON YOU. We saw people of all ages out here tonight voicing their frustration at what they call a misconception that all illegal immigrants are Mexican or...
Although support for the undocumented workers was felt throughout the entire community, when the dust settled, it became clear that not everyone in Postville shared that opinion. This is a local radio host, Jeff Abbas. But we were getting emails along the lines of, you can't expect to bring these people in from another country, put them together, put them all to work at the plant, and then
walk down the street together singing Kumbaya, threatening emails, you know, you keep feeding these people, we're going to come in and burn that place down. And the sad part of that is it's my generation that made it so intolerant and so, this word is horrible and I hate to use it, but ignorant is basically what it is because there is an ignorance of the world around you. And until you can become aware of that world around you and your effect on that world by the actions that you either do or do not do,
You're affecting everybody. But even those who were in support of the raid could not ignore the toll that the workers' absence was taking on the city of Postville. Businesses were closing. Homes were foreclosing. Population was dwindling. Poverty was skyrocketing. And property values were plummeting. We can't even measure the amount of damage that we see. When I sit across the table from people, people that have been used to working
for everything they had, or all of a sudden have to sit across the table from someone who has to give them a handout. I can't believe that a government or a government agency that can create this much damage and not really be concerned about it. Many residents of Postville point their finger at the federal government for destroying their peaceful little town, but there was plenty of blame to go around.
This is Father Paul Outerkirk, a retired priest from St. Bridget's, discussing the role that the Roboshkins and agri-processors played in Postville's demise. This has not created anything good for the community. It's created division, hurt, harm. It was the dirtiest, unsafest plant I've ever been in. We're dealing with them. We've seen the kid without the three fingers and the one with his hand missing.
Shalom Raboshkin had his defenders as well.
In fact, two weeks after the raid, a pro-agri-processors website named Postville Voices was created to defend the company's hiring practices, to set the record straight, to counteract some of the false narratives about the Roboshkins that the media was circulating.
A few weeks later, it was discovered that Shalom Ryboshkin's 24-year-old son, Getzel, had created the website without publishing his name. Shalom's wife, Leah Ryboshkin, also remained by her husband's side.
To tell you the truth, basically this whole story has destroyed him, has wiped his name off the face of this earth. He's destroyed my kids. I mean, this whole story has destroyed our kids. When you read the media reports, you're like...
Is this the same person that I've been living with for the last 28 years? But it's really hard. It's really hard. We're doing the best we could do, you know. We're trying to stay focused and instead of, you know, just lying in bed and groping around in the misery of it. The whole business, I mean, we have nothing financially. His name is Mud. What else do we need to experience here? The stuff that has happened has brought a lot of pain to a lot of people.
And our hope is that we can pick up the pieces and move on. The full story will eventually get out there. And through it all, AgriProcessors continued operating normally, or at least they tried to. At first, the company attempted to replace their half-deported workforce through a Waterloo staffing firm. But when the agency's workers reported back about the numerous safety hazards they had encountered at the facility, they were pulled from duty.
At one point in September 2008, Aaron Raboshkin, the patriarch and owner of AgriProcessors, even found a replacement for his son Shalom as CEO of the company.
But even then, the business and the town continued to struggle. The Postville mayor says the agri-processors plant needs workers in order to stay open, and if it closes, he fears Postville will become a ghost town. Nearly every Hispanic business in that community was closed down yesterday, and owners told us their customers have simply disappeared. That could mean many of them aren't going to open again today.
People usually pack this diner here for lunch, but workers say the owner didn't even see a point of opening. And then, less than a month later... The largest employer in this small yet diverse Iowa town has been forced to file for bankruptcy protection, blaming its financial problems on a May immigration raid on its Iowa plant in which nearly 400 people were arrested.
Not only did agri-processors as a business come to an end in October 2008, so too did the investigation that spawned the initial raid. On October 30th, Shalom Raboshkin was arrested for intentionally helping illegal workers obtain false documentation. He was charged with harboring undocumented immigrants and aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft.
Shalom's arrest happened just a day after the Iowa Labor Commissioner fined agri-processors $10 million for wage violations, such as shorting workers' pay and not paying overtime. An undercover agent had actually worked at agri-processors for months before the raid.
He or she witnessed how the company helped the undocumented workers avoid detection, such as paying them from a different bank account and avoiding use of security clearance items such as biometric devices. The informant also reported an incident where a supervisor at the plant had duct taped the eyes of one undocumented worker and hit him repeatedly with a meat hook. That worker told the informant that he would not report the abuse for fear of jeopardizing his job.
Another witness, a former supervisor at AgriProcessors, told authorities that he had lost his job after discovering a meth lab in the plant. Of course, Shalom Roboshkin claimed ignorance of every accusation lobbied at the company he had been in charge of overseeing for the past decade. He claimed the undocumented and underage workers provided the false documentation when they were hired, and those safety violations and workplace injuries just the grim reality of a dirty industry.
Shalom Raboshkin was released on $1 million bond the same day he was arrested. He walked out of jail with a tracking device around his ankle. Raboshkin was to stay put in Northern Iowa until he had his day in court. But soon, none of the current allegations would even matter. The bankruptcy of AgriProcessors had set off an entirely different chain of events. First Bank Business Capital had loaned the company $35 million dollars
And when the news of AgriProcessor's bankruptcy reached the ears of the right suit, the bank came to collect its principal. One little problem, there was nothing to collect. Millions of dollars at AgriProcessor's was unaccounted for. In fact, the collateral that served as the basis for the loan from First Bank did not even exist. Fake accounts receivables, fake bills of lading, fraudulent inventory,
two sets of books, separate payrolls. The entire financial side of the business had been operated like an elaborate shell game in order to inflate the value of the company to qualify for additional loans. Money from legitimate invoices was used to pay fake invoices. Cash was funneled through secret bank accounts and laundered through separate Roboshkin ventures in Postville, like the kosher grocery store and Jewish elementary school.
And even though AgriProcessors never missed an interest payment during the entire life of the loan, prosecutors were alleging that the bank suffered a loss of more than $26 million as a result of the scheme. Messing with human lives is one thing, but playing with the bank's money? That's just asking for trouble. Shalom Raboshkin was arrested again on November 13, 2008, on 91 federal charges including bank fraud.
He was denied bail because the arresting officers had discovered a bag in his possession that contained $20,000 cash, silver coins, and his passport. Taking into consideration Israel's law of return, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jew upon immigration, the judge had determined that Shalom was a flight risk. That ruling was eventually overruled due to concerns that the law of return could be used to deny bail to every Jew who appears before a judge
So instead, Shalom Raboshkin was released on $500,000 bond with tight restrictions. This trial was scheduled for a year later in November 2009. This is Shalom's attorney.
There was no purpose other than publicity in arresting Mr. Roboshkin precipitously. And Agri Processors is confident that when all the facts are known and presented in a public trial, the company and Mr. Roboshkin will be vindicated.
Thanks, Phil. Back to our breaking news tonight. A jury has reached a verdict in the case of former Iowa kosher slaughterhouse manager Shalom Rabashkin, who has been charged with 91 counts of financial fraud. Action News anchor Brian Allen joins us live on the phone. Brian. Katie, it is 86 guilty verdicts out of 91 possible charges of federal financial and bank fraud.
Federal prosecutors made an argument, 91 charges worth, that Rabashkin had engaged in bank fraud, financial fraud, that he had violated federal payment laws requiring payments be made to cattle producers within 24 hours. Again, the verdict, 86 out of 91 charges, guilty verdicts.
On November 12, 2009, Shalom Raboshkin was convicted of 86 counts of federal financial fraud charges related to the first bank loan. However, Raboshkin would never have to answer for the host of federal immigration charges levied against he and his father's company because those charges were dismissed after a jury found him guilty of the financial crimes.
That also meant that former workers of agri-processors would never get a chance to testify in court about the alleged abuses they had suffered under Mr. Hrabowskian's watch. However, state charges related to child labor violations were still pending, so there was still a chance that Shalom Hrabowskian would be punished for his crimes against humanity. Not that it would affect his time spent behind bars. He was already facing a very lengthy sentence.
1200 years. Yikes. Even I must admit that seems a bit egregious. After Shalom Roboshkin's conviction, a campaign began to limit his time in prison.
Six former United States Attorneys General, as many as 17 former U.S. prosecutors, as well as dozens of sitting and former members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, including Nancy Pelosi, wrote letters to Judge Linda K. Reed, urging her to exercise a sentence that was, quote, One of Raboshkin's attorneys, Eliza Lewin, pleaded their client's case, quote,
The prosecution rejected the notion that Shalom Raboshkin was a sympathetic figure
Bob Tig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, told ABC News, We're seeing thousands of emails. We've seen recent letters by former congressmen. There's an insistent thread of misinformation that runs through all of it.
Looking at the facts of this case and then applying those guidelines to those facts, it appears his advisory guideline range would be in a range of life in prison just because the facts are so egregious. Judge Linda Reid agreed. On June 22, 2010, Shalom Mordecai Raboshkin was sentenced to 27 years in prison and was ordered to pay back nearly $27 million in restitution.
The 27-year sentence was two years longer than prosecutors had asked for. Rabozhkin began serving that sentence on August 3, 2010, with the scheduled release of some time in 2033. Upon his release, Shalom Rabozhkin would be 75 years old. Rabozhkin's defense team and supporters were devastated with the outcome.
For the first time in the history of the United States, somebody was criminally prosecuted under the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. And that's a reason for sending somebody off to jail and seeing that he gets 27 years in jail. It's crazy. In my opinion, this is the second raid on Postville. The first one destroyed the community. And now by giving him a sentence that has absolutely no relation to the truth, they've reopened the wounds.
They've divided us again because now you stand up for Shalom. Some people want to think you're standing up for somebody who broke the law. This is Shalom's wife, Leah. Our reaction is outrage. Our reaction is why does Shalom need to be treated differently than any other person in the United States of America?
Why, unlike other white-collar criminals, does he deserve to get a light sentence? I'll let the U.S. Attorney's Office answer that one. It's hard to get up to a 27-year sentence for white-collar crime. It is very difficult. And the only way he did that was by committing a $26 million fraud, having a sophisticated fraud scheme,
However, the case did take a while.
A weird turn about six months later. Yeah, actually after Mr. Rubashkin was sentenced, Freedom of Information Act documents came to light that showed that the judge in the case had met with prosecutors, with Homeland Security for seven months leading up to the raid. Of course, that's alarming. On January 3rd, 2011,
New evidence surfaced that Judge Linda Reid participated in numerous meetings with prosecutors before the raid had even taken place, as if she had helped plan the massive bust herself, and then for her to preside over the trial of the man she helped arrest. Not a good look, to say the least. It was also discovered that not only did Judge Reid's husband, Michael Figginshaw, own stock in two of the largest private prison corporations in the United States,
it was revealed that Judge Reed's husband had purchased that stock just five days before 400 illegal workers were arrested in Postville. With this new highly concerning evidence in hand, Shalom Raboshkin's lawyers appealed for a new trial. But on September 16th, 2011, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals denied his motion. Things were looking bleak for Shalom Raboshkin.
Over the next several years, his lawyers continued to fight for an appeal but were blocked at every turn.
And just as soon as all hope was lost, something happened that nobody saw coming. The Fox News decision desk has called Pennsylvania for Donald Trump. This means that Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. As soon as Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election,
a man named Charles Kushner began lobbying for the release of Shalom Raboshkin. If you don't know, Charles Kushner is the father of Jared Kushner, the weird robot guy that's married to Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka. Charles Kushner is also a convicted felon. In 2005, Charles served 14 months in prison on charges of witness tampering, tax evasion, and illegal campaign contributions. Charles is also an observant Jew.
And he credits the Chabad Lubavitch movement in which the Rabashkin family has tremendous influence for helping him with his religious obligations such as kosher meals while he was locked away. Finally, with Trump's election, the right pieces were in place to free Shalom. And anybody that knows anything about Donald Trump knows that he will do anything for daddy's little girl.
On December 20th, 2017, on the last day of Hanukkah, President Trump commuted the 27-year prison sentence of Shalom Raboshkin.
A statement released by the president clarified that his action was, quote, "not a presidential pardon."
It does not vacate Mr. Raboshkin's conviction, and it leaves in place a term of supervised release and a substantial restitution obligation, which were also part of Mr. Raboshkin's sentence. Nevertheless, Shalom Raboshkin was free to go home.
As for those state charges of child labor violations that were still pending after Roboskin's federal conviction, well,
Shalom Raboshkin is not guilty. A Blackhawk County jury returned that verdict today on dozens of charges of child labor violations. The state trial against the former manager of the Agri-Processors Meatpacking Plant lasted more than a month. The jury returned not guilty verdicts for all 67 counts against Raboshkin. Of course, Shalom Raboshkin already found guilty on federal fraud charges, but then to have all of these child labor law, the state case, all just a big acquittal.
Several low-level managers and supervisors from AgriProcessors did serve short sentences for certain labor violations and document fraud. But in the end, it seems nobody suffered more damage than the people doing the dirty work on the factory floor, along with the community that supported them. Back in Postville, Iowa, things are slowly returning to normal. A company named Agristar bought the old AgriProcessors plant. Jobs are coming back. The local economy is recovering.
But the townspeople won't ever be able to forget about the raid that day in 2008. And they can't help but watch as the federal government continues to treat the symptom of undocumented work rather than the disease that causes it. It should work where the job is attractive enough to employ people locally. That's how it should work.
It'll never be that way because the American public wants cheap products. As long as that desire for cheap products is there and cheap food, then the need for cheap labor is going to be there as well. And the only way we're going to get cheap labor is to exploit those people who are here without a voice. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard.
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