U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose told members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday that she wasn’t a key decision maker regarding the May 2008 immigration raid in Postville, Iowa.

Last month President Barack Obama nominated Stephanie Rose, U.S. attorney for Iowa’s northern district, for a federal judgeship in Iowa’s southern district. If confirmed, Rose would become the first woman to serve as a district judge in Iowa’s southern district. Today the Des Moines Register published an opinion piece urging U.S. senators not to “rubber-stamp” Rose’s nomination.  

I expected 2009 to be a relatively quiet year in Iowa politics, but was I ever wrong.

The governor’s race heated up, state revenues melted down, key bills lived and died during the legislative session, and the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Varnum v Brien became one of this state’s major events of the decade.

After the jump I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from January through June 2009. Any comments about the year that passed are welcome in this thread.

Although I wrote a lot of posts last year, there were many important stories I didn’t manage to cover. I recommend reading Iowa Independent’s compilation of “Iowa’s most overlooked and under reported stories of 2009,” as well as that blog’s review of “stories that will continue to impact Iowa in 2010.”

Yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Stephanie Rose and Nick Klinefeldt to be the U.S. Attorneys in Iowa’s northern and southern districts, respectively. Senator Tom Harkin recommended Rose and Klinefeldt for those positions in March, and President Barack Obama nominated them in September.

Some defense and immigration attorneys criticized Rose’s nomination because of her role in last year’s Postville prosecutions. Harkin and Senator Chuck Grassley defended Rose’s qualifications for the U.S. attorney position.

I still think the Senate Judiciary Committee should have thoroughly examined the treatment of Postville detainees before voting to confirm Rose. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in May that “federal prosecutors have inappropriately used aggravated identity theft laws to prosecute undocumented workers.” Most of the fast-track Postville prosecutions were identity-theft cases. I sincerely hope that under Rose’s leadership, the U.S. Attorney’s office in the northern district will treat alleged illegal immigrants more fairly in the future.

Main Justice posted a short bio of Klinefeldt here and a short bio of Rose here. Those pages include links to the nominees’ full Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaires (pdf files).

Iowans Nick Klinefeldt and Stephanie Rose were among three U.S. attorney nominees the Senate Judiciary Committee approved today by unanimous consent, the Main Justice blog reported. Their nominations still need to be confirmed by the full Senate, but that is likely to be a formality. In March, Senator Tom Harkin recommended Klinefeldt for the U.S. attorney position in Iowa’s southern district and Rose for the position in Iowa’s northern district. President Barack Obama nominated the two last month.

Main Justice posted a short bio of Klinefeldt here and a short bio of Rose here. Those pages include links to the nominees’ full Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaires (pdf files).

A Bleeding Heartland reader who watched today’s committee meeting tells me that Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy asked if there were any objections to the nominations, and none were raised. Senator Chuck Grassley told his colleagues that he “had interviewed both Iowa nominees –he praised Harkin’s selections and both nominees–he asked that a statement he prepared be made part of the record but did not read the statement.”

I expected the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Rose about her role in last year’s prosecutions of hundreds of undocumented workers from Postville. Harkin has defended her on the grounds that officials senior to Rose made the key policy decisions. Even so, Rose should have been asked about the cases and how they might have been handled differently. As things stand, I agree with critics who say promoting Rose without asking serious questions “would constitute a stamp of approval on the Postville debacle.”

Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language court interpreter, has spoken and written at length about injustice he observed in the aftermath of the Postville raid:

Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.

In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

Click here to watch a video interview of Camayd-Freixas or download his 14-page essay about his experience with the Postville detainees. Rose may have the skills to be a good U.S. attorney, but it bothers me that the Senate Judiciary Committee has just indicated that they have no concerns or objections about last year’s events in Iowa. That’s a bad message to send to U.S. attorneys everywhere.

A full six months after Senator Tom Harkin recommended Stephanie Rose and Nick Klinefeldt for the U.S. attorney positions in Iowa’s northern and southern districts, President Barack Obama sent Rose’s and Klinefeldt’s names to the Senate for confirmation. Radio Iowa posted the September 25 press release from the White House.

I don’t know when the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up these nominations. Some advocates have objected to Rose’s nomination because of civil liberties and due process violations in the wake of last year’s immigration raid in Postville. Senators should thoroughly explore Rose’s role in the Postville prosecutions during her confirmation hearing. Harkin’s office has defended Rose’s record and her work with the detainees from Postville.

The nomination of Stephanie Rose to be the next United States Attorney in the Northern Distric of Iowa is an issue that needs sunshine.  We should all care what about happened at the Postville Prosecutions and that Assistant United States Attorney Stephanie Rose played  a central role in the prosecutions. We should all care because never in the history of the United States have there been federal prosecutions conducted like the ones that occurred stemming from the Postville ICE raid.  

We believe that before Stephanie Rose  is confirmed as a United States Attorney, the public has a right to know what kind of prosecutor she will be. A careful public review of her record is essential. It is critical that the public be able to determine what her views are regarding the Postville prosecutions as she has been quoted as calling Postville ” a ton of good work.”  

We deserve to know if  Rose ever raised her voice in opposition to the Northern District’s use of coercive prosecutorial tactics against the Postville workers?  Even Privately?

To date no one has been held accountable for the due process and civil liberties violations of that occurred in Postville prosecutions No one is asserting that Stephanie Rose should be held solely accountable for the Postville prosecutions. However, there is no doubt that the Postville prosecutions were the most important cases to occur in the Northern District of Iowa since Ms Rose has been employed in the office.  The fact that the cases occurred while she was in a leadership position and “played a central role in the raid and prosecution” is an important part of her record that requires careful examination.  

Even if it is true that Stephanie Rose played no direct policy role in the Postville prosecutions, she was still acting according to her oath as an officer of the court and as a federal prosecutor. Ethically and morally, her hands were not tied once she was given her  Postville prosecution assignment to negotiate the “exploding” seven-day plea agreements with attorneys representing the workers.  Even if the “raid was initiated by Washington,” or  the prosecution designed by other prosecutors in her own office,  as Chief Deputy of the Criminal Division and as an Assistant United States Attorney, Ms Rose still had made ethical duties. It was her responsibility to carefully review and scrutinize each prosecution for any ethical or constitutional due process problems. The ethical and constitutional issues created by the prosecutions were numerous and should have been obvious to her. Either Ms. Rose was not able to understand the numerous defects in the prosecutions,  she chose to overlook the defects  or she just plain failed to see any problems with the prosecutions as executed. Any one of these conclusions raises serious questions about her judgment and fitness to be an United States Attorney at this point in her career.  

It really concerns us that no serious  reporting has covered Stephanie  Rose’s   professional record and in particular her role in the Postville prosecutions.   Senator Harkin touts her as leader but  completely fails to hold her accountable for any thing bad that has happened in the  Northern District office during her tenure.  Once Harkin nominated Rose, he decided he would support her and does not want to lose face.

The Postville Prosecutions are arguably the most egregious use of federal prosecutorial power this century. At the time of the Postville Prosecutions, Rose was not a low ranking member of the office but was in a leadership position as third in charge in the office for criminal prosecutions behind only United States Attorney Dummermuth and Chief Deputy Richard Murphy. Recently,   Stephanie Rose was asked about her role at Postville. She defended the raid and prosecutions saying “executing the massive operation required amazing effort and a ton of good work.”  (See Waterloo Courier article from   April 5, 2009 .)

The plea agreements negotiated by Stephanie Rose were calculated to take advantage of the workers worry about families they had been supporting with their wages. Almost all workers were represented by lawyers with little or no immigration expertise that were forced to represent on average 17 workers during a very short period of time. Clearly this was premeditated and calculated to force the workers to waive all rights and submit to the criminal charges and then deportation after serving five months in prison.  Stephanie Rose is apparently blind to the fact that the Postville workers were begging to be released to go support their families in Guatemala .   Her “ton of good work” really amounted to ramming these cases through before anyone could raise an effective defense.  Her record at best, even without the Postville Prosecutions,  was mediocre, her role in the prosecutions is more than troubling but her unqualified support for the Postville Prosecutions and  ICE raid  tactics even with the benefit of hindsight makes her nomination a complete disgrace.

It seems more than implausible that Stephanie Rose while operating in the position of Chief Deputy of the Criminal Division had no clue that the Postville prosecutions were being planned by her colleagues in the Iowa office until just before the ICE raid.  It also seems implausible that she would have no prior knowledge of the ICE Postville investigation nor that criminal complaints and criminal arrest warrants for 697 Postville workers that were being prepared and sought by her office some 30 days before the ICE raid. Either Rose was involved in the Postville prosecutions to a greater extent than she has being willing to acknowledge or she was displaying that leadership trick of “putting her head in the sand.” Neither of these conclusions is what we would expect of a United States Attorney candidate.

Even more importantly is what she did after she found out about the prosecution plan-did she ever raise any concerns? When? With whom? Why a year later is she quoted as calling the Postville ICE raid and Prosecutions “a ton of good work?”

Even if it is true that Stephanie Rose played no direct policy role in the Postville prosecutions, she was still acting according to her oath as an officer of the court and as a federal prosecutor. Ethically and morally, her hands were not tied once she was given her Postville prosecution assignment to negotiate the “exploding” seven-day plea agreements with attorneys representing the workers.  Even if the “raid was initiated by Washington,” or  other  prosecution designed by other prosecutors in her own office,  as Chief Deputy of the Criminal Division and as an Assistant United States Attorney,  Rose still had ethical duties. It was her responsibility to carefully review and scrutinize each prosecution for any ethical or constitutional due process problems once she became involved as an officer of the court.

The ethical and constitutional issues created by the Postville prosecutions were numerous and should have been obvious to her. Stephanie Rose was not able to understand the numerous defects in the prosecutions, she chose to overlook the defects or she just plain failed to see any problems with the prosecutions as executed. Any one of these conclusions raises serious questions about her judgment and fitness to be a United States Attorney at this point in her career.  

Why not clear up the issue of Stephanie Rose’s role and release all emails and memos that describe her role?  Likewise, she should volunteer to answer questions under oath about her Postville role and her views on basic criminal justice issues. AG Holder certainly made his records and emails  available to the public during his vetting. Why is Harkin keeping us in the dark?

Rose has refused to meet with the leaders  of Postville to talk about the case-what is she hiding?

Minimally,  she helped railroad the least powerful people in Iowa and now that they are gone no one but a few in the clergy seem to care how outrageous they were treated. This is being swept under the rug -which is what Harkin and Rose want to happen.  Please help shine sunlight on this issue.

Iowa deserves better! There must be better attorneys in Iowa other than an attorney without a cloud over her head…

One year after federal immigration agents raided the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants, prayer vigils are planned in Postville and in at least 50 other cities across the country:

“Postville will one day be remembered as a dark chapter in U.S. history that served as a catalyst for reforming our nation’s immigration system into something we can take pride in again,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan, pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington.

[…]

Ever since the raid, pro-immigration groups, including the Catholic church and other religious and political lobbies, have used it to illustrate what they argue is the basic unfairness of punishing illegal immigrants seeking a better life.

To make their point, today they are staging a prayer vigil, news conferences, a blessing for the town and a symbolic march to the Agriprocessors plant.

“We are working hard to raise the national consciousness about the devastation of this raid,” said Sister Mary McCauley. “We are calling for complete immigration reform and an end to the raids. … We can never be proud of what happened here.”

I’M for Iowa sent out an e-mail yesterday about the vigils:

People are asked to gather at St. Bridget’s Church at 4:00 p.m. for a prayer vigil followed by a march to the Agriprocessors plant where the raid took place. Text for the prayer vigil is available for adaptation for local use.

If you aren’t able to travel to Postville, there may be a vigil in your home town, since May 12th has been declared a nationwide day of remembrance to promote awareness of the devastating effects of raids such as this. In Des Moines, Catholic Charities’ Social Justice Consortium will hold an interfaith prayer service at 3:30 at St. Ambrose Church. Contact Sol Varisco at svarisco@dmdiocese.org.

More links are after the jump.

Lynda Waddington posted an interesting story at Iowa Independent about a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling announced yesterday. The decision may become an issue at confirmation hearings if President Barack Obama takes Senator Tom Harkin’s advice and nominates Stephanie Rose for U.S. attorney in Iowa’s Northern District.

More on this story is after the jump.

Shameless plug for my Iowa labor blog-

Postville and The Shame of Iowa
By jimmyhiggins

The Des Moines Register reported yesterday on Lt. Gov. Patty Judge’s visit to Postville, where the shutdown of the Agriprocessors plant has thrown the community into turmoil.

rest at

http://jimmyhiggins.wordpress.com/2008/12/06/postville-and-the-shame-of-iowa/

Congressman Bruce Braley has been trying for months to find out how much the May 12 immigration raid in Postville cost the government. Today his office released this statement:

Braley Gets Answers from ICE on Cost of Postville Raid, Receives Full Accounting of Initial Costs

Washington,  DC -In response to his formal request, Rep. Bruce Braley (D, Iowa) received a full accounting of the initial costs incurred by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the May 12, 2008 raid at the Agriprocessors Plant in Postville, Iowa.  Braley has sent repeated letters to ICE requesting a full accounting of the costs to taxpayers associated with the raid at the Agriprocessors plant in  Postville , Iowa .

“It’s important that my constituents in  Iowa and all  U.S. taxpayers know how their tax dollars are being spent,” Braley said.  “I’m glad that ICE has begun to share information with taxpayers, so they can see for themselves how their tax dollars are being used to enforce our immigration laws.  I’ll continue pushing to ensure that taxpayers know how every dollar is being spent.”

The costs associated with ICE’s initial enforcement action are below.  The official document from ICE is attached to this message.

I’m not able to get that chart properly formatted, but here’s how the costs of “Operation Cedar Valley Junction” break down.

The Office of Investigation costs (which relate to the initial enforcement action) are $2,803,265. Line items:

$1,578,004 for Temporary Duty Assignment Cost for 750 ICE Office of Investigations Personnel

$60,117 for Transportation of Equipment, etc.

$268,483 for Lease of Cattle Congress Facility and Modspace Trailers

$744,747 for Leased Services (Security Work Authorization with Federal Protective Service, electrician)

$65,389 for Supplies (electrical, office, operational, ID, custody)

$74,481 for Misc. Equipment (computer switch)

$12,044 Document Exploitation (DocEx), Under Cover

The Office of Detention and Removal Costs so far have been $2,441,642. Line items:

$495,697 for Temporary Duty Assignment Cost for 281 ICE Detention and Removal Personnel

$1,905,750 for Leased Services, KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root), shower trailers, latrines, detainment at Cattle Congress, processing, physical security, detainee meals

$40,195 for Supplies (cuffs / custody, property)

The official document from Immigration and Customs Enforcement concludes:

These are the known Office of Investigations costs as of October 1, 2008.  This investigation is still ongoing and incurring additional expenses.

These are the known Office of Detention and Removal costs as of October 6, 2008.  This investigation is still ongoing and incurring additional expenses.

The Des Moines Register noted that the $5.2 million figure does not include costs incurred to the U.S. Department of Labor or the U.S. attorney’s office in Cedar Rapids. The Register report included this as well:

Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union that has attempted to organize Agriprocessors’ workers, was critical of the Postville raid. He said it covers up the fact that the Bush administration has done nothing to fix what he called a broken immigration system.

“The Agriprocessors’ raid cost taxpayers millions of dollars, it raised serious due process issues, and it may have compromised federal investigations into labor abuses by the company’s management,” Frotman said.

U.S. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, disagreed. He said immigration laws must be enforced, regardless of the expense to taxpayers.

“If we start saying, ‘Well, it costs too much money to enforce the law,’ then we will see more and more of these radical, pro-illegal immigration activists drive more wedges between us and make it harder to enforce the law,” King said.

I see no evidence that large-scale raids such as that in Postville or earlier at the Swift plant in Marshalltown do anything to reduce illegal immigration. But I’m not surprised that King is for heavy-handed actions that punish immigrants without changing much about corporate hiring practices.

Meanwhile, Lynda Waddington just wrote this piece for Iowa Independent about how the raid adversely affected life in Postville.

Governor Chet Culver took the unusual step of publishing a guest editorial in the Sunday Des Moines Register about alleged wrongdoing at the Agriprocessors meat-packing plant in Postville:

The sad events surrounding the [May 12] federal Postville raid, resulting in multiple federal criminal-law convictions of line workers and low-level supervisors – and, notably, not yet of the company’s owners – are strong evidence of a company that has chosen to take advantage of a failed federal immigration system.

[…]

Before the federal raid, Agriprocessors already had a history of sanctions by Iowa’s state regulatory agencies for water pollution, as well as health and safety law violations. Alarming information about working conditions at the Postville plant – including allegations ranging from the use of child labor in prohibited jobs to sexual and physical abuse by supervisors; from the nonpayment of regular and overtime wages to the denial of immediate medical attention for workplace injuries – brought to national attention by the raid forces me to believe that, in contrast to our state’s overall economic-development strategy, this company’s owners have deliberately chosen to take the low road in its business practices.

He said he had directed members of his cabinet to make sure Iowa law is being enforced with Agriprocessors. Furthermore, open positions at Agriprocessors may not be included on state job-listing services “due to the unsafe working conditions at the Postville facility.” In addition, he called on Attorney General Tom Miller “promptly to prosecute all alleged criminal and civil-law violations that are backed by sufficient evidence.”

On Friday the Iowa Division of Labor Services released a statement citing 31 new and repeated safety violations at Agriprocessors’ plant in Postville.

If any Bleeding Heartland readers keep kosher, you may be interested in this piece by Lynda Waddington for Iowa Independent. She describes a “kosher social seal” program, which signifies that food not only meets Jewish ritual requirements but has also been produced in a humane and socially responsible manner.

Meanwhile, John Carlson reports in his latest Des Moines Register column that a local radio personally has written lyrics called “Palau to Postville – a Topical/Tropical Tale.” They are meant to be sung to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme. He was inspired by “reports last week that an employment recruiter has been trying to entice people in the Pacific island of Palau to come to work for the [Agriprocessors] plant.”

UPDATE: A spokesman for Agriprocessors says the company is drafting “a forceful response to the governor’s guilty verdict even before trial.”

The same article goes on to say:

Several business and political experts said Culver’s criticism was unusual, but they applauded it.

“I think it’s out of the ordinary. But then again, I think Agriprocessors is a little out of the ordinary, too,” said Mike Ralston, president of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry.

Ralston’s group includes most large Iowa employers, but not Agriprocessors. He said he wouldn’t want Culver to make a habit of publicly criticizing specific businesses. However, he said Agriprocessors’ notoriety has damaged the state’s reputation, making it fair game for the governor’s ire.

Video from a rally in Waterloo on Sunday

I agree with Congressman Bruce Braley that federal agencies need to investigate Agriprocessors, the company operating the meatpacking plant in Postville where nearly 400 workers were detained during an immigration raid on Monday.

It is hard to believe that a company could be unaware that some 40 percent of its workforce may consist of illegal immigrants.

Click the link about to read Lynda Waddington’s whole report for Iowa Independent. Here is a particularly important passage:

“Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem with illegal immigration,” Braley said.

According to Braley, just three employers were fined for breaking immigration laws in 2004. Last year, following Bush administration promises “to make employer enforcement a priority,” Braley says 92 employers were arrested, but only 17 fined out of the six million employers in the U.S.

“Naturally, the sheer number of arrests made by ICE during Monday’s raid raises questions about Agriprocessors, Inc.’s knowledge of possible violations of employment and immigration law.”

For his efforts, Braley received the same answer as members of the media have received when asked about a possible or ongoing investigation. “Federal officials would not comment on the possibility of an investigation into Agriprocessors for possible violations of the law,” he said Wednesday evening.

An official at the Iowa Labor Commission has confirmed that Agriprocessors was under investigation for possible child labor and wage law violations at the time of the raid. No one would comment on the possible impact the raid would have that investigation.

On a related note, I completely agree with this letter to the editor, which the Des Moines Register published on Thursday:

From the May 13 paper, “Orthodox Jews…gather across from the Postville plant.” “Ari Berkowitz, a 15-year-old Hasidic Jew, was hanging out with a handful of friends.”

I trust that we will also be seeing captions such as “Southern Baptists watch a baseball game,” and “Jane Doe, a Pentecostalist from West Des Moines, was at the mall yesterday.”

– Sondra Krueger Feldstein, Bondurant

When the Swift plant was raided in Marshalltown last year, media reports didn’t go out of their way to identify the owners and operators of the plant as Methodist, Catholic, or whatever.

Calling attention to the religion of the Agriprocessors’ owners may give the misleading impression that their faith was related to possible legal violations.