Textbook
IFCO bust used to stop use of illegal workers



ALBANY — Nearly a year after 1,187 illegal immigrants were rounded up in a nationwide raid, the company managers accused of knowingly hiring them pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday.

It was the largest immigration raid in history at the time, and now, it is being used as the textbook example for today’s immigration stings, according to United States Immigration Customs Enforcement. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said more than 40 IFCO plants throughout 26 different states were affected by the 2006 raid.
"This was the first significant work site investigation where we looked at the case nationwide and targeted employers doing the hiring. This was the starting point for how we are doing things today"It was highly successful," said Peter Smith, special agent in charge of the Buffalo office of the ICE.

The investigation leading up to the raid began after federal agents were tipped off that IFCO, a German-based pallet company, was hiring illegal aliens at many of its factories around the country. The American headquarters for the company is in Houston, Texas.

Concerns were first raised at the IFCO plant in the Northeast Industrial Park in Guilderland Center.

IFCO employees James Rice, Robert Belvin, Dario Salzano, Scott Dodge, and Michael Ames all pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement in United States District Court in Albany before Judge Lawrence E. Kahn this week.

Rice and Belvin pleaded guilty Tuesday to felony charges and the other men pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges. Rice and Belvin could face a maximum of 10 years in federal prison.

All of the men admitted in court to knowingly hiring and harboring illegal aliens.

Immigrants deported

Locally, scores of undocumented immigrants worked at the IFCO plant in the Northeast Industrial Park last April. They were provided housing by IFCO on Western Avenue and Route 146 in town.
Federal agents say their 14-month investigation by the Department of Homeland Security began after witnesses told them workers were "ripping up their W-2 forms" at Guilderland’s industrial park.

The Enterprise, with the help of interpreter Roberto Flores, interviewed workers from the plant in Guilderland Center. The men all lived together and were paid 30 cents for each wooden pallet they rebuilt.
"We want to get back working, that’s why we’re here," a 23-year-old man from Honduras said at the time. "If they send me home, they send me home. I’d rather be home than detained."

The men, who said they came to America from different parts of South America and Central America including Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua, said they were not mistreated during the raid.

All of the men taken in the raid, including those who talked to The Enterprise were sent to the Buffalo Federal Detention Center in Batavia about two weeks after the raid and deported to their respective countries, according the United States Immigration Custom Enforcement agency.
Smith said the men were "voluntarily removed" from the country.
"If they decide to not challenge their charges then we get them out of prison and get them home," Smith told The Enterprise yesterday. "But, if they re-enter the country illegally, they will be charged with felony re-entry and face five years in prison."

All of the men deported after the raid been entered into a national database used by Homeland Security, he said.

As for their travel accommodations, Smith said, the government has a contract, which on a monthly basis, or sooner if there are enough detainees to fill a plane, immigrants are flown to their home countries.

Product of that environment

Dario Salzano, an Amsterdam man who was the assistant manager at IFCO in the Northeast Industrial Park at the time of the raid, pleaded guilty to a low-level misdemeanor of employing illegal aliens, according to his attorney, Kevin Luibrand.
"It’s a proper outcome given the circumstances," Luibrand said. "Dario was hired in August of 2005 and he found that it was an environment that encouraged the hiring of employees from any means.
"He became a product of that environment," Luibrand concluded.

Luibrand said that his client’s plea was the lowest-level offense out of the five men in court on Tuesday. Salzano is facing a zero-to-six-month sentence in prison, as well as fines, but has cooperated with authorities throughout his ordeal, said Luibrand.

The five men will be sentenced on June 20 in federal court.