Methamphetamine lab found by officials in immigration raid, says JTA
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4571
A US government http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1823 raid on America’s top kosher meat processing plant uncovered a methamphetamine laboratory inside AgriProcessors in Postville, Iowa, according to a report carried by the Jewish Telegraph Agency. The May 12 raid, which is thought to have been one of the largest single immigration enforcement actions ever undertaken in the United States, netted at least 300 arrests. A dozen federal law enforcement agencies were involved, from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The warrant for the raid was based on a sixty page application constructed after an investigation of AgriProcessors lasting six months. One source for the information was, reportedly, a former plant supervisor, a legal Hispanic immigrant, who alleged that 80% of the floor employees were illegal aliens. Even some of the rabbis who supervised the kosher slaughter of livestock, a Jewish religious practice in which conscious animals have their throats cut open and are bled to death, were alleged to be working illegally. While three of those detained were Israelis alleged to be illegally employed, the vast bulk of the arrestees hailed from Latin America.AgriProcessors was founded by Aaron Rubashkin, an Hasidic Orthodox Jewish butcher and rabbi from Brooklyn, whose sons Sholom and Heshy are reportedly also involved in the business, which is said to provide over half of all kosher meat sold in the US.
Rubashkin is considered to be an innovator in the kosher meat business, branching out to add non-kosher meat to his portfolio, an interest which currently makes up two-thirds of the AgriProcessors output, branded as Iowa Best Beef. A 2006 deal with the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2758 of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Nebraska gave Rubashkin hefty tax breaks because of the protected status of Indians, while the governor of Nebraska reportedly paid Rubashkin over half a million dollars to locate the plant there. Such practices are commonly referred to as “corporate welfare.”
AgriProcessors was in the news in 2005 after the animal welfare organization http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3344 makes brutal reading, while many will find the video of the animal abuse to be unwatchable.
AgriProcessors also paid a 2006 environmental damages fine of $600,000 for discharging untreated sewage in violation of waste management laws. The company’s sewage was blamed for polluting the surrounding area, which is mainly agricultural.
In 2000, a book called “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America” was released. Authored by Stephen G. Bloom, a journalist, the book charted the course of conflicts between Postville’s white gentile founding population of 1,300 and an influx of Hasidic Jews, whose numbers grew to about 900 after Rubashkin purchased the plant in 1987. The Jews belong to the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3642 of Hasidism, a messianic Zionist group that has been called cultlike by some Jews. Evangelical, the Lubavitchers are known for their Chabad Centers, “Mitzvah tank” vans and other efforts in major metropolitan areas to “reconvert” secular Jews to hardline Jewish practice. (Hasids, along with their Mitnagdim rivals, are classified as Haredi or Ultra-Orthodox Jews, characterized by distinct dress and commitment to arcane interpretations of biblical tenets.) Bloom, who is also Jewish (although secular), found that the Lubavitchers’ behavior towards the Iowans was “despicable,” a function of beliefs he finds to be “racist” and “perverted.”
Law enforcement agents carrying out the May 12 raid were confronted by young Lubavitchers outside the plant gates. Their Yeshiva of Northeast Iowa stands across the road.
News of the allegation about the drug lab remains sketchy, and is presently found mainly in Jewish sources. It is unclear if the ownership is being investigated as being part of the lab operation, or if the illegals were running it. Methamphetamine (crystal meth) is a dangerous stimulant that has been blamed for an epidemic of abuse across rural America.
The dirty, dangerous and harsh US meatpacking industry has long been a focal point for labor unrest, memorialized in the 1906 novel The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. Thanks largely to illegal “blackleg” immigration, the meatpacking bosses have managed to finally break the meatpacking unions, with the resulting impoverishment of whole regions of the Midwest. This capitalist use of illegal immigration has been felt all across the United States, which suffers cratering unionization, a depressed wage scale, and the loss of low skilled work for blue collar people.