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Witness: Processing plant manager hired illegalsSIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)--Government prosecutors tried to use witness testimony on Oct. 27 to prove a former kosher slaughterhouse manager knew he was employing illegal immigrants at his plant. The testimony was intended to show that the manager, Sholom Rubashkin, lied to a lender bank about his compliance with the law. Rubashkin faces consecutive trials, the first on 91 financial fraud charges and a second trial on 72 immigration violations. The former Agriprocessors, Inc., human resources manager, Elizabeth Billmeyer, said she asked Rubashkin multiple times about employing illegal immigrants. The Postville meatpacking plant was the site of a massive immigration raid in May 2008, when 389 illegal immigrants were arrested. "He said it was his company and he would run it the way he wanted to,'' Billmeyer said. Billmeyer said she noticed irregularities with employees' Social Security numbers in 2005, but was ignored until 2007, when she said the company placed employees with allegedly false identification on a separate payroll without her knowledge. Billmeyer pleaded guilty in April to one count of conspiracy to harbor undocumented aliens for profit and one count of knowingly accepting false resident alien cards. With the jury out of the courtroom, Rubashkin's attorneys protested the introduction of more of Billmeyer's testimony on immigration issues, saying it would undermine the reason for splitting Rubashkin's trials. Assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Deegan said he needed Billmeyer's testimony regarding a list of employees' names that Deegan said was used, with Rubashkin present, to decide which employees to rehire with new identification the day before the May 12, 2008, raid. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade said she would rule on the matter early Oct. 28. Billmeyer testified that in October 2007 she wrote an e-mail to Rubashkin in which she claimed she was mistreated by two Agriprocessors managers when she warned them about potential immigration violations at the plant. The managers were permitted to do "whatever they want to do with no one above them curtailing their actions,'' Billmeyer wrote, adding that hiring people with "obviously fake'' identification meant "someone could go to jail.'' Earlier Oct. 27, prosecutors pressed livestock sellers to acknowledge that Agriprocessors was often late with payments as they tried to prove the plant broke an 88-year-old agricultural law. Among the allegations against Rubashkin are that he broke a law in the U.S. Packers and Stockyards Act that mandates purchasers make timely payments to livestock sellers. Records from the Wisconsin-based Equity Cooperative Livestock Sales Association show Agriprocessors often mailed a check several days after purchasing cattle. Equity officials testified Oct. 27 that Agriprocessors was often late but always paid in full.
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