First, I want to address the comment left by “Mike.” I have a co-worker who was a member of management at Pilgrim’s Pride before coming to our company. He said that the majority of the violators were using stolen security numbers which are hard for the employer to verify other than it is a real, registered number. The ICE agents have even said that the IDs and fake social security cards are hard to spot and you have to be trained to be able to detect a fraud. As long as Pilgrim’s Pride can show that they were given documentation then there is no legal recourse that should or could be brought against the company. In fact, the management new about the raid before it happened, so they are in support of the laws. The only way these people are being caught is when the identity theft victim finds out his information has been stolen and the government can get involved to find the criminal responsible. The fact of the matter is, the only people who will do these jobs are illegals because they will take the jobs American’s refuse to do. The work they were doing is filthy, wet, smelly, and cold. How many of you would want to work in those conditions 40 hours a week for next to nothing, with no benefits? The company doesn’t want to pay a lot for this work because it is basic, unskilled labor that anyone could do. The problem is it is hard work, but not hard enough for the company to want to pay more for it. I really don’t think they were hiring illegals in order to pay them less, especially since the majority of the Pilgrim’s Pride plants are unionized and the union negotiates the wages. This is just another example of companies being defrauded and losing a lot of productivity because of lost labor. The news only reported on the employees who were brought into custody. There were a lot of people who didn’t come back after lunch because they were illegal, they just didn’t get their name called. And again, that was just first shift. I have to believe that there were people who could have been caught on other shifts who didn’t show up because they heard what had happened. I don’t often say this, but I think this time the company wasn’t at fault and was really hurt by something over which they had very little actual control.