What’s wrong with this picture?
Yesterday’s Globe reported that “nearly 300 people were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.” The immigrants, who are here illegally from Guatemala, were arrested at the Iowa plant on May 12 and taken to the grounds of the National Cattle Congress. In a span of four days, 297 people were convinced to plead guilty to avoid higher penalties and sentenced to five months in jail—how’s that for due process? They will be deported immediately after completing their jail terms. Later in the article, it states, “No charges have been brought against managers or owners…” This whole episode makes me sick to my stomach. If this crime of working to pack animal carcasses without proper papers is so atrocious, why aren’t the owners being sent to prison for hiring them? And what will happen to the company? Will it shut down or just ship in a new group of presumably low-paid workers to exploit? But the real kicker is, if they’re being deported anyway, why make them sit in prison for five months first? So they can be fed and housed on the taxpayers’ dime? The whole thing makes no sense (a combination of mean and stupid). It stinks, I imagine, as bad as a meatpacking plant…