Mike Heine of The Week has a good summary of developments in the Star Packaging raid, where the Whitewater police and other agencies, acted against Mexican workers, and the American owner of the business, leading to criminal charges against both.
Here’s Heine’s summary of the raid:
Whitewater businessman Allen L. Petrie, owner of Star Packaging, is charged with six counts of conspiracy to commit identity theft, a felony. He is accused of employing Mexican immigrants who allegedly used stolen or made up identities. An Aug. 8 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at the company led to the arrest of 25 suspected undocumented immigrants.
Heine quotes Assistant District Attorney Diane Donohoo, from an earlier interview, on the legal basis for charges against Petrie:
“Employers cannot knowingly employ people, continue to have them on staff or continue to facilitate their pay when they know that that person is using someone else’s Social Security number,” Donohoo said in an earlier interview.
Defense Attorney Stephen Glynn notes that the use of supposed identity theft charges in this case is unusual:
“This is one of these situations in which the state is using a statute that, I think, probably wasn’t too much to be used in this fashion,” Glynn said. “The typical use of identity theft (law) is somebody getting a copy of someone else’s charge card and securing property or goods or services on the bases of using it. That’s what most people have in mind. They don’t have in mind someone getting a job that the other’s aren’t seeking.”
There is one powerful consequence of plowing ahead with identity theft charges: it allows the Whitewater police and their supporters to use — and misuse — fear of identity theft to shield them from accusations that the raid targeted Mexicans. The raid has generated bad press, much to the surprise of the mostly town-bred elite. Repeating — over and over — that the raid was about identity theft distracts many people from thinking about the raid more seriously.