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very night for months, Victor Zavala Jr., who was
arrested on Thursday in a 21-state immigration raid, said he showed up
at the Wal-Mart store
in New Jersey to clean floors.
As the store's regular employees left at 11 p.m.,
Mr. Zavala said, they often asked him whether he ever got a night
off.
Mr. Zavala, identified by federal agents as an
illegal immigrant from Mexico, told the Wal-Mart workers that he and
four others employed by a cleaning contractor worked at the Wal-Mart in
Old Bridge every night of the year, except Christmas and New Year's
Eve.
Now Mr. Zavala feels cheated, saying he worked as
hard as he could pursuing the American dream, only to face an
immigration hearing that could lead to deportation for himself, his
wife, Eunice, and their three children, 10, 7 and 5 years old. He was
one of 250 janitors employed by Wal-Mart contractors who were arrested
at 60 Wal-Mart stores before dawn on Thursday.
"My family's not happy about this," said Mr.
Zavala, who said he paid a "coyote" $2,000 to smuggle him into the
United States three years ago. "My children do not want to leave and go
back to Mexico."
A federal law enforcement official who spoke on
condition of anonymity said yesterday that several current and former
cleaning contractors for Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest retailer, were
cooperating with the government in its investigation. On Thursday,
federal officials acknowledged that they had wiretaps and recordings of
conversations and meetings among Wal-Mart executives and
contractors.
Federal officials said that as part of the
Thursday raid, they searched the office of a middle-level manager at
Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The officials said the
government believed that Wal-Mart executives knew the cleaning
contractors were using illegal immigrants.
Federal officials noted that 102 illegal
immigrants working for Wal-Mart cleaning contractors had been arrested
in 1998 and 2001 and that 13 Wal-Mart cleaning contractors had pleaded
guilty after those arrests. Those pleas remain under court
seal.
Wal-Mart said yesterday that it had begun an
internal investigation and would dismiss anyone in its work force who
did not have proper immigration papers. Wal-Mart also told its officials
to preserve any documents that might be relevant to the federal inquiry,
which is being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security's
division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Wal-Mart officials said that the raid surprised
them, and that they had no idea the company's cleaning contractors used
illegal immigrants.
They acknowledged yesterday that 10 immigrants
arrested on Thursday in Arizona and Kentucky were employed directly by
Wal-Mart. Company officials said they had brought these workers in-house
after certain stores phased out the use of the contractors for whom the
immigrants had worked.
Wal-Mart officials also said the company required
its contractors to hire legal workers only.
"We have seen no evidence thus far that anyone in
Wal-Mart is involved in any scheme involving illegal workers," Tom
Williams, a company spokesman, said.
Government officials and Walmart executives
declined yesterday to name the cleaning contractors whose employees were
arrested.
"These arrests are part of the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement mission and part of our continuing commitment to
investigate companies that are hiring individuals who are not authorized
to work in the United States," said Garrison Courtney, a spokesman for
the immigration agency.
Federal officials said yesterday that the leading
nation of origin for the janitors caught in Thursday's raids was Mexico,
with 90. The Czech Republic was second with 35, followed by Mongolia
with 22, Brazil with 20. Uzbekistan, Poland, Russia, Georgia and
Lithuania each had about a dozen.
Mr. Zavala, the janitor in Old Bridge, N.J., said
he got his job shortly after arriving in the United States, when a
neighbor asked whether he wanted work cleaning buildings. Mr. Zavala,
28, said he did not know the name of his boss.
Mr. Zavala said he believed that the Wal-Mart
managers knew the janitors were illegal immigrants.
"Deep in their minds, of course the store managers
knew it," he said. "The other guys from the crew didn't speak one word
of English. Of course they knew it, but if you asked them, they'll say
`we thought they were citizens or residents.' "
Mr. Zavala said the contractor that he and Eunice,
his wife, worked for paid them $400 a week each for working 56 hours.
That would come to $6.25 an hour if time and a half overtime is included
for all hours worked in excess of 40.
"We don't know nothing about days off," said Mr.
Zavala, whose hometown is Mexico City. "We don't know nothing about
nights off, we don't know health insurance, we don't know life
insurance, and we don't know anything about 401(k) plans."
He said that when he was arrested and taken to a
detention center in Newark, immigration officials mocked him for taking
a job that paid so little in a state where rents and living expenses are
so high. He said that in his 16 months as a cleaner at Wal-Mart, he was
given only two nights off.
He said he did not think that the contractor
withheld taxes from his pay, raising questions about whether the
contractor was making the required contributions for Social Security and
unemployment insurance.
Misha Firer, an illegal immigrant from Russia,
said he worked for three months last year as a cleaner at Wal-Marts in
Ephrata, Pa., and Glens Falls, N.Y., working 90 consecutive days without
having a day off.
Mr. Firer said that he earned $6 an hour, working
the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift, washing, waxing and buffing floors. He
said the chemicals were so strong that some workers had nose bleeds,
sore eyes and skin irritations.
"Nobody wanted to take the job," he said. "It was
a night job and it paid very little."
