300 Illegal Workers Arrested at Wal-Marts
By CHUCK BARTELS,
AP
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Oct. 23) - Federal agents raided
Wal-Mart's headquarters and 60 of its stores across the country Thursday,
arresting more than 300 illegal workers in an immigration crackdown at the
world's biggest retailer.
The workers were members of cleaning crews hired by
outside contractors, but federal law enforcement officials who spoke on the
condition of anonymity said Wal-Mart had direct knowledge of the immigration
violations. They cited recordings of meetings and conversations among Wal-Mart
executives, managers and contractors.
''We have seen no evidence of this from the INS, and, if
that turns out to be true, we will cooperate fully with law enforcement
officials,'' Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams said.
The workers were arrested as they finished their night
shifts at Wal-Mart stores in 21 states. Agents also hauled away several boxes
of documents from an executive's office at Wal-Mart headquarters in
Bentonville.
An employer can face civil and criminal penalties for
knowingly hiring illegal immigrants or failing to comply with certain employee
recordkeeping regulations.
Wal-Mart Stores had sales last year of $244.5 billion.
The company has about 1.1 million employees in the United States, and it uses
more than 100 third-party contractors to clean more than 700 stores
nationwide, Williams said.
''We require each of these contractors to use only legal
workers,'' she said.
The law enforcement sources said the investigation grew
out of earlier probes of Wal-Mart cleaning crew contractors in 1998 and
2001.
All the arrested workers were in the country illegally,
said Garrison Courtney, a spokesman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
They were detained at local immigration offices. Those who had no criminal
record were released with instructions to appear before immigration
judges.
Wal-Mart is not the first big company to be targeted in
an immigration investigation. Six managers at Tyson Foods, based one town away
from Wal-Mart in Springdale, were charged in an immigrant-smuggling case in
2001.
One defendant shot himself to death a few months after
being charged, and two managers entered guilty pleas early in the case. A jury
acquitted the poultry company and three other managers.
Ulysses A. Yannas, an analyst with the investment firm
Buckman, Buckman and Reid, said it is too much to expect Wal-Mart to keep
track of all of its vendors' workers. But he said the investigation could
present a problem for the company.
''It is a question of what else it might bring out. These
are long, drawn-out processes,'' Yannas said.
Top Wal-Mart officials learned of Thursday's sweep when
store managers began calling headquarters for guidance in dealing with the
raids.
Courtney said agents searched the office of one of
Wal-Mart's executives. Williams, the spokeswoman, said they spent several
hours in the office of a ''mid-level manager'' at Wal-Mart's headquarters and
carried away several boxes of paperwork.
She said she did not know if any other Wal-Mart
administrative offices were searched.
The arrests were made at stores in Alabama, Arkansas,
Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan,
North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West
Virginia.
10-23-03 17:40 EDT
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