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ICE sends chilling message

6/16/2007
Jim Dickrell
Lean and lanky, 24-year-old Sandhills Dairy manager Lee Zimmerman had just stepped out of the shower about 8 a.m. on April 10 when he heard a fist pounding on his front door.

Dripping wet, he threw on a pair of boxers and headed toward the noise, fearing someone was trying to break the door down. By the time he got there, the pounding had stopped. He peeked out and saw two men walking around the corner of the house toward the back.

When he yelled out, “Hey,” he says the two men turned and rushed the house, shoving in the door, throwing Lee to the floor, and cuffing his hands behind his back. They showed no identification or search warrant, he says.

In the freestall barn, an officer with his sidearm drawn forced Charlie Keller, the dairy’s herdsman, face down on the concrete, Keller says. Keller, 49, was cuffed behind his back, with the officer demanding he immediately produce a birth certificate or driver’s license or other form of identification, he says.

Similar actions were occurring in the parlor, out-buildings and the 10 trailer homes of Sandhills Dairy, a 700-cow facility 35 miles east of Minot, N.D.

Some three dozen law enforcement officers descended on the dairy that morning, conducting a well-coordinated immigration raid. Participating were officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol, the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the North Dakota Highway Patrol and the McHenry County Sheriffs’ Department. They had patrol cars, vans, 4-wheelers and dogs, Mike says.

By the time Mike and Mary Zimmerman arrived at the dairy at 8:30 a.m., all the Sandhills employees had been rounded up, handcuffed and held in the employee breakroom, they say.

Mike and Mary, Lee’s parents and owners of Sandhills, were confronted by ICE officers at the dairy office. The Zimmermans were shown the first page of a vaguely worded search warrant, but the Zimmermans say the officers refused to show them anything more—including a much more detailed list in an attached Appendix B. “Basically, they told us that anything more was on a need-to-know basis,” Mike says.

At one point, there were 18 officers crowded into the farm office, Mike says. “It was pretty tense,” he says. “We told them, ‘If you’re looking for records, they’re all right here in the dairy office.’”

That had little effect, Mike says. The officers searched each of the 10 homes on site, including their daughter Jenny Robb’s house, where they downloaded her personal computer, Mike says.

The officers assured Mike they weren’t there to shut down his business, and searches of the property would take a couple of hours. They were there for six, Mike says.

In the meantime, nothing moved on the dairy. No cows were being milked or any cattle fed. Cows in the holding pen waiting to be milked at 8 a.m. were left there.

Pens that had been milked earlier and were in lock-ups since 7:30 a.m. weren’t released until 10:30 a.m. The transition pen, with some cows averaging 140 lb. of milk/day, was on a 4X milking schedule. The group actually broke a gate trying to get to the parlor. “You could see those cows were in a lot of pain,” Mike says.

By the end of the ordeal, the officers took 13 Hispanic employees into custody, Mike says. They also confiscated paper records from 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 and downloaded computer hard drives, Mike says.

“When the ICE officers left that day, they gave us a list of the people they had taken into custody and a sketchy inventory of paper records, but nothing else,” Mike says.

And then the real problems started. With two-thirds of their work force in custody, the Zimmermans had to figure out how they were going to get cows milked, fed and bred.

“Our initial goal was to get the entire herd milked once,” Mike says. “And then we just took it six hours at a time, trying to get through each milking and feeding.”

The Zimmermans’ oldest daughter, DelRae, is a real estate agent in Minot. She volunteered to milk the night shift with her dad and her younger sister, Jenny, that first week. DelRae also recruited a client and a city building inspector to help. Numerous neighbors pitched in to feed and bed calves, or brought food for those volunteering labor. In-laws, who had never stepped inside a milking parlor, dipped teats.

Soon after the raid, employee relatives from Mexico started calling the dairy. “They were hysterical. ‘Where is my son? Where is my husband?’” Mary says. “We couldn’t tell them because even we didn’t know. We didn’t get answers for quite some time, and then only through news reports.”

After three weeks, the Zimmermans had cobbled together a crew of 13 new workers, mostly recruited through a Madison, Wis., employment agency specializing in documented workers.

But even that’s been a challenge since most of the workers had little or no dairy experience. It was like starting all over again, Mike says, with basic dairy management training.

“We had been on cruise control with our old crew, with many of our guys here two, three, four, even seven years,” Lee says. “Everybody we had trained in AI, gone. Every department head, gone. Plus, we were at the peak of calving, and all our calf people, gone.

“If this weren’t a family business, if it was just me, I would have ordered the semis and gotten rid of the cows that day,” he says.

Prior to the raid, the Zimmermans had undergone a three-day Internal Revenue Service audit, a two-day North Dakota Tax Department audit, and an audit of their trucking business records by the Department of Transportation. After the raid, they were inspected by the North Dakota Health Department and had a records audit by the North Dakota Water Commission.

To top all of that, their close-up barn caught fire at 4:30 a.m. May 3. They lost about one-third of the building, 250 bales of alfalfa, and were miraculously lucky their main freestall barn/parlor complex didn’t catch fire as well.

The Zimmermans have dairied at the site, along Highway 2 near Denbigh, N.D., since 1996. They initially hired employees locally.

But being 35 miles from Minot and 25 miles from Rugby, the only cities of size nearby, keeping help was problematic. And with North Dakota ground blizzards a fairly common occurrence in winter, getting employees to show up for work every day was weather contingent.

Plus, fewer and fewer locals wanted the type of work a modern dairy offers. “We could run ads in the newspaper for a month, and receive no applications,” Lee says.

After a few years, the Zimmermans started adding trailer homes and hiring Hispanics. The on-site trailer homes ensure workers don’t have to travel for work.

Their payroll last year topped $610,000 for 21 employees. Milkers average $24,000 to $28,000 a year, depending on experience and hours per week worked.

“We didn’t know we were doing anything wrong. Everybody who worked here had what North Dakota requires for identification,” Mary says.

Mike says their experience should serve as warning: “We live in the middle of nowhere, on the frozen tundra. To think that nothing like this could happen to you, think again.”

Charges filed

Of the 13 Sandhills Dairy employees taken into custody April 10, 12 were from Mexico and one from Guatemala.

The 12 men and one woman were charged with administrative immigration violations. The woman was released on her own recognizance due to child care issues.

Four of the men have been charged with criminal violations:

• Celestino Sanchez-Gomez, 31, Mexico. Charged with knowingly possessing and using false identification cards.
• Jose Luis Sanchez-Flores, 19, Mexico. Charged with knowingly possessing and using false identification cards.
• Ramiro Sanchez-Ramirez, 41, Mexico. Charged with a possession of a false immigration document.
• Oscar Martinez-Torres, 26, Mexico. Charged with misuse of immigration registration, which is a felony.

If convicted, all four face up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Of the remaining nine, five returned to Mexico. Tim Counts, spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says the other four could be anywhere in the detention system.

He also says all the actions of enforcement officers at Sandhills Dairy April 10 “were entirely appropriate and within the law. We use standard law enforcement procedures that have been upheld repeatedly by the courts.”

When ICE comes knocking

If Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appears at your dairy, take these tips from attorney Anthony Raimondo, who is with the law firm of Barsamian, Saqui & Moody in Fresno, Calif.:

1. Determine who the investigators are. Ask for a business card. Make sure they really are with ICE. If you are suspicious, call the agency to verify their identity.

2. Find out why the investigators are there. A “raid,” which requires a search warrant, does not require advance notification. An I-9 audit (to verify employment eligibility) requires three days’ advance notice in writing but no search warrant. Some ICE agents will present a subpoena (in conjunction with an audit), suggesting that you need to comply with it immediately. However, you are entitled to three days’ advance notice, and ICE cannot use a subpoena to shortcut that.

3. Stay calm. Be polite no matter how angry you might feel. Losing your temper will only make matters worse.

4. If the investigators present a search warrant, examine it carefully. It should identify the agency or officers, the location to be searched, the specific items or individuals to be seized (if known), and an expiration date for the court order. Note: A warrant is a court order that gives law enforcement agents permission to search your property. Resisting a warrant may result in contempt of court.

5. Contact your attorney as quickly as possible if you are faced with an ICE raid. It’s a good idea to consult with an attorney who is versed in immigration law anytime ICE shows up.

6. During a raid, you may accompany ICE officers on their search. Take notes on what is occurring. Especially make note if any unusual or disturbing behavior occurs (such as “badgering” employees or questioning only foreign-appearing employees.) Make an inventory list of the items and computer files seized.

7. Only allow investigators to see the records they are legally entitled to see. During an I-9 audit, you are technically required to produce only the I-9 forms for inspection. If ICE wants to see anything else, you can require the agent to get a valid subpoena. You are not required to keep or produce photocopies of the documents employees presented to establish identity and/or employment eligibility, so don’t do it. If you keep copies, keep them separated from the personnel file and from the I-9 file.

8. Do not allow documents to be removed from your property without making copies. And don’t turn over more documents than the law requires. Nothing in the law requires you to give ICE original I-9 forms or to make photocopies of I-9 forms.

9. Know your rights. For example, you, your supervisors and your employees are not required to answer any questions. Also, you have the right to continue operating your business during the ICE visit.

10. Do not do anything that could get you into more trouble. Do not hide employees, advise them to run or hide or help them escape from the premises. —Catherine Merlo

ICE-cold reception

• Nearly three dozen law enforcement officials in 25 vehicles raided Sandhills Dairy April 10.

• They came complete with detailed aerial maps, four-wheelers and dogs.

• Thirteen Hispanic employees were taken into custody for administrative immigration violations. Of those, four were charged with felonies.

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