"Migras" Hit Packing Plants;
Majority Of Employees Cut Out

OMAHA —(AP)— Federal immigration officials have found fewer and fewer people to interview as they continue Operation Vanguard, a plan to interview suspected illegal immigrants working in Nebraska's packing plants.

Hispanic community leaders claimed families and businesses are suffering as workers — whether illegal or simply afraid of immigration agents — quit and flee before interviews can be conducted.

At an IBP Inc. beef plant in Lexington, 200 of the 339 workers, nearly 60 percent, self-terminated before scheduled interviews last Tuesday, Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said.

Marco Morales, a Hispanic leader at the First United Methodist Church in Lexington, said several celebrations in Cozad and a wedding in Lexington were canceled this week because families departed.

``It's bad when you have friends you think are living here legally, then suddenly you find them gone,'' Morales said.

He said he does not condone living and working in the United States illegally, but believes communities will suffer if large numbers of people leave suddenly.

``When you drive around Lexington this week,'' Morales said, ``houses are empty, cars are gone. It looks like a phantom town. It affects the church, the school and stores.''

The INS subpoenaed employee records of meatpacking plants across the state and compared them with other federal documents during the first phase of Operation Vanguard. The federal agency then requested interviews with workers whose employee records showed discrepancies between Social Security or driver's license documents.

The discrepancies do not necessarily mean an employee is an illegal immigrant. At IBP's Gibbon plant, about 56 percent of the 320 employees who had possible discrepancies quit their jobs before scheduled interviews Thursday.

Of the 138 who remained and were interviewed at Gibbon, all were found to be authorized to work in the United States, Michael Went, acting INS director in Omaha, told the Omaha World-Herald.

The Gibbon plant employed about 470 workers in October.

Immigration agents made stops Friday at Central Nebraska Packing in North Platte and at Packerland Packing Co. in Gering. This week, agents will be in Crete, York, Hastings and at Monfort Inc.

Operation Vanguard is designed to remove the job magnet that attracts undocumented workers in the United States. In the Midwest, INS officials have said, that magnet is packing plants. The agency plans to take the program to meat and other industries nationwide after its debut in Nebraska and Iowa.