ey, Colo., on Tuesday. (By Richard M. Hackett, Longmont Daily Times-Call via AP)

Authorities contend workers bought or stole names and Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens and legal residents and used them to get jobs at Swift plants here and in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas and Utah.

"The issue here is that U.S. citizens have been victimized by illegal aliens," said Carl Rusnok, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security. "This is a situation where it's not just getting fraudulent identification.

It's actually stealing U.S. identities."

Some local district attorneys around the country have tried to fight illegal immigration using identity-theft, criminal impersonation and forgery statutes. Tuesday's simultaneous raids mark the first time ICE agents working on a national scale have made identity theft the focus of a major worksite investigation.

Armed federal agents at dawn surrounded Swift's plants in Greeley and elsewhere, rounding up thousands of workers, questioning hundreds of them and detaining an undetermined number. At the Greeley plant, agents loaded detained workers onto four white, 45-seat buses and drove them away.

Tuesday's raids capped a 10-month federal investigation into identity theft involving immigrant workers at Greeley- based Swift.

In March, federal officials issued subpoenas for 1,500 employment records, and the company cooperated, Swift president and chief executive Sam Rovit said.

"We offered repeatedly to make ourselves available in any way or to manage any criminal behavior and couldn't get a meeting until September," Rovit said. "They were absolutely unwilling to help."

Rovit said investigators told the company that complaints of identity theft filed with the Federal Trade Commission matched up with 170 Swift workers. Yet Tuesday's raids, he said, disrupted the work of 7,000 employees nationwide.

"If they did know who those 170 were, they could have gone and identified them and taken them away," Rovit said. "We don't see why they had to come in to do something that was this highly disruptive."

The company, he said, has never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant.

No charges filed Tuesday

Starting as soon as today, some detained immigrants may be deported without being charged with identity crimes. Authorities are considering filing criminal charges against others, Rusnok said. No charges were filed Tuesday.

Photo: University of Northern Colorado student Alonzo Barron confronts a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after a raid Tuesday at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley. ICE agents executed civil search warrants at plants in Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Iowa and Minnesota, in addition to Greeley. (Rocky Mountain News)

Swift is one of the world's largest meat-processing companies, with $9.4 billion in annual sales. No one at Swift has been charged with a crime. "We do not believe that we will be charged with anything or fined for anything," Rovit said.

The raids turned the lives of workers and their families upside-down and reignited the immigration debate from factory fence lines to Congress.

Parents and siblings of Greeley workers flocked to the factory after hearing of the raids.

"How am I supposed to explain to the children that their dad's not coming home?" 27-year-old Sara Zarate said, crying as she peered through the gray fence at the factory. Her husband, Candido, is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala whose

The four buses, with green stripes on the sides, had just rumbled away. Zarate didn't know if her husband was on one or where the buses would go.

"Who's going to help me and my kids on Christmas? They're expecting their dad on Christmas," she said.

Meanwhile, Greeley activist Joy Breuer, who opposes illegal immigration, welcomed the raids.

"I'm all for what happened today," Breuer said. "We need to start obeying the laws around here. A lot of people are saying the town is falling apart."

Photo: Breuer blames illegal immigration for various problems around Greeley: an overburdened health-care system and increased gang activity and drug sales.

City officials worried about economic damage.

"I'm concerned this will affect how people will view our community - employers as well as people coming here to live," Mayor Tom Selders said. "I'm concerned that this be done with respect for people's civil rights."

The economic and humanitarian harm inflicted by Tuesday's raids "is what happens when we have a do-nothing Congress which refuses to act," U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar said. "What is happening at Swift ... sends a strong signal to Congress that we must act with all due speed to enact comprehensive immigration reform. When Democrats take control in January, I hope today's occurrences will motivate us to act."

(To view chart of where the raids occured go to "Visit Author's Website"

An all-but-open secret

A labor union filed for an injunction in court shortly after the raids began around 7 a.m.

The use of falsified documents to get work in Greeley and other meatpacking towns has been an all-but-open secret for years.

Even factory supervisors know about it, said former Swift worker David Silva, 35, a naturalized U.S. citizen now working in oil fields, whose wife, Marisela, 32, was detained.

"I don't know where they took her," Silva said. "My kids? They've never been to Mexico. They don't even know that country."

Federal Social Security Administration officials over the past five years sent out 8 million "mismatch" letters to employers nationwide flagging possible problems with worker-identifying information.

Under federal immigration law, it's up to companies to verify the legal status of workers. Swift officials say they participated in a government pilot program to make such checks.

ICE agents began their investigation in February.

Investigators used Federal Trade Commission records to track workers using names and numbers of U.S. citizens. Then they contacted the U.S. citizens - who in many cases indicated a willingness to press charges, according to some 25 search affidavits filed in Weld County Court.

"ICE takes very seriously aliens who use false IDs, and especially those who steal identities, to illegally gain employment," said Jeffrey Copp, ICE special agent in charge in Denver.

In Congress, there has been no resolution of the immigration issues that dominated debate this year. Lawmakers still are divided.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who strongly opposes illegal immigration, issued a statement congratulating law enforcement agencies involved in Tuesday's raids.

"My hope at this point is that the U.S. government has the courage to prosecute the Swift & Co. executives who may have been complicit in their hiring," Tancredo said.

ICE officials said they would offer details about the raids at a news conference this morning in Washington.

Staff writers Christine Tatum, Christopher N. Osher and David Migoya contributed to this report.

Staff writer Bruce Finley can be reached at 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com.