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Wal mart raids 300 illegal workers

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   http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/24/wal_mart_raids_net_300_illegal_workers/

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/24/wal_mart_raids_net_300_illegal_workers/

Wal-Mart raids net 300 illegal workers
By Associated Press, 10/24/2003

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Federal agents raided Wal-Mart's headquarters and 60 of its stores across the country yesterday, arresting more than 300 illegal workers, including five in Massachusetts and 11 in New Hampshire, 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.

In Massachusetts, five people were arrested at Wal-Mart stores in Danvers and Northborough. It was not immediately known how many arrests were made at each store.

Arrests were also made at stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

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.

Ulysses A. Yannas, an analyst with 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 yesterday'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.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.



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