Friends of Justice Urges Senate committee to vote no on Rose

The nomination of Postville prosecutor Stephanie Rose as U.S. Attorney in Iowa continues to provoke opposition.  The Friends of Justice:  Urges senate committee to vote no on Rose issued the following press release:

“Accountability or Promotion for Federal Postville Prosecutor?

The nomination of Stephanie Rose to be the new United States Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa is just plain wrong. It has been reported that the Senate Judicial Committee will vote on her nomination on Thursday, November 5, 2009. As Deputy Criminal Chief, Stephanie Rose helped execute the unprecedented use of expedited trials and exploding plea agreements to convict 306 undocumented workers at the Postville. At the time of the Postville Prosecutions, Rose was not a low ranking member of the office but was in a leadership position as third in charge in the office for criminal prosecutions. Earlier this year, Stephanie Rose was asked about her role at Postville. Even in hindsight, she defended the raid and prosecutions saying “executing the massive operation required amazing effort and a ton of good work.

” Dr. Erik Camayd-Frexias makes a compelling case for a D.O.J. investigation of the Postville Prosecutions and raises important questions regarding Stephanie Rose’s role in the Postville Prosecutions. (See attachment) Previously he wrote a very strong OP-ED published in the Des Moines Register (May 28, 2009). ( See below) The American Immigration Lawyers Association made a similar statement earlier this year. American Immigration Lawyers Association officer David Leopold also has raised serious questions about Stephanie Rose’s nomination. (See below.)

No organization has spoken out more clearly and forcefully regarding the egregious Postville Prosecutions that ACLU. The May 4th statement Iowa ACLU Executive Director Ben Stone praising the Supreme Court ruling in Flores-Figueroa v. United States characterized the Postville prosecutions perfectly: “the critical and novel element that sets Postville apart from prior ICE Raids was the pre-planned and massive prosecution of immigrant workers for allegedly using false documents to work.”

The ACLU statement submitted in July 2008 to the U.S House of Representatives Committee looking into the Postville matter was a damning summation of the many due process violations present in the Postville prosecutions. It is far past time to get to the bottom of who is responsible for the Postville Prosecutions and hold them accountable. We cannot allow these due process violations to happen in our country and then be brushed under the rug. ( See http://tinyurl.com/lq66be)

The actions of the federal employees who organized and executed the Postville worksite raid and prosecutions were taken on behalf of the people of the United States. Collectively, the Postville raid and prosecutions were arguably the most important cases ever to be handled by the Northern District of Iowa United States Attorney Office. All Assistant United States Attorneys who played a role in the prosecutions were acting as officers of the court sworn to uphold high ethical and legal standards. As in all potential criminal cases stemming from a federal or state investigation, each Assistant United States Attorney had a responsibility to carefully review and scrutinize the investigation and potential prosecution to determine whether were are any ethical or constitutional due process problems present.

So one year later, what has happened to those responsible? Have the federal prosecutors who executed the mass “fast track” prosecutions learned from their mistakes or been held accountable? To date no one has been held accountable for the due process and civil liberties violations of that occurred in Postville prosecutions. In fact, the federal prosecutors who executed the prosecutions consider it a success story. The Northern District of Iowa United States Attorney Office was so pleased with the brutal efficiency of the Postville prosecutions that a press release was issued boasting about arraigning, pleading, and sentencing a record number of defendants in one day.

We find it impossible to understand what grounds Ms Rose and her colleagues had for choosing to exercise their prosecutorial discretion in this case with such aggression and lack of respect for due process, other than the requirements of their own ambition. They brought the full force of the USA office to bear on the most vulnerable members of a community with full knowledge that the U.S. Department of Labor was conducting an ongoing investigation of child- labor and wage violations at the plant where these same workers were being victimized. All of these workers were laboring in one of our most physically demanding industries, meatpacking– an industry that historically has relied on immigrants. The workers were doing nothing more than striving to support themselves and their families. Rather than treat them with dignity, Ms Rose and her colleagues chose to grind them down further. They took advantage of the workers’ lack of resources, limited rights, and lack of powerful friends.

Even if that were not the case, Ms Rose and her team helped in expending vast resources to no useful end – a massive raid, the arrest hundreds of people, negotiated pleas, all done with cattle-call trials in cattle-ground trailers, and jailed hundreds of people for five months each, after which they were deported. Why did they bother? The workers were deportable anyway and the same end could have been achieved without all of the shameful pageantry. That, of course, would not have given Ms. Rose and her colleagues the chance to splash themselves all over the headlines and build their statistics. Postville was a massive failure on many levels, not the least of which was a failure of prosecutorial judgment. The fact that Ms Rose played a “central role” in this travesty is very disturbing. Her role in Postville should render her unfit to be a viable candidate to serve as a USA in the Obama Administration.

A vote for Stephanie Rose is a vote to endorse the Postville ICE Raid Prosecutions.

We urge a no vote!

Friends of Justice”