Terra Universal, Inc., is a multimillion dollar U.S. government contractor built on the backs of an immigrant workforce. It contracts with the U.S. Army, Navy and NASA, but for years, its owner, George Sadaghiani, has exploited and discriminated against its workers.
Terra Universal regularly makes employees at its plant in Fullerton, California, work as many as 14 hours a day, but refuses to pay overtime. The company pays workers whom its executives believe to be undocumented far less than everyone else, and denies them benefits. Mr. Sadaghiani verbally abuses workers and flaunts basic health and safety codes, all the while browbeating the employees into believing that if they don't have papers, they don't have basic workplace rights.
Today, the ACLU of Southern California and the law firm of Hadsell Stormer Keeny Richardson & Renick LLP filed suit against Terra Universal and Mr. Sadaghiani today, demanding repayment of all the wages and benefits he cheated from his workers ''' both citizens and noncitizens alike.
Mr. Sadaghiani is the kind of business owner the Obama Administration has said it would target for breaking the law to exploit its workforce. Yet, until now the most vulnerable workers, who are the victims of these unscrupulous practices, have paid the greatest price.
On June 29, 2010, immigration agents raided Terra Universal. Agents corralled the workers and handcuffed and arrested 43 of them. Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been investigating the company for some time and was aware of egregious labor violations, it only informed the Department of Labor of its plans for a raid immediately beforehand. Now, although the Labor Department is investigating wage and hour violations, the victims of those practices face deportation.
Upon learning of the raid, the ACLU of Southern California investigated. What we found was staggering. Terra Universal avoided overtime by creating fake time clocks that forced workers to punch in to make-believe second jobs. Employees injured on the job were sent home without pay, or their pay would be docked. And most troubling was an elaborate two-tier system of workplace rights: a system for workers believed to be undocumented, and another system for everyone else. A red dot on a worker's human resources file meant that he or she could be denied equal pay, overtime wages, vacation, holiday and sick days - and any opportunities for a raise.
Worker exploitation is nothing new - but its brutal reality often goes untold. Such practices are magnified when you have a vulnerable immigrant workforce, unaware of their rights, and employers eager to exploit that fact. U.S. employment laws do not allow for a two-tiered system; instead, they provide the same protections for everyone regardless of their immigration status.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt heralded passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the 1938 federal law guaranteeing that American workers must be paid a minimum wage, and overtime when more than 40 hours are worked in a week, with these words: '''A fair day's pay for a fair day's work."
This has become one of the nation's most revered and time-honored principles. Unfortunately, while there are unscrupulous employers bent on violating the law in order to gain a competitive advantage, the federal government provides little deterrent, devoting diminishing resources to enforcement. And, so long as the federal government fails to aggressively enforce the law against ruthlessly exploitative employers and instead places their very victims in deportation proceedings when it discovers such practices, workers will be reluctant to report abuses, and employers will continue to erode basic employment protections for everyone.
This case is against one company, but it's directed at the many businesses out there who believe they can exploit a vulnerable immigrant workforce without consequence. Every employer must afford all of their workers the dignity they deserve regardless of where they come from and how they got here.
Jennie Pasquarella is a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.

LOS ANGELES – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Southern California today sent a letter to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca demanding that he not employ against prisoners at the Los Angeles County jails a high-technology device employing heat rays, built for military use.

Sheriff's Department officials announced last week they intend to begin using an “Assault Intervention Device” -- developed by the Raytheon Co. that fires an invisible heat beam capable of causing unbearable pain on inmates -- at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correctional Facility.

“I'm extremely disappointed in the willingness of Sheriff Lee Baca to employ this weapon-like device without consulting with the ACLU, which has court-appointment responsibility to monitor the Los Angeles County jails,” said Ramona Ripston, Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California. “Historically, we have found Sheriff Baca to understand that not everybody in county jail has been convicted of a crime. We have had advance discussions with Sheriff Baca about several different procedures, but we have not been consulted about this inhumane device."

The ACLU's letter dismisses claims made by Baca last week that the “Assault Intervention Device” is uniquely suited to address some of the more difficult inmate violence issues and will allow Sheriff's Department officials to intervene in disturbances involving inmates without risking injury to jail staff or inmates. The ACLU letter highlights the fact that the military incarnation of the device was briefly fielded in Afghanistan in June and then withdrawn in July without ever being used. While the device was being tested by the Air Force, a miscalibration of the device's power settings caused five airmen in its path to suffer lasting burns, including one whose injuries were so severe that he was airlifted to an off-base burn treatment center.

The ACLU's letter also cites a 2008 report by physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Juergen Altmann which says that the device has the ability to cause second and third degree burns over up to 50 percent of the body's surface and that without reliable protections against the re-triggering of the device against the same target subject, it has the potential to produce permanent injury or even death.

“There is no justification for subjecting any incarcerated population to a level of excessive force,” said Peter J. Eliasberg, Managing Attorney with the ACLU of Southern California. “The 'pain ray' was tested by the military, and the military decided not to deploy it – that's all we need to know. Moreover, given the long and troubled history of deputy violence at the Los Angeles County Jail, entrusting use of this device to deputies there is also a significant cause for concern.”

“The idea that a military weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “Unnecessarily inflicting severe pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people's lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

 

Los Angeles County Jail has just installed an Assault Intervention Device ''' an invisible microwave-beam weapon originally developed by the military ''' as a way to subdue inmates by focusing a microwave beam on them to make them feel "intolerable heat."

Sheriff Lee Baca unveiled this giant robot-like device at a news conference last week, noting the "The Assault Intervention Device appears uniquely suited to address some of the more difficult inmate violence issues," since it will "allow us to quickly intervene without having to enter the area and without incapacitating or injuring either combatant."

The claim that the 7 '_-foot tall high-power microwave device ''' dubbed the "Pain Ray" by the media ''' will cause no injury is highly dubious, to say the least: There is good evidence from the United States military that it is capable of inflicting not only intolerable pain, but death.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California sent a letter today to Sheriff Baca, demanding an assurance that he will never use the high power microwave device against the inmates of the Los Angeles County Jails.

The device, developed by the Raytheon Company of Waltham, Mass., was dubbed the "Active Denial System" (ADS) in its original military incarnation and was mounted on trucks for "crowd control," evidently intended to be used against protesters outside American military bases. The U.S. Justice Department claimed that the device "does not cause permanent injury" ''' but that claim has been shown to be false.

In September 2006, the Secretary of the Air Force said the ADS should be used for crowd control in the U.S. to prove its harmlessness before deployment on the battlefield, or he would be "vilified" in the world press. While the device was being tested by the Air Force, however, a miscalibration of its power settings caused five airmen in its path to suffer lasting burns, including one whose injuries were so severe that he was airlifted to an off-base burn treatment center.

A 2008 report by noted physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Joergan Altmann explained that the ADS device's microwave beam heats the skin without lasting harm only if the beam is switched off immediately once a temperature of 122 F. is reached ''' and then only if the beam is not retriggered. Dr. Altmann noted:

The power and duration of emission for one trigger event is controlled by a software program. Model calculations show that with the highest power setting, second- and third-degree burns with complete dermal necrosis will occur after less than 2 seconds. Even with a lower setting of power or duration there is the possibility for the operator to re-trigger immediately. ''_ As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree.

Further, the Altmann report said, the possibility of retriggering on the same subject puts avoidance of burns at the discretion of the weapons operator: "Without a technical device that reliably prevents retriggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death."

The notion that a military weapon intended to cause intolerable pain ''' and so capable of causing lethal injury when used for crowd control ''' should now be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded. It is all the more disturbing that the use of the Pain Ray is being entrusted to the deputies of L.A. County Jail, where the long-troubled history of deputy violence, retaliation and abuse against inmates, as well as a subculture of falsification of official records, has been documented by the ACLU in its role as court-appointed monitor of the jails in the federal litigation Rutherford v. Block.

Moreover, inmates at the jail ''' most of whom are not convicted, but awaiting trial ''' will not be the only potential victims of this Star Wars technology's domestic use. We could all get burned. The Justice Department's National Justice Institute specifically developed the smaller, portable version of the microwave weapon ''' the device that Sheriff Baca is now preparing to deploy against detainees in L.A. County Jail ''' for use in the homeland, and not only by corrections officials against unruly inmates, but by law enforcement officers for civilian "crowd control."