Smithfield joins program to curb hiring of illegal immigrants

Smithfield Foods Inc., the subject of at least two immigration raids last year in North Carolina, was listed Tuesday among 37 new participants in a federal program to deter the employment of undocumented workers.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office named 26 new members and 11 new associate members to a voluntary program called IMAGE, or the ICE Mutual Agreement Between Government and Employers. The federal agency provides education and training to the companies, which in turn agree to deterrents such as establishing a tip line to report the employment of undocumented workers.

Smithfield Foods, based in Smithfield, is an associate member, which means it has not fulfilled all 10 requirements, ICE spokeswoman Pat Reilly said. Reilly and Dick Poulson, an executive vice president of Smithfield, declined to say which requirements the company had yet to satisfy.

Participation in the program, Poulson said, shows "we're being a good corporate citizen and complying with the federal law."

In 2007, immigration officials arrested about 50 workers and former employees at Smithfield's Tar Heel, N.C., plant. Federal agents said that they were in the country illegally and that some had engaged in identity theft.

"When the raids occurred," Poulson said, "we saw the writing on the wall.... We think we've taken steps to protect our employees by hopefully checking credentials and seeing that we're not vulnerable to people stealing identities."

Reilly said Smithfield, with more than 57,000 employees, was among the largest of the new additions to the program.

"We're thrilled that Smithfield wanted to be an IMAGE partner," she said. "It's an important industry. It's one in which we've found a lot of non compliance, not necessarily on the company level but in the hiring area, from the front-line supervisors looking the other way on an illegal work force. We hope that the IMAGE partners will become industry leaders."

The IMAGE program, launched in January 2007, now has 46 full members and associate members, Reilly said.

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com