WASHINGTON: Justice Department officials who prosecuted hundreds of illegal immigrants arrested at an Iowa meatpacking plant in May used a government-created “manual” to speed through guilty pleas, a potential violation of the rights of those detained in the raid, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Thursday.

The manual was assembled before the workers were arrested or their lawyers were appointed. It lays out suggested guilty pleas for the arrested workers and specifies how they should waive their legal rights.

It includes detailed scripts for judges and lawyers to recite. The manual ends with forms for sentencing and deportation.

ACLU lawyers said the detailed scripts and the rapid-fire sentencing procedure have raised concerns that the administration subverted fundamentals of legal justice in its push for an enforcement victory.

“The government’s tactics really undermined the constitutional protections of due process and presumption of innocence,” said ACLU staff attorney Monica Ramirez.

Justice Department officials adamantly denied the allegations.

“They’re off base with that,” said Sean Berry, chief of the criminal division at the US Attorney’s Office in Cedar Rapids. “This is not some document to railroad people; this allows defence counsel to prepare their clients.”

Questions about the Postville immigration raid the largest in US history have intensified since agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the plant on May 12. Lawmakers have held hearings on the raid and have vowed to take action. Religious organisations and advocacy groups are spotlighting the case as well.

Advocates, immigration lawyers and translators question the deal offered to the Postville workers, who were told they could either plead guilty to aggravated identity theft, with a minimum two-year sentence, or accept a reduced charge and spend a year or less in jail. However, the lesser charge also would require the workers surrender more of their legal rights.

Groups of 17 workers, mostly uneducated Guatemalans, were represented by a single criminal defence lawyer. Workers appeared before judges in similarly large groups to receive their sentences. They had limited access to lawyers specialising in immigration issues.

Advocates of tighter immigration controls have defended the process at Postville.

“Each defendant was provided a criminal defence attorney, and it was up to those defence attorneys to ensure due process,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

But other lawmakers and attorneys have said that the conditions set up by the Justice Department made adequate representation all but impossible.

Justice Department lawyers gave the workers seven days to accept a plea bargain that a “majority of them didn’t understand”, said Erik Camayd-Freixas, a translator for many of the workers.

The time pressures meant that lawyers spent an hour or less with individual clients and had little time to formulate strategies or objections, said Robert Rigg, a law professor at Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa.

Nearly 400 workers were arrested, and more than 300 were charged. All but a handful of workers were sentenced by May 22 eight business days after the raid.

Lawmakers also have asked why only two managers have been arrested and questioned whether the raid would affect an ongoing Department of Labour investigation of possible labour violations at the Agriprocessors meat packing plant, including alleged child labour and sexual abuse.

Berry, of the Cedar Rapids US Attorney’s Office, said scripts are commonplace for lawyers and judges to keep track of complicated issues.

He said he did not know who had assembled the manuals, or who determined the ratio of lawyers to defendants. Berry refused to answer questions about who imposed the seven-day limit for workers to decide on guilty pleas or why, saying they touched on an ongoing investigation. But he insisted the proceedings did not violate due process.

“The defendants all had qualified, court-appointed federal counsel,” Berry said. “They had judges take their guilty pleas and ascertain their pleas were knowing and voluntary.”—Dawn/ The LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times