June 12, 2015
CapitalPress.com
5
$2.25 million ICE fine shocks tree fruit industry
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
PRESCOTT, Wash. — The
Washington tree fruit industry
has been rocked by one of its
largest companies, Broetje Or-
chards of Prescott, agreeing
to pay $2.25 million in civil
penalties to conclude a federal
investigation of its workforce.
The
settlement
was
reached for civil violations
of federal law related to ver-
ifying U.S. employment eli-
gibility of workers, according
to the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agen-
cy.
It is the largest civil penal-
ty by ICE on record against
any business in Washington,
Oregon, Idaho and Alaska
and one of the larger fines
against an agricultural com-
pany nationally, said Andrew
Munoz, Seattle ICE spokes-
man.
Broetje Orchards issued
a news release saying it has
agreed to pay the $2.25 mil-
lion with no admission of
wrongdoing and no allega-
tion or finding of criminal
conduct.
In March 2012, ICE no-
tified Broetje Orchards that
it had nearly 1,700 workers
not authorized to work in the
U.S., Munoz said.
A follow-up audit last
summer showed that while
the company had significant-
ly reduced the number, nearly
950 unauthorized workers re-
mained, Munoz said. Broetje
Orchards acknowledged that,
he said.
ICE pursued a fine of $2.5
million based on $2,250 per
employee, plus an additional
amount for the “aggravating
factor” that employees had
not been terminated after the
notice, Munoz said. Negoti-
ations reduced that to $2.25
million in the agreement
signed June 2, he said.
Broetje waives any right
to appeal and was cleared of
any further civil or criminal
liability up to June 2, Munoz
said.
“We come out of this
Associated Press file
Workers at Broetje Orchards pick Fuji apples at a Walla Walla County farm in 2013 near Prescott, Wash. The company has reached an
agreement with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
agreement hoping Broetje
continues on a path of com-
pliance, but the agreement
does not preclude future
audits for criminal enforce-
ment,” he said.
“ICE weighs various fac-
tors when considering the ap-
propriate penalty, including
the interests of the commu-
nity and local economy,” said
Raphael Sanchez, ICE’s chief
counsel in Seattle. “We be-
lieve this is a reasonable con-
clusion that holds this busi-
ness accountable but does not
cripple its ability to provide
jobs to lawful workers.”
In its news release, Broetje
Orchards said it was pleased
to get the process behind it
and get back to growing fruit.
“This case nevertheless
highlights what is clearly a
dysfunctional and broken
immigration system,” the
company said. “We urge our
industry and our state’s con-
gressional delegation to take
the lead to support and pass
immigration reform legisla-
tion. The agricultural labor
shortage needs to be fixed,
and now.”
The company said it
would make no further com-
ment.
Broetje Orchards packs
more than 5 million boxes of
apples annually and has more
than 6,000 acres of apples
and cherries, according to its
website.
It has more than 12 million
square feet of fruit storage
and packing space and em-
ploys 1,000 seasonal work-
ers during peak harvests and
1,100 year-round employees.
Other agricultural em-
ployers in the four-state re-
gion have been fined by ICE
in recent years, Munoz said.
He said he doesn’t know how
many. Penalties usually are
less than $100,000 and typ-
ically between $5,000 and
$50,000, he said.
ICE issued 11 notices
of intent to fine in the four
states in 2014 and 25 in
2013, he said. Those were all
businesses, not just agricul-
ture, he said. There were 12
final orders in 2014 totaling
$176,000 in fines in the four
states and 31 in 2013 totaling
$763,000, he said.
“A majority of cases
don’t result in any type of
penalty or administrative
action” when we see good
faith, proactive efforts, Mu-
noz said.
In reacting to the news,
the president of another
Washington tree fruit compa-
ny, said: “This deal is scary.
We will get to the point with
these raids where we just
won’t have enough people
to get our crops picked and
packed.”
The $2.25 million is a
lot for any company to pay
and probably 80 percent of
the workers in most packing
houses are illegal, said the
president, who asked for an-
onymity.
“This is a symptom of
the fact we’ve been unable
to get anywhere on immi-
gration reform. There are a
lot of growers in the same
position as Broetje. They all
need to have a way to get a
legal workforce instead of
play the games of the past
20 years,” said Mike Gem-
pler, executive director of the
Washington Growers League
in Yakima.
Solutions are available,
such as the 2013 Senate
bill, but greater use of H-2A
foreign guestworkers alone
won’t solve labor shortages,
he said.
Labor is tighter than
last year, particularly in the
Wenatchee area, he said.
“The large fine against an
outstanding grower further
demonstrates that the major-
ity of the seasonal agricul-
tural workforce is not work
authorized, as if we need fur-
ther proof,” said Dan Fazio,
director of WAFLA, a farm
labor association in Olympia.
“Immigration reform is
the domestic social issue of
our time. We need to get it
right. Congress must reform
immigration laws to make it
easier for seasonal workers
who are sponsored by great
employers to enjoy the dig-
nity of legal presence while
they work in our fields and
the administration needs to
stop playing politics with the
issue and work with Con-
gress,” Fazio said.
This year’s labor shortage
looks like 2006, a bad year,
Fazio said. The recession
reduced shortages for a few
years after 2007, he said.
“People are scared they
don’t have enough. We’re
getting calls from lots of
growers,” he said.
WAFLA probably will as-
sist growers in hiring 10,000
H-2A workers this year com-
pared to more than 7,000 last
year, he said. The statewide
total may hit 15,000, up from
9,077 last year, he said.
More hops and pear grow-
ers and smaller growers are
using H-2A on shared con-
tracts, he said.
Norm
Gutzwiler,
a
Wenatchee grower, said he’s
“dumbfounded” by the pen-
alty against Broetje.
“Our system is broken and
somehow it needs to be fixed
so people can work. That’s
a heavy fine to be levied
against anyone,” he said.
“People will be more con-
scientious and try to do the
right thing but people have
been trying to do the right
thing for years. I’m sure
Broetje had people checking
I-9 (employment eligibility)
forms,” he said.
Gutzwiler said grow-
ers he’s talked to have had
enough pickers for early
cherries and that he hopes
it will be adequate through
cherry harvest as pickers
move up from California af-
ter finishing the crop there.
Vilsack, Jewell make
pitch for more fire funds
By ZANE SPARLING
Capital Press
Grant County Sheriff’s Department
Administration officials want to tap FEMA funds to fight the most
destructive wildfires.
One percent of forest fires
soak up 30 percent of the
Forest Service’s suppression
budget, according to a Depart-
ment of Agriculture press re-
lease. Combined, the Agricul-
ture and Interior departments
expect to spend somewhere
between $810 million to $1.62
billion battling deadly forest
fires this season. The high end
of that estimate exceeds their
total budget by $200 million.
“What’s frustrating about
this is that we’re not asking
for new dollars… It’s just
spending existing money in
a slightly different way,” Vil-
sack said. “We’ll fight the 98
to 99 (percent) of fires. But
there’s 1 to 2 percent that we
simply cannot afford.”
Republicans
in
the
GOP-controlled House and
Senate have already rejected
the president’s budget propos-
al. The House Appropriations
Committee released a bill last
Tuesday that would increase
firefighting and prevention
funds by $52 million.
In the meantime, Forest
Service Chief Tom Tidwell
warned reporters that, despite
the delayed start to the sea-
son, dangerous infernos are
already burning in California
and Arizona. Oregon, Wash-
ington and Northern Idaho are
expected to see their share of
blazes as the fire season con-
tinues.
“We’re ready when fires
strike,” Jewell, the interi-
or secretary, said during the
conference. “We hope mother
nature is good to us. But she
may not be.”
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The U.S. Forest Service
said Tuesday that it need ac-
cess to new funds to combat
the 1 percent of wildfires that
are the most dangerous—and
expensive—to fight.
President Barack Obama’s
$4 trillion budget proposal
would allow the Forest Ser-
vice to use FEMA and other
natural disaster relief funds
for fire suppression. As it
stands, the agency routinely
pilfers cash from other parts
of its budget, including blaze
prevention and forest resto-
ration, to pay for firefighting.
“These are emergencies.
They should be treated as
such,” Interior Secretary Sal-
ly Jewell said to reporters
during a conference call on
Tuesday. “(Forest Service)
firefighting has exceeded
budget in nearly half of the
last 14 years.”
The president’s proposal
largely mirrors language tak-
en from the Wildfire Disas-
ter Funding Act, which was
introduced by Reps. Mike
Simpson, R-Idaho, and Kurt
Schrader, D-Ore., in 2014.
The bill has almost 100 bi-
partisan cosponsors, but has
been stuck in the House Sub-
committee on Conservation,
Energy and Forestry since
February of last year. An at-
tempt to force a floor vote
on the act, known formally
as House Resolution 3992,
failed in July after Rep. Scott
Peters, D-Calif., was unable
to obtain the 218 signatures
needed for a discharge peti-
tion.
During the press confer-
ence, Agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack emphasized the
natural origin — lightning
strikes—that cause most for-
est fires.
“We want to use a fund
that’s set aside for disasters”
he said. “And (forest fires) are
every bit as natural as torna-
does or hurricanes.”
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