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very night for months, Victor Zavala
Jr., who was arrested on Thursday in a 21-state immigration raid,
said he showed up at the Wal-Mart
store in New Jersey to clean floors.
As the store's regular employees left at 11
p.m., Mr. Zavala said, they often asked him whether he ever got a
night off.
Mr. Zavala, identified by federal agents as an
illegal immigrant from Mexico, told the Wal-Mart workers that he and
four others employed by a cleaning contractor worked at the Wal-Mart
in Old Bridge every night of the year, except Christmas and New
Year's Eve.
Now Mr. Zavala feels cheated, saying he worked
as hard as he could pursuing the American dream, only to face an
immigration hearing that could lead to deportation for himself, his
wife, Eunice, and their three children, 10, 7 and 5 years old. He
was one of 250 janitors employed by Wal-Mart contractors who were
arrested at 60 Wal-Mart stores before dawn on Thursday.
"My family's not happy about this," said Mr.
Zavala, who said he paid a "coyote" $2,000 to smuggle him into the
United States three years ago. "My children do not want to leave and
go back to Mexico."
A federal law enforcement official who spoke
on condition of anonymity said yesterday that several current and
former cleaning contractors for Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest
retailer, were cooperating with the government in its investigation.
On Thursday, federal officials acknowledged that they had wiretaps
and recordings of conversations and meetings among Wal-Mart
executives and contractors.
Federal officials said that as part of the
Thursday raid, they searched the office of a middle-level manager at
Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The officials said the
government believed that Wal-Mart executives knew the cleaning
contractors were using illegal immigrants.
Federal officials noted that 102 illegal
immigrants working for Wal-Mart cleaning contractors had been
arrested in 1998 and 2001 and that 13 Wal-Mart cleaning contractors
had pleaded guilty after those arrests. Those pleas remain under
court seal.
Wal-Mart said yesterday that it had begun an
internal investigation and would dismiss anyone in its work force
who did not have proper immigration papers. Wal-Mart also told its
officials to preserve any documents that might be relevant to the
federal inquiry, which is being conducted by the Department of
Homeland Security's division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Wal-Mart officials said that the raid
surprised them, and that they had no idea the company's cleaning
contractors used illegal immigrants.
They acknowledged yesterday that 10 immigrants
arrested on Thursday in Arizona and Kentucky were employed directly
by Wal-Mart. Company officials said they had brought these workers
in-house after certain stores phased out the use of the contractors
for whom the immigrants had worked.
Wal-Mart officials also said the company
required its contractors to hire legal workers only.
"We have seen no evidence thus far that anyone
in Wal-Mart is involved in any scheme involving illegal workers,"
Tom Williams, a company spokesman, said.
Government officials and Walmart executives
declined yesterday to name the cleaning contractors whose employees
were arrested.
"These arrests are part of the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement mission and part of our continuing commitment to
investigate companies that are hiring individuals who are not
authorized to work in the United States," said Garrison Courtney, a
spokesman for the immigration agency.
Federal officials said yesterday that the
leading nation of origin for the janitors caught in Thursday's raids
was Mexico, with 90. The Czech Republic was second with 35, followed
by Mongolia with 22, Brazil with 20. Uzbekistan, Poland, Russia,
Georgia and Lithuania each had about a dozen.
Mr. Zavala, the janitor in Old Bridge, N.J.,
said he got his job shortly after arriving in the United States,
when a neighbor asked whether he wanted work cleaning buildings. Mr.
Zavala, 28, said he did not know the name of his boss.
Mr. Zavala said he believed that the Wal-Mart
managers knew the janitors were illegal immigrants.
"Deep in their minds, of course the store
managers knew it," he said. "The other guys from the crew didn't
speak one word of English. Of course they knew it, but if you asked
them, they'll say `we thought they were citizens or residents.'
"
Mr. Zavala said the contractor that he and
Eunice, his wife, worked for paid them $400 a week each for working
56 hours. That would come to $6.25 an hour if time and a half
overtime is included for all hours worked in excess of 40.
"We don't know nothing about days off," said
Mr. Zavala, whose hometown is Mexico City. "We don't know nothing
about nights off, we don't know health insurance, we don't know life
insurance, and we don't know anything about 401(k)
plans."
He said that when he was arrested and taken to
a detention center in Newark, immigration officials mocked him for
taking a job that paid so little in a state where rents and living
expenses are so high. He said that in his 16 months as a cleaner at
Wal-Mart, he was given only two nights off.
He said he did not think that the contractor
withheld taxes from his pay, raising questions about whether the
contractor was making the required contributions for Social Security
and unemployment insurance.
Misha Firer, an illegal immigrant from Russia,
said he worked for three months last year as a cleaner at Wal-Marts
in Ephrata, Pa., and Glens Falls, N.Y., working 90 consecutive days
without having a day off.
Mr. Firer said that he earned $6 an hour,
working the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift, washing, waxing and buffing
floors. He said the chemicals were so strong that some workers had
nose bleeds, sore eyes and skin irritations.
"Nobody wanted to take the job," he said. "It
was a night job and it paid very little."
