Undocumented workers at Dallas plant say they rented false identities. Then two died.
His real name was Hugo Dominguez, but his badge and paycheck from Quality Sausage Co. identified him as Jose Marcelino Lopez.
Dominguez, 36, was one of three workers from the west Dallas meat processing plant who died in the past month from COVID-19. Two of them, including Dominguez, were undocumented and hired under false names and Social Security numbers, according to their families.
As part of an investigation into working conditions at Quality Sausage, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram also spoke to four former employees and two current employees who are all undocumented. Each said they paid Archer Services, a temporary employment agency, $300 to “rent” another person’s name and Social Security number to get a job at the plant.
The employees and former employees spoke on condition of anonymity because they are afraid of retaliation.
“They don’t tell us anything about where the name or social came from or even if it’s real,” said one of the workers. “The only information we get is what’s on the check and an ID number that’s on the badge we use to clock in and out.”
The man quit after Dominguez died because, he said, the company is not protecting employees from the virus and more people could die.
An official with Archer Services, which has offices in Irving, refused to comment about its hiring practices.
In a prepared statement in response to questions from the Star-Telegram, Quality Sausage wrote that it verifies its employees are eligible to work at the plant as part of the hiring process. “Currently we are working with Archer Services to confirm their continued compliance with U.S. work authorization regulations,” the statement says.
Using public records, the Star-Telegram found Lopez, a U.S. citizen whose name and Social Security number were being used by Dominguez for his job at Quality Sausage. The 38-year-old construction worker was stunned to see his name and the last four digits of his Social Security number above the words “Quality Sausage Co.” on one of Dominguez’s recent pay stubs.
Lopez said he did not know Dominguez and never agreed to let anyone use his identity.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Lopez said as he stood outside his home in Dallas. “I feel bad for the man who died and his family and everything, but I’m also scared that someone else out there still has my information. It makes me feel violated. I really don’t know what to do.”
Pay day at the Dallas plant
A white, rusted Chevy van pulled up and parked outside Quality Sausage at 3:05 p.m. Thursday, May 21.
Shortly after, dozens of workers, wearing hardhats and hairnets, streamed out of the plant.
Some approached a silver Hyundai parked in front of the van, where a woman handed them what looked like envelopes or a small piece of white paper.
Most of the workers then walked to the van, which had “We cash payroll checks,” written on the side in red. The employees handed someone inside the van a paper through a small window similar to those on the side of armored trucks.
The woman in the car threatened to call the police and drove off after she saw a Star-Telegram photographer taking pictures. Over the next two hours, 98 people walked up to the van and received envelopes filled with what looked like cash.
After the van drove off, the Star-Telegram saw the silver Hyundai parked outside Archer Services, 1619 W. Irving Blvd. in Irving. The Star-Telegram knocked on the door of the office and an employee said through the door that Executive Officer Melissa Lozano was unavailable. Minutes later, Lozano called the Star-Telegram but refused to speak about the allegations raised by the employees.
“Archer would give us or our supervisor the checks every Thursday,” said one of the undocumented workers who quit recently. “I had the choice to cash them at the van but, even though it didn’t have my real name, these were real checks because I would sometimes cash them at a grocery store where they knew me and they never bounced.”
Dominguez’s common-law wife, Blanca Parra, said her husband often had trouble cashing his check anywhere other than the van because he did not have a picture ID or a bank account that matched the name on his checks. Parra showed the Star-Telegram one of Dominguez’s pay stubs with his false name and Social Security number on it.
She said her husband often spoke about wanting to file his taxes to show the U.S. he was contributing to Medicare and Social Security and one day use those payments as proof to immigration authorities that he was not a public burden. But Archer would not let him file taxes on his own, she said.
Instead, Archer would pay Dominguez a bonus each year around tax season, Parra said. A photo taken by Parra of a pay stub for bonus, vacation and holiday pay from Archer Services showed a 2019 special bonus for $500 paid on Jan. 31, 2020.
Undocumented workers can file taxes using an Individual Tax Identification Number issued by the IRS. In 2019, there were nearly 3.8 million ITIN users filing taxes individually and jointly across the U.S., according to data obtained by the Star-Telegram through the Freedom of Information Act. But not all ITIN users are in the country illegally.
Lopez, whose identity was being used to pay Dominguez, said he’s never been audited or had problems filing his taxes with the IRS.
He also said that about 13 years ago he worked for a temp agency that had pay practices similar to those observed involving Archer.
Every week a woman in a car and a white van would park outside the workplace, and everyone would come out to get their checks, Lopez said. He said he paid $10 to cash his checks, and they never asked him for ID.
“It was convenient,” Lopez said. “But now I wonder if that’s when they took my information.”
Meat plant employees at risk
Dominguez left his home in Veracruz, Mexico, when he was 20, looking for a way to support his two sick parents and two young siblings. In 2004, he came to the U.S. using a visa and quickly found work in construction and later driving forklifts in several Dallas warehouses.
In 2015, his then 19-year-old brother, Pablo Dominguez, wanted to join him in the U.S. Dominguez told him they were hiring at Quality Sausage and that if he decided to come, they could work there together.
“He was the best worker they had in the warehouse,” Pablo Dominguez said. “I’d never seen him miss a day until he got sick with COVID-19. He’d always work past his regular shift and would stay until the last shipment was loaded.”
Pablo Dominguez said Quality Sausage employees often work 10- to 12-hour days, up to seven days a week, without the choice of taking sick or personal time off. He said they didn’t have health benefits and that Archer Services would often pay them for less than the hours they worked.
“It’s not like we could say anything,” Pablo Dominguez said. “We either worked or they would find someone to replace you. Many of us have families to support and no skills to go out and find another job, so we stay and hope things get better.
“The problem is they never did,” he said. “They only got worse.”
Pablo Dominguez quit after his brother’s death. He, Parra and two of Parra’s children have filed a lawsuit in a Dallas County District Court accusing Quality Sausage of wrongful death on behalf of Dominguez.
Employees at Archer Services and Quality Sausage had never spoken in public about the companies’ hiring practices, but the recent deaths of Dominguez, Mathias Martinez and Bertha Cervantes have sparked a barrage of protests and calls to close the plant.
Many current and former employees who have recently quit say they’ve been infected with the virus because of the plant’s negligence to act at the first signs of the outbreak in early April, according to one dozen interviews by the Star-Telegram.
As of May 22, 63 people who recently worked for Quality Sausage had tested positive for COVID-19, according to a count by the activist group Activista Legal in Dallas. At least a dozen were back at work, all of them are undocumented, the group says.
“This is a matter of life and death,” said Parra, Dominguez’s common-law wife, who recently joined the group in a protest outside the plant. “They are taking advantage of them because they know these people don’t have a choice.”
Lawsuit filed against Dallas plant
The Star-Telegram’s findings substantiate an accusation made in a lawsuit filed against Quality Sausage last year that said up to 180 people who work at the plant are “undocumented aliens.” The lawsuit was filed by Lam Van “Tommy” Nguyen, a former plant superintendent who says he was fired after reporting multiple health violations and sounding the alarm about the company’s hiring practices.
In his complaint, Nguyen states he believed Quality Sausage was illegally recruiting and hiring undocumented workers through Archer Services.
An Archer Services staffing agreement filed with Nguyen’s lawsuit states Archer is responsible for paying all temporary employees and making sure they are eligible to work in the United States.
The agreement, dated March 17, 2017, is signed by Ruben Lozano, an executive of Archer Services in Irving, and Ida Jimenez, Quality Sausage human resources manager. The lawsuit says Jimenez made statements confirming that she believes the workers supplied by Archer Services are “undocumented aliens.”
“Ida Jimenez has acknowledged that the paperwork for workers supplied by Archer Services is not legitimate,” reads part of the 64-page lawsuit.
Archer Services LLC in Irving was established in 2007. Ruben Lozano is listed as a former executive and a current director at another Archer Services location in Mercedes, less than seven miles from the Texas-Mexico border, according to data from the Texas Secretary of State. There are at least 15 businesses spread among most major Texas cities including Austin, Houston, Amarillo and Fort Worth named Archer Services or a variation of that name.
Lack of accountability
Martin Valko, a Dallas immigration attorney, represents employers accused of hiring undocumented workers. He said the problem is that companies rely on skilled labor that is often performed by undocumented workers. Employers that are caught will often go unpunished, as the government is unable to prove the employers had knowledge the workers were undocumented, Valko said. But it is the employees who are punished by losing jobs and being removed from the U.S., he said.
He said employers looking to hire undocumented workers will sometimes send recruits to staffing agencies until they find an agency willing to look the other way and that is not using E-Verify, a web-based system that allows enrolled employers to verify the identity and employment eligibility of new hires by electronically matching information provided by employees with Social Security and Homeland Security records.
Employers that are not enrolled in E-Verify will rely on manually checking documents provided by the employees to comply with the requirements of Form I-9, a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services form used to verify the identity and legal authorization to work.
After an I-9 form is completed and signed by both employer and employee it is stored for a required period and also in case of an audit. But if there is no audit authorities, including the Social Security Administration, could be unaware of a person’s mismatched identity for years before red flags are raised.
“This is one of the reasons why a comprehensive immigration reform is long overdue,” Valko said. “These companies often can’t find qualified U.S. workers. I tell you because I’ve seen it. Companies will try to replace their undocumented workforce but most U.S. citizens that are hired will work for a few days and then leave.”
In January, Speed Fab-Crete in Kennedale was fined $3 million for lying about firing its undocumented workers following an audit by immigration authorities. The plea documents say employers shifted 23 undocumented workers to a Fort Worth staffing agency in an effort to hide their continued employment.
ICE cases in Texas and nationwide
In fiscal year 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement began 6,812 worksite enforcement cases across the country and arrested 627 people nationwide. Between April 2018 and March 2019 only 11 individuals were prosecuted for illegal employment of immigrants, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a non-partisan research organization at Syracuse University.
ICE temporarily halted some of its operations because of the pandemic but its worksite enforcement strategy continues to focus on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly break the law, according to an emailed statement.
“Unauthorized workers create vulnerabilities in the marketplace by presenting false documents to gain employment, completing applications for fraudulent benefits, and stealing identities of legal U.S. workers,” reads the statement.
“In some instances, unauthorized workers may perform duties for which they are not certified or qualified, which could lead to safety concerns. There are real victims associated with identity theft; it can significantly impact an individual’s credit history, medical history and other aspects of everyday life.”
Quality Sausage opened in 1976 in Dallas and makes pizza toppings and precooked meats for grocery stores and “well known” restaurants around the world, according to its website. The company has never been prosecuted for illegal hiring practices and has a clean record except for a 2016 citation from OSHA after an employee was injured using a meat grinder, according to court records and public information requests filed by the Star-Telegram with the U.S. Department of Labor.
Quality Sausage said in a prepared statement that it is committed to ensuring that everyone who works at its facility has the legal right to work in the U.S. and to maintaining a safe and compliant work environment.
“We have established long-term relationships with reputable staffing agencies such as Archer Services to augment our workforce, as needed.” the statement says. “As part of our policies and procedures, it is critical that our staffing agencies confirm that anyone who works at our facility is authorized to do so.”
This story was originally published May 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
