Eighteen former Swift & Co. employees who worked at the meatpacker's Cactus, Texas, plant have filed a $23 million lawsuit alleging that Swift hired illegal workers to depress employee wages...The 18 former Swift employees have, for the past year, waged another legal battle against Swift in a Texas state court. They claim to have been fired from the company after filing workers' compensation claims...Swift has been similarly under attack in Colorado since 2004, when 26 former employees filed suit in the U.S. District Court of Colorado, alleging that they were wrongly terminated because of their disabilities. That case is still in court. None of the cases has any merit, said Swift's general counsel, Don Wiseman.