Immigration Raid Yields 62 Arrests in Illinois (NYT)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05raid.html?

Immigration Raid Yields 62 Arrests in Illinois

By LIBBY SANDER
Published: April 5, 2007

CHICAGO, April 4 — Immigration agents arrested two managers and 60 other employees of an industrial cleaning company Wednesday on immigration violations and charges of identity theft in an early morning raid at a meatpacking plant in central Illinois.

The operation was the latest in a string of raids by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on companies accused of employing illegal immigrants who, in some cases, are alleged to have stolen the identities of American citizens to create false identification documents.

The raid occurred at 1:30 a.m. at Cargill Meat Solutions in Beardstown, a town of 6,000 people northwest of Springfield, where the cleaning company, Quality Service Integrity Inc., was under contract to clean Cargill's pork processing plant.

The two managers, who officials said are Mexicans in the United States illegally, and 11 of the workers arrested Wednesday were charged with aggravated identity theft. Identity theft charges were brought against 14 additional employees of the cleaning service, but they have not yet been arrested, said Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency.

Forty-nine employees were taken into custody for alleged immigration violations. In all, 54 of the 62 people arrested are from Mexico; 5 are from Guatemala; 2 from El Salvador and 1 from Argentina, Ms. Montenegro said.

Eleven of the workers taken into custody were released on humanitarian grounds, officials said.

Neither Cargill nor any of the 2,200 employees at its Beardstown facility were objects of the investigation, officials said.

FULL story at link.

[LuckyLib]

1. Watch for immigration raids to increase, particularly when * and Gonzo are digging themselves deeper