Thread: 300 illegal immigrants held after S.C. I.C.E. raid (Now 331)

300 suspected illegal immigrants held after S.C. raid

10/07/2008
GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Federal agents detained more than 300 suspected illegal immigrants Tuesday in a raid at a chicken processing plant that has been under investigation for months.

The raid took place during a shift change. Immigration officials kept the workers inside the House of Raeford's Columbia Farms plant and spent most of the morning trying to interview them and figure out exactly how many are in the U.S. illegally, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald said.

The number could be large. A recent review found that immigration paperwork for more than 775 of 825 workers contained false information, McDonald said.

Immigration agents scoured the plant for paperwork and other information for the investigation.

House of Raeford processes chickens and turkeys in eight plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Michigan. A sales manager at the Greenville plant referred questions to the company's Rose Hill, N.C., headquarters, where a woman answering the phone said there was no immediate comment.

Federal prosecutors and immigration agents have been investigating the plant's hiring practices for several months. Twelve people have been arrested, most on charges related to falsifying documents. Seven have pleaded guilty and three supervisors awaiting trial have fled, McDonald said.

The Charlotte Observer first reported in February that plant workers were in the country illegally and that company managers knew it.

Officials are arranging to care for the children of any workers detained in the raid, one of several nationwide this year.

In August, more than 600 suspected illegal immigrants were detained at a Mississippi transformer plant in the largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history. And in May, federal immigration officials swept into Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were detained and dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards were seized from the plant's human resources department, according to court records.
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