Poultry plant supervisor gets 2 years for ID theft
By Eric Connor March 17, 2009

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The last of several workplace supervisors charged in last fall's huge immigration raid on the Columbia Farms poultry plant in Greenville County was sentenced Monday, but the federal investigation into the company's hiring practices has yet to run its course, prosecutors said.


"The investigation is ongoing, and it is very active," First U.S. Assistant Attorney Kevin McDonald said.

A spokesman for Columbia Farms' parent company, North Carolina-based House of Raeford, couldn't be reached to comment Monday. The company has said it doesn't knowingly hire illegal workers and that it is cooperating with authorities.

John Jairo Johnson-Amaya was sentenced to two years in federal prison after he had earlier pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft.

The 51-year-old man, whom a federal complaint alleges used false documents to portray himself as a legal worker named John J. Johnson, told U.S. District Judge Henry Herlong on Monday that he had "fully repented" and was "very scared of prison."

Amaya will be deported upon his release.

In October, a swarm of agents raided the poultry-processing plant on Rutherford Road during a morning shift change, rounding up 330 workers in the culmination of a 10-month investigation into the company's hiring practices.

The raid, described as the largest workplace immigration raid in the Carolinas, led agents to review 825 copies of I-9 forms that are used to verify legal immigration status for employment, U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins said. Of those forms, 94 percent were found to be falsified, he said.

Amaya, who had been employed at the plant as a supervisor, said in court that he had provided a stolen Social Security number on employment forms.


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