Former North Iowa Sheriff Remembers Raid Similar to Postvilleby Cole Mathisen
KIMT News 3
Charles City, IA- In the wake of the largest immigration raid in U.S history in Postville, the regions U.S. attorney's office has been temporarily moved to Waterloo. It’s to help them handle all the criminal cases. This is only the third time it's been done.

The first was after the 1996 raid at the All State Quality Foods meat packing plant in Charles City. Bill Cavanaugh was the Floyd County Sheriff at the time of the operation. He says it was the model for immigration raids to come.

"And there's people that actually came in here from Washington DC from immigration to monitor how we did this, and tried to find the good and bad things both that we did," he said.

He says they arrested about 100 illegal immigrants during the bust. They converted the local National Guard Armory into a detention center. The kitchen served as a federal courtroom. He says they didn't have as much trouble as the raid in Postville.

"We didn't have near the problem that they're having over there, the sheer numbers alone, to process those people, where do you house them, trying to contact family members," Cavanaugh said.

He says the company didn't do anything wrong when they hired the immigrants. He says at the time there was no way to detect illegal’s if they had a social security card.

The U.S. Marshal's Office has leased the National Cattle Congress site in Waterloo through next weekend as a detention center. A U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman says further immigration arrests are still possible.


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