Postville Raid

The Postville raid was a raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, United States, on May 12, 2008, executed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security together with other agencies. The raid was the largest single raid of a workplace in U.S. history until that date, and resulted in nearly 400 arrests of immigrant workers with false identity papers who were charged with identity theft, document fraud, use of stolen social security numbers, and related offenses. Some 300 workers were convicted on document fraud charges within four days. The majority served a five-month prison sentence before being deported.

Several employees and lower and middle level managers were indicted on charges of conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants, aggravated identity theft, and child labor violations among others and were convicted, serving prison sentences between 60 days and 41 months. Neither the owner, Aaron Rubashkin, nor his sons Sholom and Heshy Rubashkin, who were in charge of the management of Agriprocessors, were convicted of immigration and labor law violations. Financial irregularities brought to light by the raid and subsequent investigations led to a conviction of the plant's chief executive Sholom Rubashkin on bank fraud and related charges. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison, and his trial on immigration charges was canceled.

With helicopters, buses and vans, hundreds of federal officials from the ICE together with agents and officers of other federal, state, and local agencies, raided the meat packing plant in the morning hours of 12 May 2008, seizing company records and arresting 389 individuals. According to the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Iowa, those arrested included “290 Guatemalans, 93 Mexicans, 2 Israelis and 4 Ukrainians”. Eighteen were juveniles.

According to a retired federal agent, a raid on Agriprocessors expected to lead to the arrest of about 100 illegal workers mostly from Eastern Europe was planned in 2000, and canceled at the last moment over political concerns. The 2008 raid was planned for months. An affidavit the Homeland Security Department filed in court before the raid cited “...the issuance of 697 criminal complaints and arrest warrants against persons believed to be current employees,” and to have acted criminally. The affidavit cited unnamed sources who alleged that the company employed 15-year-old children, that supervisors helped cash checks for workers with false documents, and pressured workers without documents to purchase vehicles and register them in other names. It also cited a case in which a supervisor blindfolded a Guatemalan worker and allegedly struck him with a meat hook, causing no serious injury. Sources quoted in the affidavit and application for search warrant also alleged the existence of a methamphetamine laboratory at the slaughterhouse, and that employees carried weapons to work. Later press reports do not indicate that a methamphetamine laboratory was found during the search.

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