U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts the largest-ever raid of a workplace in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.
The Postville raid was a raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, 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.
On that day, ICE deployed 900 agents and arrested 398 employees, 98% of whom were Latino. According to reports at the time, "agents used presumed race/ethnicity to identify suspected undocumented immigrants, allegedly handcuffing all employees assumed to be Latino until their immigration status was verified". Men were detained at the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa, women were detained in county jails, and detainees were chained together and arraigned in groups of 10 for felony charges of aggravated identity theft, document fraud, use of stolen Social Security numbers, and related offenses.
Some 300 were convicted on the document fraud charges within four days as part of a plea bargain. In total 297 of them served a five-month prison sentence before being deported. The Supreme Court later ruled that undocumented workers cannot be charged with aggravated identity theft unless it was established that they knew that they had used an authentic Social Security number, prompting calls by some immigration attorneys and members of Congress to dismiss previous convictions against immigrants for aggravated identity theft and consider dismissing the guilty pleas sought against the Postville workers.Several employees and lower and middle level managers were convicted on charges of conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants, aggravated identity theft, and child labor law violations, among others, serving prison sentences between 60 days and 41 months. Neither the owner, Aaron Rubashkin, nor his sons Sholom and Heshy, who were in charge of the management of Agriprocessors, were convicted of immigration or labor law violations, although both Aaron and son Sholom were initially charged with 9,311 counts of child labor law violation, for which they could have faced over 700 years in prison if found guilty. All charges against Aaron were dropped right before the trial was scheduled to begin, and after a five-week trial Sholom was acquitted on all charges of violating child labor laws. His case was later completely expunged from Iowa state records. Financial irregularities brought to light by the raid and subsequent investigations led to a conviction of the plant's chief executive Sholom on bank fraud and related charges.
He was sentenced to 27 years in prison, but this led to an outcry by a bipartisan group of more than 100 former high-ranking and distinguished Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, prosecutors, judges, and legal scholars who expressed concern with the evidentiary proceedings in his case as well as with the severity of his sentence. On December 20, 2017, then-President Donald Trump commuted his sentence to time served, and his trial on immigration charges was canceled.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety.The ICE mission is executed through the enforcement of more than 400 federal statutes and focuses on customs violations, immigration enforcement, preventing terrorism and combating the illegal movement of people and goods. ICE has two primary and distinct law enforcement components, namely, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO); in addition to three supporting divisions: Management & Program Administration, Office of Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) and Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).ICE - Enforcement & Removal Operations (ERO), which primarily deals with the deportation & removal of undocumented non-citizens, is among the most public and contentious function of ICE. ERO maintains the custodial facilities used to detain people that are illegally present in the United States. In interior offices, ERO Officers primarily conduct targeted enforcement operations to apprehend aliens engaged in serious criminal activity. For example, in Fiscal Year 2020, 90% of those aliens apprehended by ERO had criminal convictions or pending charges at the time of their administrative arrest. This FY 2020 arrest statistic includes 1,800 homicide related offenses, 1,600 kidnappings, 3,800 robberies, 37,000 assaults, and 10,000 sex crimes. At border offices ERO Officers receive & detain illegal immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol. Illegal immigrants apprehended at the border have significantly lower levels of criminal history than those arrested by ERO in the interior of the United States.ICE maintains domestic offices throughout the United States and attachés at major U.S. diplomatic missions overseas. ICE personnel (Special Agents & Officers) do not patrol American borders; rather, that role is performed by the United States Border Patrol. ERO and HSI operate as two independent law enforcement agencies and have completely separate mission statements. HSI is focused on the disruption of transnational crime, where as ERO is responsible for the apprehension, detention and removal of illegal immigrants.The Acting Director is Tae Johnson. The agency has not had a Senate-confirmed director since Sarah Saldaña stepped down on January 20, 2017.