Immigration agents nab 300 in factory swoop
Tue Oct 7, 8:36 PM ET
PHOENIX (Reuters) - U.S. immigration agents arrested about 300 workers at a South Carolina poultry plant on Tuesday, the latest in a series of workplace raids targeting illegal immigrants and employers across the United States.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) said federal agents arrested the workers at the Columbia Farms poultry processing plant in Greenville.
The nationalities of those arrested were not immediately clear.
The swoop followed a 10-month criminal investigation that had already resulted in charges against 11 supervisors and one human resources manager, ICE said in a statement.
"Today's enforcement operation is the latest step in a comprehensive criminal investigation focused on identifying the individuals involved in allowing unauthorized workers to gain employment," said Kenneth Smith, the ICE special agent in charge in Atlanta, Georgia.
"ICE targets employers because the promise of employment draws illegal workers across our borders. By holding employers accountable, we are diminishing the magnet and discouraging others from breaking the law."
All of the arrested workers were interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by ICE agents and were due to be processed for removal from the United States, ICE said.
Immigration, particularly the issue of what to do with some 12 million illegal immigrants, most of them Hispanic, stirs strong passions in the United States.
The raid in Greenville was the latest by ICE, which has stepped up operations targeting illegal immigrants and their employers across the United States in recent months.
In late August, agents arrested 595 workers at the Howard Industries Inc. factory in Laurel, Miss., in the largest workplace immigration raid to date.
(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
