Immigrants netted in Chattanooga raid to stay in Nashville jails
By JANELL ROSS
Staff Writer
Women netted in an immigration raid of the Pilgrim's Pride Chicken processing plant in Chattanooga will be housed in Davidson County jails while awaiting deportation proceedings.
Wednesday's raid was part of a nationwide operation in which agents detained more than 280 immigrants at Pilgrim's Pride plants in Chattanooga, Mount Pleasant, Texas; Live Oak, Fla., Batesville, Ark.; and Moorfield, W. Va., on suspected of identity theft and other crimes related to obtaining their jobs.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gail Montenegro estimated agents detained 100 workers at the Chattanooga plant. The men from that plant will be jailed in Lumpkin, Ala.
The Davidson County jail has a standing contract with ICE to house detainees.
The raids are the result of indictments returned by a federal grand jury in Tyler, Texas, April 1 and unsealed Wednesday. The indictments say the defendants obtained and used Social Security numbers belonging to others to gain Pilgrim's Pride Corp jobs. If convicted of criminal identity theft charges, defendants could receive up to five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000, according to a statement released by ICE. Those determined to be in the country illegally but not engaged in identity theft may be deported or given the option to leave.
A statement released by Pilgrim's Pride stressed the company's efforts to avoid employing illegal workers, including using the E-verify system. E-verify is a federal database that allows employers to verify the validity of Social Security numbers and names supplied by new hires. It doesn't detect when a name and Social Security number are already in use.
Company not charged
A Tennessee law that went into effect Jan. 1 penalizes employers who are found to have knowingly hired illegal immigrants. The law also gives safe harbor to any company that uses the E-verify system.
Pilgrim's Pride faces no charges in the raids, said Ray Atkinson, a spokesman for the Pittsburg, Texas-based company.
"We knew in advance and cooperated fully," he said.
A company statement said Pilgrim's Pride shares "the government's goal of eliminating the hiring or employment of unauthorized workers. We have terminated all of the employees who were taken into custody and will terminate any employee who is found to have engaged in similar misconduct."
Detainees interviewed
All of the individuals arrested during the operation are being photographed, fingerprinted and processed by ICE and being interviewed about their health and family needs.
The raids at the poultry plant were the largest of several immigration enforcement actions across the country on Wednesday.
Agents arrived before dawn at a Houston doughnut plant and arrested almost 30 workers suspected of being in the country illegally. Robert Rutt, the agent in charge of the Houston ICE office, told The Houston Chronicle some of the people arrested lived at the Shipley Do-Nuts dough factory, a four-block plant that includes a dormitory for workers.
In Buffalo, N.Y., federal law enforcement officials announced the arrest of a local businessman and 10 associates accused of employing illegal Mexican immigrants in seven restaurants in four states. Authorities also arrested at least 45 illegal immigrants during the early morning raids in western New York, Bradford, Pa.; Mentor, Ohio; Wheeling and New Martinsville, W.Va.; and Georgia. Authorities said the workers were forced to staff Mexican restaurants for long hours with little pay to work off smuggling fees and rent.
In Atlanta, a federal grand jury indicted 10 people from suburban Atlanta employment agencies on charges they placed illegal immigrants in jobs at Chinese restaurants and warehouses in six states. The agencies allegedly developed a network to "recruit and exploit" undocumented workers, said Kenneth Smith, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Atlanta.
Between October 2006 and April, the agencies advertised their services and charged immigrants a fee for finding a job without requiring any proof that the workers were allowed to work in the U.S, prosecutor David Nahmias said.
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