Learn about unlawful treatment of undocumented immigrants

Learn about unlawful treatment of undocumented immigrants

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
BY NEREIDA GUILLEN

Raids in Washtenaw County have brought about the current issue of human rights violation. Some uninformed community members ask themselves, "Is it a violation when undocumented immigrants are detained and sent back to their native country?'' Maybe not, but this is far from the reality of what is actually occurring. It is what is happening as they are being detained that should alert conscientious citizens. I'd like to address the specific question of how this becomes a violation of human rights.

Picture this. You are having dinner with your family after a long, tiring day at work, when the doorbell rings. As soon as you open your door, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent rushes into your home without any explanation and asks for your documentation. Because of language barriers, and due to the frightening circumstances, you hesitate and fail to respond as rapidly as you would wish. As you try to respond to the agent's request, they brutally beat you in front of your wife/husband, and three kids, ages 3, 5 and 7. You hear your kids yell and cry in the background as you are being beaten.

Afterward, the ICE agent decides to take you to prison due to suspicion of undocumentation and leaves you in a cell with people who are sex offenders, robbers, murderers, etc. Your crime at this point is working hard to provide a better living for your children. Now that you are in jail, your kids and spouse are left without a mom or dad, and the question of who will feed them and provide shelter for them thunders in your head. Those questions run through your head as you stare at the wall of a prison cell where you are forbidden any type of rights. Your family is now left alone and, traumatized by the incident, wonder if they will ever see you again. Now, ask yourself, "Can this be a violation of human rights?''

Immigration officials show changes at detention center

Immigration officials show changes at detention center
04/22/2008

By ANABELLE GARAY / Associated Press

Pastel-colored walls adorned with cartoon characters, porcelain instead of metal toilets in cells and other upgrades have softened the inside of a former prison where dozens of immigrant children and their families are detained.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who conducted a media tour Tuesday at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center in Taylor say the facility has become more family friendly thanks to more than 100 modifications. The changes were required under a settlement reached in a lawsuit alleging children were held in prison-like conditions.

Children now receive night lights, sneakers and colorful T-shirts with Superman and other characters on them when they arrive at Hutto. A teleconference room for immigration hearings has a large mural of the Rugrats and the large brick walls leading into the sleeping area — former prison pods — are painted in muted tones and feature Tinkerbell.

The facility's health care staff has expanded to 35 and contracts outside when more specialized services are needed. The cafeteria now offers a main menu and a hot bar to provide more variety of foods. Children — currently from 2 months old to teenagers — now go on field trips. Past visits outside of Hutto have included a museum in Austin, the zoo and the Dairy Queen.

ICE officials say the changes would have been implemented even without the lawsuit, and added that they continue to discuss more improvements to the facility where families live in small cells furnished with bunkbeds, a toilet and sink.

"Everything that was included in that settlement was either done prior to the settlement, in progress during the settlement or contemplated prior to the settlement," said Gary Mead, ICE's acting director for detention and removal.

Advocates disagree and contend that public awareness, a report last year detailing conditions at Hutto and the lawsuit spurred ICE to action.

"It is true that some of the changes were made before the settlement ... but they certainly were not in effect at the time we made our report," said Michelle Brane, director of the detention and asylum program at the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. "They were very clear that they thought it was an appropriate place to hold families."

When the facility first opened nearly two years ago, advocates say uniformed, handcuff-toting correctional officers called "counselors" threatened children with separation from their families. Children received only one hour of classroom instruction a day, lost weight and had limited access to health care, attorneys alleged.

ICE officials have denied that guards used threats or that healthcare was limited. The agency did say that the school day has been significantly expanded since Hutto opened.

A federal judge approved the lawsuit settlement in August. It called for changes including installation of privacy curtains around toilets, a full-time pediatrician and elimination of a counting system that required families to be in their cells for hours a day.

Those changes have been made, and a federal magistrate also continues to periodically review conditions at Hutto. During a previous visit, the magistrate asked for improvments to an area set aside for detainees to meet with their attorneys. The section now has a large play area in the middle. It's surrounded by meeting booths that have privacy curtains and noise control. Advocates had previously complained that asylum seekers detained at Hutto had little privacy and couldn't shield their children from hearing them describe details of past abuse, torture or other violence to their attorneys.

Immigration officials have described the 500-bed Hutto as a residential environment that keeps families together while they seek asylum, await deportation or seek other outcomes to their immigration cases.

Officials say Hutto — operated by Corrections Corporation of America under a contract with Williamson County — is meant to end the "catch and release" practice that in the past permitted families in the U.S. illegally to remain free while awaiting a court hearing. Many never showed up in court; some borrowed other people's children and posed as families to avoid detention, ICE officials have said.

ICE is considering opening more facilities to detain families around the country, making Hutto a sort of prototype, Mead said. Currently, the Berks Family Residential Center in Leesport, Pa., a former nursing home about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia, is the only other facility in the country that holds related adults and children.

"I think we will continue to have family residential centers," Mead said. "In terms of the treatment that people receive here, this is clearly a model."

In Mississippi, Work Is Now a Felony for Undocumented Immigrants

In Mississippi, Work Is Now a Felony for Undocumented Immigrants
By David Bacon

Sunday 20 April 2008

Jackson, MS - On March 17, Mississippi Governor Hayley Barbour signed into law the farthest-reaching employer sanctions law of any on the books in the U.S. Employer sanctions is a shorthand name for laws that prohibit employers from hiring immigrants who don't have legal immigration status in the U.S. That provision was part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed by Congress in 1986, which for the first time in U.S. history required employers to verify the immigration status of employees.

The Mississippi bill, SB 2988, requires employers to use an electronic system to verify immigration status, called E-Verify. That system has only recently been developed by the Department of Homeland Security, and by the department's own admission, is not a complete record. Its accuracy is unknown, but by comparison, the Social Security database of U.S. workers, compiled since the 1930s, contains millions of errors.

The Mississippi bill goes much further, however. Employers are absolved from any liability for hiring undocumented workers so long as they use the E-Verify system. But it will become a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job. Anyone caught "shall be subject to imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years, a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1000) nor more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or both." Anyone charged with the crime of working without papers will not be eligible for bail. The law is set to become effective for large employers on July 1.

In the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, University of Mississippi journalism professor Joe Atkins called the law "a new xenophobia ... that threatens once again to lock down the state's borders and resurrect the 'closed society' that once made it the shame of the nation." According to the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, the bill got the support of many Democratic state legislators because party leaders "wanted the house to bring out at least one bill dealing with immigration to relieve the political pressure being put on members (i.e. white Democrats), by right-wing forces in their districts. Many Black Caucus members were persuaded to go along. Unfortunately the bill they brought out was the worst of the six the Mississippi Senate passed."

Passage of the bill was a setback to the political strategy that has shown the most promise of changing the old conservative power structure in the state, the "closed society" described by Professor Atkins. That strategy, building over the last several years, has relied on creating an electoral base of African Americans, immigrants and unions. The new employer sanctions law, according to supporters of that strategy, is intended to drive immigrants out of the state by making it impossible for them to find work.

In Mississippi African American political leaders, and immigrant and labor organizers have cooperated in organizing one of the country's most active immigrant rights coalitions - the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance. They see hope for political transformation in the demographic changes sweeping the south. Beginning before World War 2, Mississippi, like most southern states, began to lose its Black population. Out-migration reached its peak in the 60s, when 66,614 African Americans left between 1965 and 1970, while civil rights activists were murdered, hosed and went to jail. But in the following decades, Midwest industrial jobs began to vanish overseas, the cost of living in northern cities skyrocketed, and the flow began to reverse.

From 1995 to 2000, the state capital, Jackson, gained 3600 Black residents. In the 2000 census, African Americans made up over 36% of Mississippi's 2.8 million residents - no doubt more today. And while immigrants were statistically insignificant two decades ago, today they're over 4.5% of the total, according to news reports. "Immigrants are always undercounted, but I think they're now about 130,000, and they'll be 10% of the population ten years from now," predicts MIRA Director Bill Chandler.

"We have the chance here to avoid the rivalry that plagues Los Angeles, and build real power," says Chandler. Erik Fleming, a MIRA staff member and former state legislator who recently filed for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat held by Thad Cochrane, believes "we can stop Mississippi from making the same mistakes others have made."

The same calculus can apply across the South, which is now the entry point for a third of all new immigrants to the U.S. Four decades ago, President Richard Nixon brought its white power structure, threatened by civil rights, into the Republican Party. President Ronald Reagan celebrated that achievement at the Confederate monument at Georgia's Stone Mountain. MIRA-type alliances could transform the region, and change the politics of the country as a whole. SB 2988 is not only intended to stir anti-immigrant sentiment, but to reverse that demographic change and the political transformation it might make possible.

MIRA is the fruit of strategic thinking among a diverse group that reaches from African American workers' centers on catfish farms and immigrant union organizers in chicken plants to guest workers and contract laborers on the Gulf Coast, and ultimately, into the halls of the state legislature in Jackson. Activists look back to changes that started when Mississippi passed a law permitting casino development in 1991, bringing the first immigrant construction workers from Florida. Employers in gaming then began to use contractors to supply their growing labor needs. Guest workers, eventually numbering in the thousands, were brought under the H2-B program to fill many of the jobs development created.

Through the 90s more immigrants arrived looking for work. Some guest workers overstayed their visas, while husbands brought wives, cousins and friends from home. Mexicans and Central Americans joined South and Southeast Asians, and began traveling north through the state, getting jobs in rural poultry plants. There they met African Americans, many of whom had fought hard campaigns to organize unions for chicken and catfish workers over the preceding decade.

It was not easy for newcomers to fit in. Their union representatives didn't speak their languages. When workers got pulled over by state troopers they found themselves, not only cited for lacking drivers' licenses, but also often handed over to the Border Patrol. Sometimes their children weren't even allowed to enroll in school.

In the fall of 2000, labor, church and civil rights activists formed an impromptu coalition, and went to the legislature. At their heart was the core of activists who'd organized Mississippi's state workers, and a growing caucus of Black legislators sympathetic to labor. Jim Evans, a former organizer for the National Football League Players Association, helped lead the group on the House side, while Senator Alice Harden, who'd led a state teachers' strike in 1986, organized the vote in the Senate. "We decided that the place to start was trying to get a bill passed allowing everyone to get drivers' licenses, regardless of who they were or where they came from," Evans remembers.

Harden's efforts bore fruit when the drivers' license bill passed the Senate unanimously in 2001. "But they saw us coming in the House, and killed it," Chandler says. Nevertheless, the close fight convinced them that a coalition supporting immigrant rights had a wide potential base of support, and could help change the state's political landscape. In a meeting that November, the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance was born.

To build a grassroots base, MIRA volunteers went into chicken plants to help recruit newly-arrived immigrants into unions. In the casinos, MIRA volunteers worked with UNITE HERE organizers. In Jackson, the coalition got 6 bills passed the following year, stopping schools from requiring Social Security numbers from immigrant parents, and winning in-state tuition for any student who'd spent four years in a Mississippi high school.

Then Katrina hit the Gulf. MIRA fought evictions and the cases of workers cheated by employers, and eventually recovered over a million dollars. MIRA organizer Vicky Cintra and other activists participated in several celebrated cases defending guest workers, especially in the Signal International shipyard in Pascagoula. "There's still a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment here," Cintra says, "but when people give the police their MIRA ID card they get treated with more respect, because they know their rights and have some support." Laborers Union organizer Frank Curiel says, "In Kentucky, outside of Louisville, Latinos are afraid to go out into the street. In Mississippi it's different."

Not always that different, however. In Laurel and many other Mississippi towns police still set up roadblocks to trap immigrants without licenses. "They take us away in handcuffs and we have to pay over $1000 to get out of jail and get our cars back," according to chicken plant worker Elisa Reyes. And the way the state's Council of Conservative Citizens demonizes immigrants is reminiscent of the language of its predecessor - the White Citizens Councils: "The CofCC Not only fights for European rights, but also for Confederate Heritage, fights against illegal immigration, Fights against gun control, fights against abortion, fights against gay rights etc. SO JOIN UP!!!" its website urges.

In 2007 the Republican machine introduced twenty-one anti-immigrant bills into the state legislature, including ones to impose state penalties for hiring undocumented workers and English-only requirements on state license and benefit applicants, to prohibit undocumented students at state universities, and to require local police to check immigration status. MIRA defeated all of them. "The Black Caucus stood behind us every time," Evans says proudly. There are no immigrant or Latino legislators. Without the Caucus all 21 bills would have passed in 2007, and 19 similar bills in 2006.

The 2008 legislative session was different, however. Chandler describes three factions in the party - the Black Caucus at one end, white conservatives hanging on at the other, and "liberals who will do whatever they have to do to get elected" in the middle. After some Democratic candidates campaigned in 2007 on an anti-immigrant platform, MIRA wrote a letter in protest to Howard Dean, national chair of the Democratic Party. Those tactics, it said, were undermining the only strategy capable of changing the state's politics. "The attacks on Latinos, initiated by Republican Phil Bryant a year and a half ago, and joined by other Republicans, are now being echoed by Democrats like John Arthur Eaves and Jamie Franks," the letter said. State party leaders who "would go along to be accepted, rather than show the courage necessary for positive change... are peddling racist lies against immigrants that violate the core of the party's progressive agenda."

Anti-immigrant campaigning by Democrats was unsuccessful. Conservative Republican Hayley Barbour was returned to the governor's mansion and Phil Bryant was elected lieutenant governor. And in the legislative session that followed, some Democrats began to buckle under pressure from vocal rightwing groups, including the Klan.

During the 2007 elections the Ku Klux Klan held a rally of 500 people in front of the Lee County court house in Tupelo, wearing white hoods and robes, and carrying signs saying, "Stop the Latino Invasion." Their presence was so intimidating that Ricky Cummings, a generally progressive Democrat running for re-election to the State House of Representatives, voted for some of the anti-immigrant bills in the legislature. When MIRA leaders challenged him, he told them that Klan-generated calls had "worn out his cell phone."

The Klan's website says "it's time to declare war on these illegal Mexicans ... The racial war is among us, will you fight with us for the future of our race and for our children? Or will you sit on your ass and do nothing? Our blissful ignorance is over. It is time to fight. Time for Mexico and Mexicans to get the hell out!"

The web site has links to the site of the Mississippi Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (the state affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform), directed by Mike Lott, who sat in the state legislature before being defeated in a run for the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State. .After MIRA's Erik Fleming urged Governor Barbour to veto the employer sanctions bill, saying it would be "devastating to our economy and community here in Mississippi," he was then targeted on the MFIRE website.

For those threatened by changing demographics, and the political upsurge they might produce, SB 2988 law is a finger in the dike. The fight to implement it is not over, however, and MIRA has assembled a legal team to challenge its constitutionality in court.

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David Bacon is a California photojournalist who documents labor, migration and globalization. His book "Communities Without Borders" was just published by Cornell University/ILR Press.

Tally of those arrested in immigration raids at Pilgrim's Pride plants climbs to 311

Tally of those arrested in immigration raids at Pilgrim's Pride plants climbs to 311

12:00 AM CDT on Friday, April 18, 2008

By DIANNE SOLÍS and STELLA M. CHÁVEZ / The Dallas Morning News

The tally of those arrested at Pilgrim's Pride poultry plants on various immigration-related offenses climbed Thursday to 311.

Workers at Pilgrim's Pride, one of the world's largest poultry processors, have been the target of a criminal investigation into identity theft for at least a year, and Wednesday, workers employed at five plants, including Mount Pleasant operations, were arrested by federal immigration agents.

Certain workers at the Mount Pleasant plant are believed to be key organizers in an identity theft ring, federal prosecutors and agents said.

False use of an authentic Social Security number is a felony – and growing in prevalence among illegal immigrants searching for ways to avoid detection.

But the tally, released Thursday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, showed that slightly less than a third of the arrested workers had been charged with criminal violations. Federal officials said Wednesday that charges could be made more severe.

The remaining Pilgrim's Pride employees are being processed for removal from the U.S., on administrative violations of immigration law.

All 46 workers arrested in Mount Pleasant faced criminal charges. But Thursday afternoon, two workers were released and motions to dismiss the criminal indictments were dropped, said Arnold Spencer, a U.S. assistant attorney involved in the investigation. In one case, one worker was a legal permanent resident; Mr. Spencer would not comment on the immigration status or citizenship of the second worker.

Arrests in Mount Pleasant could climb. "We have a significant number of people who are now fugitives and were indicted," Mr. Spencer said.

Another two dozen workers were arrested last December, after an investigation that began a year ago and involved undercover agents

School district officials in Mount Pleasant said the arrests have rattled their schools.

Missy Walley, principal of Chapel Hill Elementary in the Chapel Hill Independent School District, said she had 16 upset students in her office Thursday morning. Two of them had parents who had been arrested.

"We had one whose daddy was taken last night and one whose mother was taken," she said. "They were pretty much hysterical."

Ms. Walley said she heard students crying in the bathroom on her morning rounds through the hallway.

Some students were worried that immigration agents would pick up students at the school. Parents called the district to make sure their children were OK.

A Chapel Hill district employee visited the home of at least one student who did not report to school and found nobody home. A neighbor indicated that federal agents had been to the home.

At Mount Pleasant Independent School District, counselors were also on hand to talk to students.

"All of our students and campuses are impacted because Pilgrim's is the number one employer," said Judith Saxton, public information officer for the Mount Pleasant district.

Ms. Walley said she was struck by the number of children who showed support for those visibly shaken.

"It was not just our Hispanic children who were upset," she said. "It was all the children. It affected the whole school."

BREAKING NEWS: Raids net 15 arrests in Newton, Jasper counties

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By Staff reports

Neosho Daily News

Fri Apr 18, 2008, 03:08 PM CDT

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Neosho, Mo. -

A total of 15 people, 10 in Newton County alone, were arrested in a drug sweep early Friday morning.

Several area, state and federal agencies took part in the sweep, conducted after an 18-month investigation into the Mexican ice trade in Newton and Jasper counties.

Arrested on federal drug charges were Ernesto Garza, 22, and Eleazar Ortega, 33, both of Neosho. The two are currently in federal custody in Springfield, according to Eric R. Siweck, resident agent in charge at the Springfield resident office of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, and have been charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute narcotics.

Also arrested in the sweep on drug charges were April Love, 21, of Neosho; Genovero Coronado, 33, of Neosho; Nathaniel Reagh, 24, of Neosho; Belinda Olson of Duenweg; Billy Coleman, Duenweg; Andres Layton, Joplin; Roberto Rivera, Joplin; and Milthon Marchant, Joplin.

Several Neosho area residents were also arrested on charges they were in the United States illegally. Those arrested were Maria Rodriguez, 36; Roel Garza Jr., 20; Montzerrat Mota, 18; Marco Diaz, 31; and Maria Rodriguez, 44.

At approximately 6 a.m. Friday, agents conducted two drug sweeps — one in Jasper County, the other in Newton County — seizing one vehicle, a quarter ounce of meth, $15,000 in cash, and two pounds of marijuana. The vehicle, $13,000 in cash, and some meth were seized in Newton County, according to Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland.

Agencies participating in the raids were the Newton County Sheriff’s Office, the Neosho Police Department, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office, the Jasper County Drug Task Force, the Southwest Missouri Drug Task Force, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the federal Agency of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Joplin Police Department, the Eastern Shawnee Tribal Police, the U.S. Customs Service, the Duenweg Police Department; and the federal Agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Seven residences and businesses in Newton County were included in the sweep, including Vernado’s Tire Shop, located at 1019 S. Neosho Boulevard.

More on the story will be in Sunday’s print and on-line editions of the Neosho Daily News.

Immigrants netted in Chattanooga raid to stay in Nashville jails

April 17, 2008

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.

Poultry plants are raided in the latest federal crackdown on illegal-immigrant labor

Hundreds of workers in five states are arrested .

From the Associated Press
April 17, 2008

MOUNT PLEASANT, TEXAS -- Federal agents arrested hundreds of people Wednesday in raids at Pilgrim's Pride chicken plants in five states, the latest crackdown on illegal-immigrant labor at the nation's poultry producers.

In separate sweeps, authorities also arrested dozens of workers at a doughnut factory in Houston and the operators of a chain of Mexican restaurants in upstate New York.

The arrests at Pittsburg, Texas-based Pilgrim's Pride Corp., the nation's largest chicken producer, were on charges of identity theft, document fraud and immigration violations. The company worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ahead of the raids, said Ray Atkinson, a company spokesman.

"We knew in advance and cooperated fully," Atkinson said.

Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary for ICE, confirmed that the company is cooperating, though she said the raids grew out of an investigation that produced arrests last year at the company's plant here.

No criminal or civil charges have been filed against Pilgrim's Pride, which has about 55,000 employees and operates dozens of facilities mostly across the South and in Mexico and Puerto Rico, supplying the KFC restaurant chain and other customers.

ICE said that nearly 300 workers were arrested, but Pilgrim's Pride officials said that about 400 hourly, nonmanagement employees were arrested.

"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. We are investigating these allegations further," Atkinson said in a statement.

Forty-five people, all illegal immigrants, were arrested here on charges of false use of Social Security numbers, ICE said. More than 100 people were arrested on immigration violations in Chattanooga, Tenn., and they could face criminal charges related to identity theft, the agency said. Another 100 were arrested on immigration charges in Moorefield, W.Va.

More than 25 people face immigration violation charges in Live Oak, Fla. They will also face identity theft or document fraud charges, ICE said. And more than 20 were arrested in Batesville, Ark., on federal warrants for alleged document fraud or identity theft.

Pilgrim's Pride has had previous trouble with employees in Arkansas. In January 2007, police arrested a manager at the company's De Queen plant who allegedly rented identification documents for $800 to get a job there.

The company has said its policy is to fire employees who can't clear up discrepancies in their documentation.