40 People Officially Charged By Feds From ICE Raid and Counting!

Here's more, from the USA Today:

Charges have been filed in federal court accusing more than 40 people detained in the recent Mississippi chicken processing plant raids of being in the United States illegally.

But more than a week after the raids, there are no records of company officials charged with knowingly hiring undocumented workers. This is despite information in federal search warrant affidavits suggesting company officials knew their workers were undocumented.

Some managers knew workers wore ankle monitors to work as they waited on immigration hearings, the warrants say. One of the chicken companies was aware its workers used fraudulent Social Security numbers, a confidential informant told investigators. A human resources employee revealed an employee was hired on two occasions, under two different identities.

When a Guatemalan man encountered law enforcement in Texas, he admitted he had worked at one of the plants, Koch Foods, and reportedly said the plant knew about his immigration status and that there were “a lot of illegals working there."

Authorities said since 2002 they have recorded about 350 encounters or arrests of undocumented immigrants around the country who acknowledged working at either Koch Foods or Peco Foods plants in Mississippi. 

The initial wave of about 40 charges filed against workers this week includes an arrest warrant and a sworn affidavit by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Brent Druery. It accuses each person of either illegally reentering or failing to depart the U.S.

For example, an arrest warrant for Cesar Berduo-Perez said he had three prior encounters with immigration officials — including one in November 2011, near Morton, Mississippi, and another in 2013, in Scott County. When agents raided Pearl River Foods in Carthage last week, they once again found Perez, who is from Mexico. 

Perez was deported to Mexico each time, the court documents say. ICE databases revealed Perez never received permission to apply for readmission. Federal law states someone illegally reentering the country can be fined or imprisoned up to two years, or both. They also can be deported.

The new criminal complaints filed against workers stem from the Aug. 7 raids of seven Mississippi food processing plants, when immigration officials arrested 680 people suspected of living and working in the country without permission. Officials called it the largest immigration operation of its kind in more than a decade, and the largest single-state raid ever.

The approximately 380 people still in custody were shipped to detention facilities in southwest Mississippi and Louisiana, authorities said. 

Will employers face consequences? 

Mike Hurst, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, has said the investigation is ongoing. He hasn't said specifically whether criminal charges will be brought against companies and officials — but pointed to a track record that includes several similar prosecutions.

The search warrant affidavits suggest all five companies that operated the processing plants knowingly hired undocumented immigrants. Companies engaging in a “pattern and practice” of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants can be fined as much as $3,000 for each person hired. Company officials can face up to six months in prison. 

Sometimes investigators leaned on confidential informants, who talked with human resource managers and other company officials about what they knew.

In other cases, authorities gleaned information about company practices by questioning workers. For example, a Guatemalan employee working under an assumed identity said she was told during her job interview that it was OK to wear an ankle monitor, as long as it stayed charged. Another woman said she'd applied at one of the plants using an alternate identity and was "hired on the spot" for a three-month trial.

And to those people who say no "Americans" will fill these jobs, I'm sorry but you just don't know the facts: