The Postville raid was a raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc., kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008, during George W. Bush's Presidency executed by the United States 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, including 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 Heshy and plant chief executive Sholom, who were in charge of the management of Agriprocessors, were convicted of immigration or labor law violations, although both Aaron and 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 Sholom on bank fraud and related charges.
Sholom 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, President Donald Trump commuted his sentence to time served, and his trial on immigration charges was canceled.
Raid With helicopters, buses and vans, hundreds of federal officials from ICE, together with agents and officers of other federal, state, and local agencies, raided the meat packing plant in the morning hours of May 12, 2008, seizing company records and arresting 398 individuals. According to the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Iowa, those arrested included "290 Guatemalans, 93 Mexicans, 2 Israelis and 4 Ukrainians". Eighteen were juveniles.
According to a retired federal agent, a raid on Agriprocessors expected to lead to the arrest of about 100 illegal workers, mostly from Eastern Europe, had been planned in 2000, and canceled at the last moment over political concerns.
The 2008 raid was planned for months. An affidavit the Homeland Security Department filed in court before the raid cited "...the issuance of 697 criminal complaints and arrest warrants against persons believed to be current employees," and to have acted criminally. The affidavit cited unnamed sources who alleged that the company employed 15-year-old children, that supervisors helped cash checks for workers with false documents, and that they also pressured workers without documents to purchase vehicles and to register them in other names. It also cited a case in which a supervisor blindfolded a Guatemalan worker and allegedly struck him with a meat hook, causing no serious injury. Sources quoted in the affidavit and application for search warrant also alleged the existence of a methamphetamine laboratory at the slaughterhouse, and that employees carried weapons to work. Later press reports omit to indicate whether a methamphetamine laboratory was found during the search.
The arrested workers were taken to a nearby fairground, the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa, where they were charged with aggravated identity theft, a criminal offense that carries a mandatory two years sentence, and briefed on their rights and options. The immigrant workers, most of them without prior criminal records, were offered a plea agreement in exchange for a guilty plea to lesser charges. In total, 297 accepted the agreement and pleaded guilty to document fraud. In an expedited procedure known as "fast track," hearings were scheduled over the course of the following three days, in which the judges took guilty pleas from the defendants, who were bound by handcuffs at the wrists as well as chains from their upper torso to their ankles, in groups of ten, and sentenced them immediately, five at a time. Most of the workers were sentenced to five months in prison and were deported afterwards. Before this raid, undocumented people who had no prior records were usually not criminally charged in the aftermath of a raid, and were instantly deported on civil immigration violations. Forty-one of those arrested were allowed to remain in the US, being granted a special visa, known as a "U-visa" (see 'also' "United States visas"), for those who suffered violent abuse.
The Rubashkin family, ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Lubavitcher hasidic movement, who owned and operated Agriprocessors, has denied any knowledge of criminal activity. Aaron Rubashkin, the owner of the company, said that he had no idea that his workers were in the US illegally and that they had produced what appeared to be legitimate work documents. Getzel Rubashkin, one of his grandsons who worked at the plant, was reported as saying: "Obviously some of the people here were presenting false documents. Immigration authorities somehow picked it up and they did what they are supposed to do, they came and picked them up. God bless them for it." According to ICE, costs of the raid totaled $5,211,092 as of August 21, 2008, not including costs associated with the U.S. Attorney's Office, the U.S. Department of Labor or local Postville authorities.
Impact The raid significantly affected the Postville community. The town, with a census population of only 2,273, lost a large percentage of its population due to the arrests. As a result of the difficulties Agriprocessors faced after the raid, the plant stopped slaughtering cattle in October 2008, and filed for bankruptcy on November 5, 2008. The City Council declared Postville a humanitarian and economic disaster area, but federal officials said the town did not qualify for help. Agriprocessors was bought at auction in July 2009 and has resumed production under the new name "Agri Star" on a smaller scale.
Several Agriprocessors employees and managers were indicted on charges of conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants and were convicted. Related charges brought, though, against owner Aaron Rubashkin and his son the plant chief executive, Sholom, were dismissed. However, the financial irregularities that were brought to light by the raid and subsequent investigations led to a $35 million bank fraud charge against Sholom, who was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
Indictments and convictions Guerrero-Espinoza and De La Rosa-Loera On July 3, 2008, Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, supervisor of the beef kill department and three other departments, and Martin De La Rosa-Loera, supervisor of the poultry kill department and three other departments, were arrested at the Agriprocessors plant.
They were charged with aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identity documents, and encouraging aliens to reside illegally in the United States. Guerrero-Espinoza was also charged with aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft.
In late August 2008, Guerrero-Espinoza reached a deal with federal prosecutors and was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison. The plea deal allowed him to avoid deportation and to arrange for his wife and children to return to the US following his prison term. The sentence included a two-year mandatory ruling for aggravated identity theft. In March 2009, De La Rosa-Loera was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison.
After the Flores-Figueroa v. United States ruling of the Supreme Court issued on May 4, 2009, he made a request for the reduction of his sentence. Aggravated identity theft charges had formerly been dismissed against human resources employee Laura Althouse, supervisor Brent Beebe (one of two operations managers at the Agriprocessors plant), and Sholom Rubashkin, the motion contended. Both Guerrero-Espinoza and De La Rosa-Loera, after being released from jail, have gone back to work at the meatpacking plant under the new ownership.
Aaron Rubashkin, Sholom Rubashkin, Billmeyer, Althouse, and Freund In September 2008, Aaron Rubashkin, his son Sholom Rubashkin, as well as the company's human resources manager, Elizabeth Billmeyer, and two office employees, Laura Althouse and Karina Freund, were charged for child labor violations. State child labor charges against Aaron Rubashkin were dropped, and he was never charged federally.
In October 2008, Althouse pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens and one count of aggravated identity theft. She was sentenced to two years federal probation, Freund to one year of probation. Billmeyer was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release for harboring undocumented aliens and accepting counterfeit resident alien cards. After she agreed to plead guilty to state child labor charges under an agreement with the state, her sentence was reduced to eight months. Former human resources assistant Penny Hanson was sentenced to two years probation on January 7, 2010. In 2010, state child labor charges were dropped against former Agriprocessors supervisor Jeff Heasley, who had his case separated from the other defendants.Iowa Courts Online Docket Records
On October 30, 2008, Sholom Rubashkin was arrested and charged with conspiracy to harbor undocumented aliens for profit, aiding and abetting document fraud, and aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft. He was released on conditions that he wear a GPS ankle bracelet, limit his travel to the Northern District of Iowa, surrender his passport and his wife′s passport, and provide a $1 million appearance bond with $500,000 to be secured. On November 14, 2008, he was arrested again on a charge of a $35 million bank fraud.
Beebe