Conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants, aggravated identity theft, and child labor law violations
Sentence
Between 60 days and 41 months
Immigration raid in Postville, Iowa
The Postville raid was a raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008, executed by the U.S. 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".[1] 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.[2]
Several employees and 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 Sholom and Heshy, who were in charge of the management of Agriprocessors, were convicted of immigration or labor law violations, although both Aaron and son 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.[3] All charges against Aaron were dropped right before the trial was scheduled to begin,[4] and after a five-week trial Sholom was acquitted on all charges of violating child labor laws.[5] His case was later completely expunged from Iowa state records.[6] Financial irregularities brought to light by the raid and subsequent investigations led to a conviction of the plant's chief executive Sholom on bank fraud and related charges.
He 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.[7] On December 20, 2017, then-President Donald Trump commuted his sentence to time served,[8] and his trial on immigration charges was canceled.
^Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Chishti, Muzaffar; Bergeron, Claire (May 15, 2009). "Supreme Court Rules against Charging Unauthorized Immigrants with "Aggravated Identity Theft". Migration Information Source. Retrieved 2009-05-15.
^"Child Labor Charges For Iowa Meat Plant". CBS News. September 9, 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-08.
^"Some Charges Dropped in Iowa Slaughterhouse Case". NY Times. May 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-10.
^Preston, Julia (June 7, 2010). "Former Manager of Iowa Slaughterhouse Is Acquitted of Labor Charges". The NY Times. Retrieved 2010-06-07.
^"Postvilles Rubashkin Has Criminal Case Expunged". The Gazette. February 28, 2016. Retrieved 2016-02-28.
^Renfrew, Charles B.; Reynolds, James H. (May 18, 2016). "Prosecutors, judges decry Rubashkin "witch hunt"". Des Moines Register. Retrieved 2016-05-18.
^"President Trump Commutes Sentence of Sholom Rubashkin – The White House". trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov. Retrieved 2023-04-08.
The Postvilleraid was a raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008, executed by...
corporate identity of a slaughterhouse and meat-packaging factory based in Postville, Iowa, best known as a facility for the glatt kosher processing of cattle...
Agriprocessors, a now-bankrupt kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, formerly owned by his father, Aaron Rubashkin. During his time...
in infant mortality. A quasi-experimental study found that after the Postvilleraid in Iowa in 2008, newborns were 24% more likely to be underweight at...
also dismissed requests for an injunction against future workplace raids. PostvilleRaid Operation Wetback Illegal immigration to the United States Immigration...
documentary film, "abUSed:The PostvilleRaid", about the May 12, 2008 U.S. Immigration raid of a kosher meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa. Argueta studied...
Hong 9 Meat Hooked 18 November 2012 Suzanne Wasserman 10 abUsed: The PostvilleRaid 2 December 2012 Luis Argueta 11 Red Without Blue 9 December 2012 Brooke...
community in Postville, Iowa. Agriprocessors went into bankruptcy after the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staged a raid of the plant...
temporary holding facility for 260 illegal immigrants arrested in a raid in Postville, Iowa. There was no convention in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic...
Commission. Allison L. McCarthy (2010). "The May 12, 2008 Postville, Iowa Immigration Raid: A Human Rights Perspective" (PDF). University of Iowa College...
2008, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the Agriprocessors meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, detaining 398 employees who were overwhelmingly...
Enforcement, together with other Federal agencies, raided a kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, owned by Agriprocessors, Inc. At the...
2023. Tapper, Josh (February 3, 2016). "Postville, Iowa's Jewish Community Bounces Back After Immigration Raid". Haaretz. Archived from the original on...
corporation. The company's plant in Postville, Iowa, once the U.S.'s largest kosher meatpacking operation, was the raided by immigration agents in 2008, and...
for future health concerns of their own. On May 12, 2008, a raid took place in Postville, Iowa, where 389 workers at a meat processing factory were arrested...
found that Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking company in Postville which had recently been raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had employed 57...
industrialized attempt at a kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors of Postville, Iowa, became the center of controversy in 2004, after People for the...
Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid and the subsequent bankruptcy of Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, JCUA and Jewish Community...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts the largest-ever raid of a workplace in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and...
the Hopkinton schools for two years and superintendent of schools at Postville for one year. He was a school superintendent in Wisner, Nebraska. He next...
in a rally in Postville, Iowa to support the immigrants who worked there without legal permission and were effected by an immigration raid on the meatpacking...
Agriprocessors, a kosher slaughterhouse and meat processor in Postville, Iowa, had been raided by Federal authorities on May 12, 2009, where U.S. Immigration...
slaughtering practices at a major kosher slaughterhouse run by Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa. The methods used there involved clamping the animals into a box...
Global Information