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Illegal Immigrants Get 5-Month Prison Sentence

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The New York Times

Published: May 24, 2008

WATERLOO, Iowa - In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, nearly 300 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Previously, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported from the country.

The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meats plant in nearby Postville, in a raid that federal officials called the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.

The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.

The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security or immigration documents.

The pleas were part of a deal worked out with prosecutors to avoid even harsher charges. The immigrants agreed to immediate deportation after they serve the five months in prison.

"To my knowledge, the magnitude of these indictments is completely unprecedented," said Juliet Stumpf, an immigration law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., formerly a senior civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department. "It's the reliance on criminal process here as part of an immigration enforcement action that takes this out of the ordinary, a startling intensification of the criminalization of immigration law."

Defense lawyers said most of the immigrants were ready to accept the plea deals because prosecutors said otherwise they would face felony identity theft charges that carry a mandatory two-year minimum jail sentence.

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