ICE: At Least 400 American Identities Stolen by Illegal Aliens Working at Mississippi Chicken Plants

At least 400 Americans had their identities stolen by illegal aliens who worked at food processing plants in Mississippi that were raided by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency last year.

In August 2019, ICE agents conducted the largest workplace raid in United States history across seven food processing plants in Mississippi, netting the arrests of 680 illegal aliens. That same day, though, ICE officials said they released about 300 of the illegal workers back into the U.S. on “humanitarian grounds,” while more than 200 of the illegal workers had prior criminal records.

A year later, about 126 of those 680 illegal aliens have been charged with felonies and 76 have been convicted, according to a new report by Clarion Ledger journalists Alissa Zhu and Maria Clark.

In comparison, only four managers from two of the plants have been charged with knowingly hiring illegal aliens. None of the executives at the seven plants have been charged with a crime. The plants include those owned by P H Food Inc., Koch Foods, A&B Inc., Peco Foods, and Pearl River Foods.

The report reveals the scale to which American citizens were victimized by the seven plants’ hiring of the hundreds of illegal aliens. ICE official Bryan Cox told the Clarion Ledger that at least 400 identities of American citizens were stolen by the illegal aliens involved in the raid.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Mike Hurst said Americans were also denied employment at the plants for years by the mass illegal hiring scheme:

“I think all the American citizens who flooded into these companies, applying for jobs that were opened up are better off,” he said. “I think we’re all better off because at least in the state of Mississippi, employers want to think twice now about trying to hire illegal aliens.”

Indeed, days after the ICE raids, Americans lined up for jobs at the plants.

Federal affidavits, as Breitbart News noted, allege that the plant employers were fully aware that hundreds of their employees were illegally in the U.S., and in some cases, illegal aliens said they were not asked for work authorization documents.

Many of the illegal aliens would arrive at the food processing plants wearing ankle monitors, indicating that they had been released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the U.S. interior after crossing the southern border.

Today, at least eight million illegal aliens hold American jobs in the U.S. economy that would have otherwise gone to Americans. In most cases, these illegal aliens obtain fraudulent work authorization documents or steal American citizens’ identities in order to take jobs.

The latest data available shows that federal prosecutors rarely prosecute businesses for hiring illegal aliens. In 2018, for example, only 11 employers and no businesses were prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens. Meanwhile, potentially 39 million Americans have had their identities stolen by illegal aliens between 2012 and 2016.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.