Yesterday agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) detained 160 workers at a Texas trailer manufacturing plant on suspicion of unlawfully working inside the United States.
The raid happened on August 28 at the Road Trail manufacturing plant in Sumner, Texas, after Homeland Security received a tip that the company may have knowingly hired illegal immigrants, according to a press release from the agency. ICE agents executed a criminal search warrant at the plant during the late morning hours.
ICE says that it arrested 160 employees for federal immigration violations during the raid. ICE says the arrested workers will be interviewed to determine whether they will remain in custody or be released and that all of the workers who turn out to be illegal will be “fingerprinted and processed for removal from the United States.”
Many of the workers were reportedly using fraudulent identification documents.
ICE Special Agent in Charge Katrina Berger remarked on the massive scope of the raid, “It’s a big deal. This is probably one of the larger, single-site worksite operations in the last 10 years.”
According to ICE, Load Trail was fined $445,000 in 2014 for knowingly employing 179 illegal immigrants.
Load Trail currently employs about 500 workers.
Other agencies involved in the raid on Load Trail include the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Border Patrol, and CBP Air and Marine Operations.
