First group of Postville immigration raid detainees deported to Mexico (Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier)

First group of Postville immigration raid detainees deported to Mexico

Saturday, June 7, 2008 6:23 AM CDT
By JENS MANUEL KROGSTAD, Courier Staff Writer

WATERLOO --- Federal officials deported on Wednesday the first group of people arrested in last month's immigration raid in Postville.

The Mexican nationals, nine men and one woman, boarded a flight operated by the U.S. Marshals Service, which runs the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System. They disembarked at the U.S.-Mexico border, and were handed over to Mexican officials, said Tim Counts, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He said there is no time table for the deportation of the rest of those arrested in the May 12 raid on Agriprocessors Inc., the largest kosher meat-processing plant in the U.S. Federal agents detained 389 people in the raid, which ICE has called the largest single-site raid in U.S. history. Many of those detained were from Guatemala.

Based on the length of the sentences, it will likely take more than a year before the last of illegal immigrants to be deported.

As of Friday, 303 people have been criminally charged and 298 have been sentenced, according the U.S Attorney's Office, Northern District of Iowa.

Some immigrants have been sentenced to more than a year in prison, but the majority were sentenced to five months for using fake documents to obtain work.

When Guatemalan prisoners are deported to their home countries, Counts said they will also ride the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System.

He said people deported to other parts of the world sometimes are escorted on commercial or chartered flights.

The Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System transports approximately 300,000 federal prisoners and illegal immigrants every year, according to the U.S. Marshals Service Web site.