USA Today

A federal investigation that ended Tuesday in a raid on six meatpacking plants has uncovered criminal groups around the country that steal real birth certificates, Social Security cards and other documents and sell them to illegal workers, federal officials said.

One fraud ring mailed dozens of Puerto Rican birth certificates to a Worthington, Minn., man who resold them for as much as $1,000 to illegal workers as part of a set of identity documents. Some of the sets were bought by workers at the meatpacking plants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman Marc Raimondi said.

In its largest workplace raid ever, ICE agents on Tuesday arrested 1,282 workers at Swift & Co. meat-packing plants in Worthington, Minn., Greeley, Colo., Cactus, Texas, Grand Island, Neb., Marshalltown, Iowa and Hyrum, Utah. Workers were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Laos, Sudan and other countries, Raimondi said.

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