Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arm arrested more than 150 people Tuesday on allegations of immigration violations at a trailer manufacturer in North Texas, authorities said.
Katrina W. Berger, special agent in charge of HSI’s Dallas office said at a news conference, “With those numbers, this is one of the larger work site enforcement operations conducted at one site in the past 10 years.”
The raid in Sumner, Texas — based on what authorities described as criminal search warrants — follows a set of actions in early June in which U.S. immigration agents arrested 114 people at two locations of Corso’s Flower & Garden Center in Ohio.
At the time, the Ohio raids constituted one of the largest employer stings in the nation in recent years, officials said.
The Texas action targeted workers at Load Trail, which makes recreational and work trailers. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a statement from ICE, “This ongoing investigation began when HSI received information that the company may have knowingly hired illegal aliens, and that many of the aliens employed at Load Trail were using fraudulent identification documents.”
At the news conference, Berger called the suspects “illegal aliens who are unlawfully working here in the United States at this business.”
Footage of the raid from NBC affiliate NBC Dallas-Fort Worth showed multiple coach buses for detainees.
In a statement Berger said suspects like the ones arrested Tuesday “take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents, and they create an atmosphere poised for exploiting their illegal workforce.”
Load Trail workers determined to be in the country without authorization will be “processed for removal from the United States,” according to ICE’s statement.
