Federal authorities arrested five people in Iowa during this week’s immigration stings at Swift meatpacking plants in a half-dozen states. About 20 people were arrested in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweep of six Swift plants, including the one in Marshalltown.
Tim Counts, a spokesman for "ICE," says one of the Iowa men arrested is 37-year-old Christopher Lamb. Counts says Lamb is a human resources employee at Swift and he’s charged with two criminal offenses: harboring illegal aliens and "misprision" of a felony, which means being aware of a felony but failing to report it.
Lamb is scheduled to appear in federal court on July 23rd. Counts says the other man arrested in Marshalltown is a local union official, 58-year-old Braulio Pereyra-Gabino. Gabino is a Swift employee and is the local vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. He’s also charged with harboring illegal aliens and has a court date of August 27th.
Three other people on the line at Marshalltown were charged with immigration violations, but their names haven’t been released. Elsewhere, arrests were made this week in Grand Island, Nebraska; Worthington, Minnesota; Greely, Colorado; Hyrum, Utah; and Cactus, Texas. In Greely, two Swift supervisors were arrested for other violations. During another federal sting at Swift plants in December, 90 people in Marshalltown were arrested, 13-hundred nationwide.