Minn. hog producer, other Midwest ag businesses targeted in sweeping ICE raid

Minnesota’s Christensen Farms, one of the nation’s largest pork producers, was among the nearly dozen agriculture businesses to receive warrants Wednesday from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau on allegations that they are exploiting illegal immigrants. ICE issued search warrants for worksite violations at Christensen Farms hog production properties in Appleton, Minn.; Sleepy Eye, Minn.; and Atkinson, Neb. The bureau did the same at a number of other agricultural facilities including a cattle feedlot, a cattle ranch, tomato farms and potato farms — centering mostly in O’Neill, Neb. — and rounded up a total of 133 allegedly illegal workers in the process. The multi-state operation, meanwhile, issued criminal arrest warrants for 17 people on allegations of a conspiracy to “exploit illegal alien laborers for profit, fraud, wire fraud and money laundering in Nebraska and Minnesota,” ICE officials said.