Rubashkin Raid Cost $5 million

By William Petroski, Des Moines Register

The nation’s taxpayers have spent $5.2 million on the raid of Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville by immigration officials.

The May 12 raid on the meatpacking plant, one of the largest immigration raids ever on a single site in the United States, included several hundred federal agents and two law enforcement helicopters that monitored the raid from overhead.

Officials of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, said in response to a freedom of information request by The Des Moines Register that their expenditures totaled $5,211,092 as of Aug. 21.

That means it has cost taxpayers an average of $13,396 for each of the 389 illegal immigrants taken into custody.

So far, about 50 of the people apprehended at Postville have been deported. About 50 other people are not in custody while undergoing proceedings to be removed from the United States.

The rest of the people are in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, serving sentences for criminal convictions, ICE spokesman Tim Counts said. Some of the most common convictions involve federal identity theft and misuse of a Social Security number.