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Immigration charges dropped in slaughterhouse case

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - A federal judge dismissed dozens of immigration charges Thursday against the former manager of a kosher slaughterhouse, at the request of prosecutors who had already won a conviction on multiple counts of financial fraud.

U.S. District Court Judge Linda Reade dismissed the 72 charges just hours after the government made its request. According to the motion, a conviction on the immigration charges would not affect the term Sholom Rubashkin serves because he has been convicted of the charges with the longest sentences.

"Dismissal will avoid an extended and expensive trial, conserve limited judicial and prosecutorial resources, and lessen the inconvenience to witnesses," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan wrote in the motion.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Bob Teig declined to comment on the motion.

Rubashkin, a former top manager at the Agriprocessors Inc. slaughterhouse in Postville, was convicted last week of 86 counts of financial fraud. He has claimed he is innocent of all the charges and intends to appeal the convictions.

"We welcome the government's dismissal of these charges," said his attorney, Guy Cook. "It should have been done a long time ago. In spite of how the government has characterized this motion, we view this as a clear win for Mr. Rubashkin."

Rubashkin initially faced 163 counts in a government indictment that followed a massive immigration raid at the Agriprocessors plant in May 2008. Reade later divided the trial into 91 counts of financial fraud and 72 counts of immigration violations.

A jury in Sioux Falls, S.D., found Rubashkin guilty on 86 of the 91 financial fraud charges. Reade has not announced a sentencing date on those charges.

Rubashkin was convicted of 14 counts of bank fraud, 24 counts of making false statements to a bank, 14 counts of wire fraud, 9 counts of mail fraud, 10 counts of money laundering, and 15 counts of violating an order of the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to timely pay suppliers of livestock.

He was acquitted on five counts of violating an order of the Secretary of Agriculture dealing with a failure to pay livestock providers on time.

In his second trial, he had faced charges of harboring illegal immigrants for profit, conspiracy to commit document fraud and aiding and abetting document fraud.

Rubashkin's attorneys had protested the government's introduction of alleged immigration violations during the financial trial. In the motion filed Thursday, prosecutors acknowledge that several of the financial charges were based on the assumption that Rubashkin harbored illegal immigrants.

"The jury's verdicts on several of the fraud and false statement counts were premised, at least in part, upon defendant knowingly making false statements to the bank with regard to the harboring of undocumented aliens at Agriprocessors," Deegan wrote.

Cook, however, said the government's language "overstates the jury's verdict on financial charges."

The government asked that the immigration charges be dismissed without prejudice, meaning it can file them again if circumstances change. Deegan wrote in the motion that "evidence of immigration violations would be relevant conduct" that Reade can examine when Rubashkin is sentenced on the financial fraud charges.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.