Immigration enforcement agents have swarmed the Iowa dairy farm that employed and housed the Mexican man charged with killing college student Mollie Tibbetts.
A team of ICE agents and local law enforcement spent two hours at Yarrabee Farms in Brooklyn on Thursday morning as they looked around the property and spoke to workers.
The owners of the dairy farm are cooperating with federal authorities who had asked to visit the business following Cristhian Bahena Rivera's arrest in Tibbetts' death.
Yarrabee Farms confirmed in a statement that investigators met with employees and owners, but it said it could provide no additional details due to an ongoing investigation.
A team of ICE agents and local law enforcement spent two hours at Yarrabee Farms in Brooklyn, Iowa on Thursday morning as they looked around the property and spoke to workers
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE were leading the investigation at the farm, according to Division of Criminal Investigation spokesman Mitch Mortvedt.
Mortvedt said that means the activity was focused on federal law and not the homicide case, which his agency is leading.
The search comes just one day after it emerged that Rivera, 24, had been employed at the farm for years under a false name: John Budd.
Rivera was arrested and charged with first-degree murder last month in the stabbing death of Tibbetts who vanished while out for a run in Brooklyn on July 18.
Investigators say Rivera, a 24-year-old native of Mexico who came to the US during his teenage years, was in the country illegally and is subject to deportation proceedings.
The farm has said that at least a couple of its roughly dozen employees left the area following Rivera's arrest, which sent fear through the immigrant community.
Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 24, worked at the farm for four years under a fake name: John Budd. The owners of the dairy farm are cooperating with federal authorities who had asked to visit the business following his arrest in Tibbetts' death
Police say Rivera followed and confronted Tibbetts while she was out for a run on July 18 in Brooklyn, Iowa and later stabbed her to death
The dairy, which has about 800 cows and is owned by a prominent family with Republican Party ties, says it received dozens of angry phone calls and some death threats.
Rivera worked there for roughly four years and lived in one of its trailers for free. The farm has said that about half of its workers live in provided housing.
Farm managers have said Rivera presented an out-of-state identification and a Social Security number when he was hired in 2014, and that they were unaware of his true identity until his August 21 arrest.
The company did not use the government's voluntary E-Verify system to check his identity and eligibility to work, although it's unclear whether that would have made a difference.
Farm manager Dane Lang, did apologize earlier this month for a mistake in falsely claiming to have used E-Verify in an initial statement on the day of Rivera's arrest, hours after he allegedly led police to Tibbetts' body in a nearby cornfield.
Lori Chesser, an immigration employment lawyer advising the farm, said that companies cannot discriminate against workers based on how they look or how their names sound.
The farm followed legal requirements to examine the documents and determined 'that they appeared genuine on their face and related to the person presenting them,' Chesser said.
Farm manager Dane Lang said Rivera presented an out-of-state identification and a Social Security number when he was hired in 2014, and that they were unaware of his true identity until his August 21 arrest
The dairy, which has about 800 cows and is owned by a prominent family with Republican Party ties, says it received dozens of angry phone calls and some death threats
'Questioning a name or other characteristic would violate the anti-discrimination provisions of the law.'
During his four years at the farm near Brooklyn, Iowa, Rivera 'was called and responded to the name he used in the hiring process,' Chesser said. He lived in a trailer owned by the farm as a benefit of his employment, as do about half of its 10 workers.
Employers typically do not face legal consequences for hiring a worker under false documents as long as they were not involved in obtaining them and had no other obvious reason to suspect they are fraudulent, said Bob Teig, a retired federal prosecutor in Iowa.
'Absent unusual circumstances, it would be difficult to show they knew any more than what they were told,' Teig said, adding that it would be 'pretty racist' to assume a John Budd could not be Hispanic.
Rivera has been jailed on $5 million bond while awaiting trial on a first-degree murder charge, which carries a sentence of life in prison.
It comes as Tibbetts' father, Rob Tibbetts, urged the public not to bring his daughter's death into the divisive racial debate over immigration.
'The person who is accused of taking Mollie's life is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people,' he wrote in an opinion piece for the Des Moines Register.
Link hienalouca.comhttps://hienalouca.com/2018/09/07/authorities-swarm-dairy-farm-where-mollie-tibbetts-killer-worked-under-fake-name/
Main photo article Immigration enforcement agents have swarmed the Iowa dairy farm that employed and housed the Mexican man charged with killing college student Mollie Tibbetts.
A team of ICE agents and local law enforcement spent two hours at Yarrabee Farms in Brooklyn on Thursday morning as they looked around...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
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