Those who are in this country illegally face expulsion.
Two Butler County companies, Chesapeake Display and Packaging Co. and AccuStaff, are being investigated for allegedly hiring illegal aliens, said William Ring Jr., officer in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Cincinnati office.
The raid at Chesapeake involved 40 federal agents from Detroit, New Orleans, Atlanta, Louisville, Indianapolis, Cleveland and Buffalo.
Similar roundups have occurred in Columbus and northern Ohio, Mr. Ring said. In the largest previous local roundup, 63 people were taken out of a West End food processing firm in January.
Mr. Ring said 70 suspects Wednesday were Mexicans, 46 were Guatemalans and one a Honduran.
Of the 117 individuals, more than 40 were juveniles, Mr. Ring said. They will be released to adults, including some who were arrested Wednesday. That makes each youngster a "golden child" in immigration jargon because the responsibility to care for them delays adult expulsions, Mr. Ring said.
One youngster told INS she was 12; another said he was 13.
"I question whether they are that old," Mr. Ring said. "They're babies."
Adult suspects who were not given custody of a juvenile were taken to Dayton, Ohio. From there they will go to Philadelphia, where there is a detention center and immigration judges to handle the cases.
Illegals who agree to leave the country will do so under a process called voluntary departure. If they balk, they face deportation. The big difference is that voluntary departure leaves no barrier to returning legally, while deportation makes a legal return unlikely, INS officials said.
Many of the workers arrested at Chesapeake, which packages consumer products such as lotions and batteries, wept as they were loaded onto vans while helicopters droned overhead and Butler County sheriff's deputies on horses guarded exits.
Companies that knowingly hire illegal aliens can be fined $250 to $2,500 for each worker, Mr. Ring said.
Susan Greenbaum, assistant vice president of communications for Chesapeake Corp., a specialty packaging and display manufacturer based in Richmond, Va., denied any wrongdoing. Chesapeake Display & Packaging Co. is a subsidiary of Chesapeake Corp.
"We do not hire illegal aliens," she said. "The raid was targeting temporary employees who were employed by AccuStaff. AccuStaff is in no way associated with Chesapeake other than as a vendor.
"All Chesapeake locations are in full compliance with INS regulations."
No AccuStaff officials could be reached for comment. The company address listed in Cincinnati Bell telephone records is the same address as Chesapeake, 9756 International Blvd. in West Chester. The raid was part of a local crackdown in the wake of a surge of illegal immigrants from such countries as El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, Mr. Ring said. INS is also investigating a group suspected of bringing illegal aliens to the region, officials said, but they would not elaborate.
A national expert said the number of suspected illegal immigrants rounded up was unusual.
"For one site in Cincinnati, that is a significant number," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.
After delivering an administrative subpoena, federal officials pored over company files throughout the day seeking violations of immigration, age, Social Security and wage and hour regulations.
Workers told INS
INS investigated operations at the distribution center in West Chester for a month after disgruntled workers told officials that lucrative overtime shifts were given to workers who spoke little or no English, Mr. Ring said.
INS officials said they think employees frequently worked 16-hour shifts without overtime.
"Americans were out here trying to make a living," Mr. Ring said. "Our information is that people would come out seeking jobs and be sent home while illegals would have the work. Americans who want to work, who are willing to work, were losing jobs to illegal aliens."
Robert Brown, INS director in Ohio, said the immigrants were drawn to the state by fairly good wages, plentiful jobs, and "little likelihood of being caught" by the few INS agents in the state. Workers apparently were earnthan the minimum wage for laborers in Mexico of $3.46 an hour, officials said.
Midwest attractive
INS estimates that 5 million illegal aliens work in the United States and account for one of five immigrants in the country. Ohio has 23,000 illegal aliens, according to an INS estimate from October 1996. "The Midwest and the South are new destinations for illegal immigrants," Mr. Krikorian said.
"Traditional areas are filling up - California, Florida, New York City and Chicago - so new illegal immigrants are looking for greener pastures, cities where there have not been a lot of illegal immigrants in the past."
The low local unemployment rates in Hamilton and Butler counties - at 3.5 percent and 3.4 percent in June respectively - tend to be a big draw for illegal workers, Mr. Krikorian said.
The national unemployment rate is 5 percent, while the Ohio rate is 4.2 percent, according to the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services.
Additionally, "a tight labor market compels employers to do what is necessary to find workers," Mr. Krikorian said. "One thing they can do is to get immigrants: legal or illegal. A lot of meatpacking plants have significant levels of illegal aliens and even go to other countries to recruit."
He said that when illegal immigrants arrive, employers are often relieved of the need to boost wages or improve working conditions because the illegal workers will do menial jobs for far less.
The local work force suffers as a result, he said.
U.S. workers who were sent home Wednesday after the raid said it was no secret among employees that many of the people working at the site had entered the country illegally.
"I speak a little Spanish, and one woman told me she worked 16 hours a day for seven days," said Nicole Watkins, 25, a Mount Auburn resident. "She made $250 for all that work. She said they would come up here to work, send their money home, and when they went back to their country they would be considered rich."
Mr. Ring said buses picked up workers from Lower Price Hill, where many of them lived, and brought them to the work site in southern Butler County. Buses also took them home after their shifts.
Some of the workers who were forced to head home for the day resented the raid because the company suspended operations.
"I'm losing a day's pay," said Wilson Seay, a 25-year-old Over-the-Rhine resident. "Why were they hired to begin with?" Ms. Greenbaum said operations could resume as soon as today and predicted that customers who contract with the firm for distribution would feel no effects.
"We anticipate business as usual as quickly as possible," Ms. Greenbaum said.
