Responsible for illigal hiring to charge

27 employees at an Illinois cleaning company were charged for having hired illegal immigrants, and taken into custody 49 other workers who they claimed were in the country illegally.

Photo: Responsible for illigal hiring to charge

Among those arrested at Quality Service Integrity Inc. were two executives - plant manager Gerardo Dominguez-Chacon and Maria del Pilar Marroquin de Ramirez, the personnel administrator - who face federal charges that they hired illegal immigrants by arranging for them to steal the identities of U.S. citizens. They also faces charges of aggravated identity theft.

Officials claim Dominquez-Chacon had access to several assumed identities which he provided to new employees. Authorities also accused him of providing information to illegal immigrants regarding obtaining false identification documents, including social security numbers of U.S. citizens.

Charges were also filed against 25 other employees of the company, which has a contract to clean a Cargill meat processing plant. Eleven of the 25 were arrested.

It was not immediately clear whether anyone arrested Wednesday had attorneys. One number listed for QSI was disconnected, another led to Cargill. A Cargill spokesman declined to immediately comment on the arrests.

"Any employer who knowingly hires illegal aliens risks federal felony charges. It's not a risk worth taking," Rodger Heaton, the U.S. attorney for central Illinois, Rodger Heaton, said in a statement.

Officials said most of QSI's work force turned out to be illegal.