Dismissal of Guilty Pleas Is Sought for Immigrants

The immigration lawyers’ national bar association called on the Justice Department on Tuesday to consider dismissing the guilty pleas of nearly 300 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a meatpacking plant raid in Iowa last year, one day after the Supreme Court rejected a statute that prosecutors used to pressure them.

In its decision Monday, the court ruled that to win convictions for identity theft, prosecutors had to show that illegal immigrants knew that false identification documents they presented to employers actually belonged to another real person. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/us/06immig.html

By Julia Preston — New York Times