Immigration agents arrest 114 at Ohio landscaping company

SANDUSKY, Ohio — U.S. immigration agents made 114 arrests Tuesday at a gardening and landscaping company, aided by about 200 law enforcement workers in one of the largest employer stings in recent years.

The arrests occurred at two locations of Corso’s Flower & Garden Center — one in Sandusky, a resort city on Lake Erie, and another in nearby Castalia. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it expected criminal charges including identity theft and tax evasion.

No criminal charges have been filed against Corso’s, but the employer is under investigation, authorities said. Two locations were searched, and Khaalid Walls, an agency spokesman, said “a large volume of business documents” were seized.

The operation, assisted by aerial surveillance, is part of the Trump administration’s increasing focus on employers that hire people in the country illegally.

The investigation into Corso’s began in October 2017 when the U.S. Border Patrol arrested a woman who gave stolen identity documents to job applicants, said Steve Francis, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit in Detroit.

The document vendor led investigators to the landscaping company, where they examined documents in its files for irregularities, Francis said. Some Social Security numbers belonged to dead people. Of the 313 employees whose records were examined, 123 were found suspicious and targeted for arrest and criminal charges of identity theft and, in nearly all cases, tax evasion.