Feds: Slaughterhouse employee got immigrants fake Minn. IDs; girl, 14, put to work

A slaughterhouse a little more than an hour west of the Twin Cities employed a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl who flew unaccompanied to the United States, according to charges filed Tuesday against an employee who is accused of lining up fake identification for the girl and others.

The employee at Triple J Family Farms near Buffalo Lake in Renville County is accused of arranging false identifications this year for at least a dozen people, including the girl who paid $150 for a fake state-issued ID card. By mid-September, 10 Triple J employees were arrested in connection with the case, though the charges do not implicate the company in any wrongdoing.

Mireya Reyes, 31, of Fairfax, Minn., was charged Tuesday in federal court in Minneapolis with five felony counts of aiding and abetting the misuse of Social Security numbers while employed with Triple J. Reyes, 31, remains free on a $25,000 unsecured bond.

According to the charges, Reyes is accused of identity theft, unlawful employment and the "harboring of undocumented aliens" by directing the teenager and other future slaughterhouse workers on how to apply for state ID cards at the Department of Vehicle Services office in Redwood Falls, Minn.

Reyes' defense attorney, Tom Plunkett, said he "just got the indictment" and has yet to determine whether his client wants him to comment about the case. Plunkett also would not say whether Reyes still worked for Triple J.

Plant manager Jeff Eastman also declined Wednesday evening to say whether Reyes was still on the payroll, but he did say he was "absolutely not" aware of what authorities allege against her and that the girl no longer works for Triple J.

Along with the teenager's alleged use of a Social Security number that wasn't hers and her immigration status, there are federal laws on how many hours employees ages 14 and 15 can work and what jobs they can fulfill. Employment is fine in such areas as retail, yard work, lifeguards and even on a limited basis in sawmills and wood shops, according to a U.S. Labor Department website.

State labor laws also prohibit many duties associated with slaughterhouses for minors including working with meat-cutting tools as well as barring 14- and 15-year-olds from working for any length of time in walk-in meat freezers or coolers.

According to the complaint against Reyes, a Homeland Security investigator determined that the 14-year-old from Guatemala arrived in the United States on Sun Country Airlines on May 5 as an unaccompanied minor and with Reyes listed as the "parent or guardian receiving minor."

The girl told authorities that Reyes drove her in July to the licensing office and helped her fill out the paperwork, then charged her $150. The birth date and Social Security number of a Texan born in 1991 was used to secure the girl's fake Minnesota identification, according to the complaint.

Once tipped to the scheme, Homeland Security personnel and state vehicle service employees in Redwood Falls put Reyes under surveillance and saw her using "altered, counterfeit or stolen" documents to help unqualified people receive the state IDs.

In one instance, she paid the application fee and on another occasion filled out the forms for three people she brought to the office.

Triple J, about 20 miles southwest of Hutchinson, opened in 2012 under new ownership with a goal of processing 600 cattle per day from Minnesota and the Dakotas. It caters to the kosher and halal beef markets.

The plant ran into other trouble with federal regulators last year after being cited for numerous violations of humane slaughtering rules, missteps that suspended the plant's production four times. Suspensions are uncommon, and multiple suspensions within a year's time are even more rare.