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.

A Federal District Court in Iowa saw immediate fallout on Tuesday from the Supreme Court's decision, as prosecutors dropped one charge against a human resources manager from the meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa.

Earlier, a federal district judge had ruled that the manager, Laura Althouse, could withdraw a guilty plea she entered last year in the case. Ms. Althouse had pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft, after prosecutors accused her of helping illegal immigrants to hire on at the plant using documents that she knew were false.

In legal papers, Ms. Althouse's lawyers argued that she had not been aware that the documents some of the immigrants presented belonged to other people and were not wholly fabricated fakes. She is still facing sentencing next week on a separate charge in the case.

But the prosecutors' swift action to dismiss the charge against Ms. Althouse raised new concerns about the convictions of hundreds of illegal immigrants from Postville. In a statement, the American Immigration Lawyers Association praised the Supreme Court decision and called on Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to order a case-by-case investigation of the prosecutions.

"The federal prosecutors used the law as a hammer to coerce the workers," said David Leopold, a vice president of the association. He said Mr. Holder should dismiss the charges in cases where the threat of prosecution under the statute "was a miscarriage of justice."

The aggravated identity theft statute carries a mandatory added sentence of two years in prison, above any other sentence imposed. Fearing that they would be convicted in a trial, most of the immigrants pleaded guilty to lesser charges of document fraud and also agreed to summary deportation. They served five months in prison, and most have been deported.

The Postville cases were the toughest application to date of criminal charges against illegal immigrants whose main offense was that they were working without authorization.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the House immigration subcommittee, went further than the immigration lawyers. The Justice Department should "start from scratch and pretend these cases never happened," she said. "They did not comport with the requirement of the law."

Bob Teig, a spokesman for the United States attorney in Cedar Rapids, declined to comment on the Postville cases because some are still making their way through the court. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, covering Iowa, had upheld the interpretation of the identity theft law that prosecutors applied to the immigrant workers from Postville.

The immigration lawyers group also raised new questions on Tuesday about the recommendation for the post of United States attorney of Stephanie Rose, an assistant United States attorney in the Northern District office who was a leading prosecutor in the Postville cases. Ms. Rose has been recommended for the position by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, although she has not yet been nominated by the White House.

Some Iowa defense lawyers have said that Ms. Rose was the main prosecutor in charge of securing guilty pleas from hundreds of Postville immigrants.

In a statement Tuesday, Senator Harkin said Ms. Rose "had no role in deciding what charges to bring or what plea agreements to offer." He said Ms. Rose, who has been an assistant United States attorney in Iowa for 12 years, "has demonstrated great intellect and judgment, outstanding leadership and strength of character."

Eleven criminal defense lawyers who represented immigrant workers from Postville wrote in an open letter that Ms. Rose "worked incredibly long hours and exhibited a level of competence and ability that would be hard to overstate."

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