Many of the illegal aliens arrested this month in the largest single-state raid by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Mississippi stole the identities of dead Americans to illegally work, federal prosecutors say.

In the first week of August, ICE agents conducted the largest workplace raid in more than a decade across five food processing plants in Mississippi, netting the arrests of 680 illegal aliens. That same day, however, ICE officials said they released about 300 of the illegal workers back into the U.S. on “humanitarian grounds.” More than 200 of the illegal workers had prior criminal records. The raids have already resulted in job fairs at some of the plants seeking to hire locals.

Federal affidavits obtained by the Neshoba Democrat reveal that illegal workers arrested in the raids had allegedly stolen the identities of American citizens, including those who are deceased, to work illegally at the five food processing plants, which include P H Food Inc., Koch Foods, A&B Inc., Peco Foods, and Pearl River Foods.

The illegal workers, federal prosecutors say, purchased fraudulent Social Security documents for between $200 and $1,000 in order to work at the plants. In many of these cases, the illegal workers purchased stolen identities of dead American citizens.

Some victims of the alleged identity theft scheme by the illegal workers reported to federal officials how they were denied government benefits because when they applied, records came up that they were working at the food processing plants in Mississippi, though they were not.

The Neshoba Democrat reports:

On June 3, one woman told investigators that she was denied unemployment benefits because the government thought she was employed at Pearl River Foods after her identity was stolen, court filings reveal. [Emphasis added] Other people whose identities had been stolen were denied food stamps and other government benefits because their social security numbers showed them working in chicken factories in Mississippi. [Emphasis added]

Since the ICE raid, only 40 of the 680 illegal aliens have had charges brought against them, and none of the employers have had charges brought against them.

Federal affidavits, as Breitbart News noted, allege that the food processing plant employers were fully aware that hundreds of their employees were illegally in the U.S., and in some cases, illegal workers said they were not asked for work authorization documents.

Many of the illegal workers would arrive at the food processing plants wearing ankle monitors, indicating that they had been released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the U.S. interior after crossing the southern border.

Today, there are at least eight million illegal aliens holding American jobs in the U.S. economy that would have otherwise gone to American workers and legal immigrants. In most cases, these illegal workers obtain fraudulent work authorization documents or steal American citizens’ identities in order to take jobs.

The mass employment of illegal aliens by hundreds of businesses, though, continues to go largely ignored by the law, as only 11 employers and no businesses have been federally prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens in the last year.

A 2018 investigation by the Immigration and Reform Law Institute (IRLI) discovered that there have been potentially 39 million cases between 2012 to 2016 wherein American citizens have had their identities stolen by illegal aliens.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.