An attorney for the embattled Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville wants a judge to exclude from his client’s trial all evidence and testimony collected from a massive May 2008 immigration raid.

Jim Clarity argues that the raid violated the constitutional rights of every worker arrested during the operation, because agents used an administrative warrant to enter the slaughterhouse “for the purpose of prosecuting them criminally.”

Agents also detained and questioned all Hispanic workers “without a reasonable, articulable suspicion that any particular worker was an illegal alien,” Clarity wrote in the motion to suppress evidence.

Clarity argued that the warrants, which targeted 697 “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” workers, were invalid because they did not properly identify the person to be arrested and were not backed by probable cause.

“Based on all of these errors, all of the evidence flowing from the arrests on May 12, 2008 should be excluded at trial,” Clarity wrote.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Cedar Rapids did not immediately respond to a message.

Prosecutors have said the plant’s plight was caused not by the raid, but managers who attracted and employed the illegal work force.

(Source: Des Moines Register)