More than 50 arrested in Upstate immigration sting

COLUMBIA — A raid focused on people who forge paperwork and hire workers living in the country illegally led to dozens of arrests at an Abbeville metal castings maker, law enforcement officials announced Thursday.

Two managers were among the 50 arrested Wednesday, showing how South Carolina officials hope to keep people from entering the country without legal permission. Three others accused of forging documents were arrested months ago, said state Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Instead of targeting the workers themselves, officials want to stop the people believed to be selling them false papers for hiring purposes, he said.

“It’s so easy for people to get those, so that’s the problem that we needed to fight,” said Creighton Waters, chief attorney overseeing the State Grand Jury.

But once law enforcement officers arrived at the plant about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, he said, they couldn’t ignore that some workers had entered the country without legal permission.

The State Grand Jury, which consists of 18 people who hear complex criminal cases, indicted two managers of the metal castings company Burnstein von Seelen on charges of identity fraud to obtain employment, criminal conspiracy and forgery.

A message left by the SC Daily Gazette on the company’s voicemail Thursday seeking comment was not returned.

Another four people were charged with forgery and identity fraud under allegations they created and sold false documents to workers who needed them. All but one have been arrested. Authorities are still looking for that person.

The investigation is ongoing, so more charges are possible, Wilson said.

People shouldn’t be afraid to go to work or out in public following the raid, Wilson said.

State law enforcement officials don’t intend to go after companies unless they have proof someone is fabricating documents or intentionally hiring people without proof of legal residence, he said.

“I want to make it clear we are not targeting communities because of what you look like or where you work,” Wilson said. “We’re targeting specific conduct, we’re following the facts of that conduct, and if it leads us to a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime.”

But Jace Woodrum, director for the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the raid will stoke fear among people who are trying to do what’s best for their families. He cautioned that the investigation is still in its early phases, meaning people don’t yet know the full story of what happened.

“The bottom line is that these employees showed up for work, and many of them will not be able to return home to their families,” Woodrum said in a statement. “In other states, we’ve seen similar actions include gross violations of individual liberties that are guaranteed to all regardless of immigration status.”

Wilson said Operation Ghost Story, as the investigation is called, started in October 2024, when local law enforcement officers complained to the state attorney general’s office that the Abbeville machine shop employed many workers without permanent legal status.

Police in the area didn’t feel they had the resources to investigate the case, so they reached out to the attorney general’s office and State Law Enforcement Division for help, said Wilson, one of five Republicans running for governor.

Undercover work and witnesses led law enforcement officers to believe the plant’s managers hired workers several times under different names, suggesting they knew the documents were fake, he said.

The attorney general’s office decided to pursue the case the way it would a drug bust, Waters said.

Rather than going after the people using the forged documents, investigators wanted to know where the documents were coming from and stop the people creating and selling them, in turn preventing more people from using them, Waters said.

The false documents often listed real Social Security and driver’s license numbers, which constitutes identity fraud, he said.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers accompanied state and local officers to check workers’ residency statuses and detain anyone without the proper documentation.

ICE is processing the 48 workers arrested with the intention of deporting anyone who lacks the proper paperwork to live in the country. Most of the workers came from Guatemala or Mexico, said Maria Somers, assistant field office director for ICE.

The Trump administration’s focus on immigration helped accelerate the process, Wilson said, though he said the investigation is “not a political issue at all.”

Once Trump took office, the state had more federal support to move forward, but the state would have pursued the operation either way, he said.

He couldn’t say whether the arrests were a direct result of a revival in agreements for local law enforcement officers to help federal agents detain immigrants.

Bill wouldn’t invite federal immigration agents to SC. Opponents still worry.

The city and county of Abbeville are not among the 42 police and sheriff’s departments that have signed onto the program, called 287(g) agreements.

SLED does have an agreement allowing agents to enforce immigration laws.

A bill that would have required all law enforcement agencies that operate a jail to sign up for at least one version of the program passed the House 84-26 but never got a hearing in the Senate.

This was the second major raid the attorney general’s office has publicly participated in over the past year. In June 2025, state law enforcement officers helped arrest 80 people at an unlicensed Charleston County nightclub.

People at the club that night and advocates decried the raid for detaining people on civil immigration charges, not for criminal actions, and scaring the community away from large gatherings.

That was not the intent of this week’s operation, Waters and Wilson said.

“This investigation is not about targeting hard-working people that are just trying to put food on the table, but we cannot ignore identity theft,” Waters said. “We cannot ignore blatant violations of the law.”