Former Agriprocessors supervisor's trial to start in two weeks

The immigration and document fraud trial of a former Agriprocessors beef supervisor remains on track to start Jan. 19 in U.S. District Court.

Brent Beebe, of Postville, is charged with 17 counts of harboring illegal immigrants, conspiracy to defraud and document fraud. The charges stem from the May 12, 2008 immigration raid the Postville kosher meatpacking plant where 389 illegal workers were arrested.

Beebe is the current operations manager of Agri Star, which the new meatpacking business that took over Agriprocessors after it filed bankruptcy.

U.S. Attorneys and Beebe's defense attorney went over several procedural matters and some remaining motions today during a pretrial hearing. The trial is expected to last a little over a week but could go longer because of altered court hours due to other set hearings during that first week of the trial. Some days will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. but many days will go 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.