A Manassas man pleaded guilty in federal court this week to hiring illegal immigrants who were not authorized to work in the U.S.
Felisberto Magalhaes, 55, pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria to a misdemeanor charge of a pattern or practice of hiring illegal immigrants.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson sentenced him to one year of unsupervised probation. He also ordered Magalhaes to pay $122,000, the amount prosecutors believe he earned by hiring illegal immigrants.
The maximum punishment for the misdemeanor charge is six months in prison, a fine of $3,000 per illegal immi-grant hired and one year of supervised probation, according to federal law.
Magalhaes was associated with CMC Concrete and Stonewall Concrete, both Manassas-based businesses, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.
On March 24, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducted a raid at CMC Concrete, at 8577 Sudley Road, and took into custody 34 illegal immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador, federal officials said at the time.
Federal officials believe that Magalhaes hired hundreds of illegal immigrants over a two-year period beginning in early 2006.
According to the court documents Magalhaes knew that many of the people he hired, some of whom presented false Social Security cards and green cards, were not legally allowed to work in the United States.
Since 2006, Magalhaes hired 257 illegal immigrants who used false Social Security numbers. More than 100 of the false Social Security numbers were issued to no one and 150 were issued to people other than the employees who used them.
The 34 construction workers detained in the March raid are undergoing deportation proceedings, federal officials said at the time.
Staff writer Amanda Stewart can be reached at 703-878-8014.
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