233 Suspected Illegal Workers Seized in Raid : Immigrants: INS agents hit Vans shoe plant in Orange looking for employees with false documents in one of largest mass arrests in nation. Company says it complied with all hiring laws.

ORANGE —  In one of the largest mass arrests of its kind in the nation, immigration agents raided a Vans Inc. shoe manufacturing plant early Thursday and arrested 233 workers suspected of being illegal immigrants.

At 8 a.m., 60 Immigration and Naturalization Service agents surprised workers at the company’s Orange plant at 2900 Batavia St. INS spokesman John Brechtel said almost all of the arrested employees are suspected of being Mexican nationals who were working with false documents.

“It’s certainly one of the largest cases we’ve had” in recent years, Brechtel said. “When I look at figures nationwide, this certainly is near the top.”

Craig Gosselin, vice president and general counsel for Vans Inc., strongly denied any wrongdoing and said the company “is still trying to figure out all of the facts.”

“We absolutely do not knowingly employ aliens who are not authorized to work in the United States,” Gosselin said. “I can say for certain that we have all of the proper procedures in place to collect documents.”

The arrested workers account for roughly 10% of the company’s 2,400 employees, some of whom work at a newer plant in Vista. Most were earning between $4.80 and $6 an hour for making shoes.

The workers, which included 128 men and 105 women, were taken to the INS district office in Los Angeles where they either voluntarily offered to return to their country or requested a hearing.

The INS began investigating the company’s hiring practices in November. Brechtel said the agency received information from “several sources” indicating that a large number of people without immigration documents were working in the Orange plant where the company’s corporate headquarters also is located.

“It is alleged that the documents being presented to the employer were counterfeit and there is an allegation that someone in the plant was providing them,” Brechtel said. “The source of the counterfeit documents has no connection to management at this point.”

Gosselin said he is not aware of anybody in the plant making fake documents.

“We are a public company, we are not involved in anything like that, and to our knowledge, none of our employees are involved in anything like that,” he said. “All of this happened without warning. They showed up with search warrants, and that’s the first we heard of it or suspected that anything like this was going on.”

The company faces fines of $250 to $2,000 per employee in violation of the employer sanctions clause of the 1986 Immigration and Reform Control Act.

Brechtel said that if the investigation determines that company officials have a continuing pattern of hiring illegal workers, they can be fined $3,000 per employee and be imprisoned for up to six months.

Brechtel said the company had been fined in 1982 and 1984 for employing illegal workers.

Vans Inc., which became a publicly traded company in 1991, recorded $6.5 million in earnings last year. The company is the maker of 30 models of multicolored suede and canvas tennis shoes.