Attorney: Farm Turned 'Blind Eye' to Illegal Status of Alleged Mollie Tibbetts Killer

The former defense attorney involved in the murder case of 20-year-old college student Mollie Tibbetts says the dairy farm that employed her alleged killer ignored the suspect’s illegal alien status.

Defense attorney Allan Richards previously represented 24-year-old illegal alien Cristhian Bahena-Rivera of Mexico, the man prosecutors say murdered Tibbetts in Brooklyn, Iowa and dumped her body in a nearby cornfield.

This week, Richards told the Associated Press that Yarrabee Farms, the dairy farm where Bahena-Rivera worked under the “John Budd” alias, turned a “blind eye” to the fact that many of their workers are illegal aliens.

As Breitbart News reported on Thursday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency raided Yarrabee Farms but did not provide details as to what their investigation discovered.

In a statement to Breitbart News, ICE officials said the agency “didn’t have any comment to offer at this time,” with no indication as to whether other illegal alien workers were detained and taken into custody.

Bahena-Rivera was first hired by the dairy farm in 2014, using an alias and alleged stolen ID which included a fraudulent Social Security Card. The dairy farm did not use E-Verify to check the legal status of the illegal alien, though officials say the system may not have detected Bahena-Rivera as an illegal alien because of his use of a fake ID.

That dairy farm where Bahena-Rivera worked, Yarrabee Farms, owns the property and trailer where the illegal alien had been living and which, allegedly, many Mexican nationals frequented, as Breitbart News reported.

Eric Lang, one of the chief executives of Yarrabee Farms, is the brother of Craig Lang, who was the president of the Iowa Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau has chapters all over the United States, with the goal of increasing the number of low-skilled foreign workers, specifically those on H-2A visas, who are allowed to enter the country every year.

As Breitbart News reported, Eric Lang is also married to Nicole Schlinger, who runs the GOP fundraising firm Campaign Headquarters in Brooklyn, Iowa.

According to police, Bahena-Rivera was the last person who saw Tibbetts jogging on the evening of July 18 in Brooklyn, Iowa, security camera footage reveals. That is the night Tibbetts went missing.

The illegal alien told police that Tibbetts was jogging when he saw her. That is when he said he approached Tibbetts and started talking to her. After Tibbetts allegedly told Bahena-Rivera that she would call the police if he did not stop following her, the illegal alien allegedly chased her and he says he “blacked out” after this.

The following month, Tibbetts’ body was found in a cornfield where prosecutors say Bahena-Rivera placed corn stalks over her to hide her body.