Agents bust big op
Agents operating under Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have taken down a major cockfighting, gambling ring in Alabama’s Blount County.
According to local media, the bust on Saturday involved state and local law enforcement, along with agents from HSI.
75 people charged with criminal and civil offenses
The bust resulted in the arrest of 75 people charged with criminal and civil offenses.
HSI Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Steven Schrank stated the suspects ran an illegal gambling operation based on animal abuse.
Feds playing hardball
According to AL.com, Schrank accused the dismantled gambling operation of “abusing livestock, taking advantage and victimizing animals and profiting from that.”
The 75 arrested, however, might have taken a gamble on the feds’ attention being anywhere but on their farm, on the day of the bust. As President Trump’s birthday celebrations echoed through Washington and the No Kings protest raged through the US, the feds chose Saturday to move in.
While HSI reports stated the bust exposed an organized drugs and gambling crime network, the arrests also included “a large number of illegal aliens,” Schrank said.
The feds were busy in the Deep South long before the ICE rollout hit Los Angeles, busting a cockfighting farm in Mississippi last month in which HSI announced some of those arrested were illegal immigrants.
As with the raid on Alabama’s neighbor state, the feds “seized multiple firearms.”
Killer chickens
Alabama’s premier news outlet cited a situation report that the chickens on the Alabama site were fitted with cutting blades and would “ultimately kill each other in the name of sport.”
abuse of the livestock was “terrible”
Agent Schrank slammed the conditions on the farm as “abysmal.” He added that the abuse of the livestock was “terrible” especially because Blount County has a strong poultry industry.
Schrank concluded site conditions and the criminal element “demonstrated a danger to the participants as well as the community” and that hadn’t a rainstorm arrived, more on the farm would have been arrested.
