Federal immigration and homeland security agents converged this week on the Iowa dairy farm where the man accused of killing college student Mollie Tibbetts had worked, according to new reports.
The investigators met Thursday with employees and owners during the two-hour visit to Yarabee Farms, where suspect Christhian Bahena Rivera — reportedly an undocumented immigrant — was employed, the Des Moines Register reported.
In a statement obtained by the paper, the farm, owned by the family of Craig Lang, a prominent local clan with ties to the Republican Party, said it would continue to cooperate with local, state and federal authorities, without providing any further details.
Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of Iowa’s Division of Criminal Investigation, told the paper that “one or two” state agents were at the farms in an assisting capacity, but deferred further comment to Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It was unclear whether the agents had been looking into the employment practices of the farm, Tibbetts’ slaying or both, according to the report.
The visit came a day after it emerged that Rivera had worked at Yarabee using the alias John Budd.
That name was confirmed by three people with knowledge of his employment history, who spoke on condition of anonymity. One said Rivera’s work identity as John Budd appears on official government records.
But Yarabee Farms declined to confirm or deny Rivera’s work identity — and an immigration employment lawyer advising the farm said companies cannot discriminate against workers based on how they look or how their names sound.
Farm officials noted that Rivera presented an out-of-state photo identification and a Social Security number when he came on board in 2014, and they believed he was the person depicted in those documents until his arrest last month.
Tibbetts’ body was found in late August, more than a month after she vanished. Preliminary autopsy reports show that she died of “multiple sharp force injuries,” according to multiple reports. The death was declared a homicide, according to the state medical examiner.
Investigators believe Rivera abducted Tibbetts when he saw her out on a run on July 18, when she first went missing.