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McALLEN — Federal agents were seen entering the Delia’s Tamales restaurant at 3400 N. 10 St. Wednesday morning.
Approximately four law enforcement officers — some wearing ballistic vests bearing the word “POLICE” and others reading “FBI” — entered the restaurant at approximately 10 a.m.
One unmarked law enforcement vehicle parked just outside the restaurant’s drive-thru lane, which was empty at the time of their arrival.
A few minutes later, dine-in customers could be seen emerging from the restaurant’s front door and leaving in their vehicles.
A woman with a bullet proof vest reading “POLICE” emerged briefly to take photographs of the front of the restaurant, then returned inside.
Minutes later, two men bearing vests that read “FBI” retrieved what appeared to be empty cardboard evidence boxes from their vehicles and returned inside the restaurant.
A spokesperson for the FBI confirmed that agents are conducting “court authorized” activity at the restaurant.
A group of customers who arrived just after 10:15 a.m. were met with a printed sign reading “We are closed.”
The group said they found another Delia’s location on Jackson Road to be similarly closed.
The FBI spokesperson also confirmed that agents are carrying out similar activity at other Delia’s locations, including in San Antonio.
“(W)e were performing court authorized law enforcement activity in the vicinity of Hauseman and 1604 in San Antonio,” the spokesperson said.
According to the company’s website, Delia’s operates a total of seven restaurants — two in McAllen, and one each in Mission, Edinburg, Pharr, San Juan and San Antonio.
The company that owns Delia’s Tamales, Del-Gar Foods, is currently embroiled in a wage theft lawsuit in federal court.
In the suit, more than two dozen former employees of the restaurant claim that Delia’s engaged in fraud by forcing them to work long hours without paying them overtime, then terminated their employment as they reached retirement age.
In early versions of the lawsuit, the employees — many of whom are undocumented — also claimed that Delia’s obtained fraudulent Social Security numbers for its employees, then withheld Social Security deductions from their paychecks.
The employees claimed the company kept those payroll deductions for itself while threatening to report the employees to immigration officials if they complained.
Among the allegations included in more recent court filings are claims that Delia Lubin, owner and founder of the company, assigned some of those employees as her personal house cleaners. Lubin is not a named defendant in the civil suit.
The newer allegations also claim that for years the company has maintained two sets of books — one to record legitimate business and payroll accounting, and another to record illicit transactions, such as under-the-table payments to employees.
Messages left with several attorneys representing the company went unreturned Wednesday.
Staff at the office of one attorney — Stephen Quezada, of Houston — told The Monitor that he was in court with a trial.
Quezada’s name was one of two mentioned in an early version of the lawsuit, which was originally filed in state district court by Edinburg attorney Richard Alamia.
In that complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that Quezada, along with a human resources staffer, threatened to report employees to “ICE,” or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if they tried to speak up.
One such employee has already testified to those alleged threats as part of the civil lawsuit’s discovery process, according to Ricardo Gonzalez, an Edinburg attorney who has taken over as lead counsel for the former employees.
“That’s what our clients have testified to, at least one of them,” Gonzalez said of the immigration threats.
The attorney, who joined the case in late-May, said six of the plaintiffs recently sat for depositions as part of the discovery process. Their testimony is meant to be representative of the larger group of 27 plaintiffs, he said Wednesday afternoon.
Gonzalez said he was hoping to depose Lubin, as well as at least two family members who are involved with the business’ operations, before next month’s court-mandated discovery deadline.
He said he had been in the process of trying to schedule those depositions when Wednesday’s news broke. Now, he doesn’t think he or his clients will have an opportunity to hear from Lubin.
“We were trying to schedule her deposition, and based on this, I don’t think that they’ll present any witnesses,” Gonzalez said, citing potential Fifth Amendment concerns the company or its principals may now have.
Asked for his reaction to news that all seven Delia’s locations had been visited by federal law enforcement, Gonzalez replied, “You could have reasonably anticipated this was going to happen.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new information.
