NEW YORK (AP) -- Two decades ago, the Rubashkin family of Brooklyn opened a kosher slaughterhouse amid cornfields in Iowa -- not exactly the center of Jewish culture.

The bearded strangers wearing fedoras quickly transformed Postville into a melting pot. Immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico began arriving in large numbers to work at the meatpacking plant. Soon, the town had a temple, and shelves in grocery stores were stocked with tortillas and bagels.

Lately, though, the grand cultural experiment seems to have lost any chance at a feel-good ending. U.S. immigration agents in May raided the Rubashkin's business in Iowa, Agriprocessors, the nation's largest supplier of kosher meat. Nearly 400 workers, mostly Guatemalans, were swept up and jailed. Most are likely facing deportation as illegal immigrants.

Labor organizers and workers accuse the company of exploiting its employees, tolerating abusive behavior by managers and illegally hiring teenagers to work on the factory floor. A few Jewish groups also question whether the plant, given its problems, should keep its kosher certification.

The situation all adds up to a mess for a family that has never sought attention and now feels it is being attacked unfairly, especially by the media.

"The press? Terrible," the family's patriarch, Aaron Rubashkin, told a reporter with JTA, the Jewish news service, during a rare interview in June.

Rubashkin said allegations the company knowingly hired illegal immigrants and children and tolerated abusive conditions were lies.

"I wish everybody would be treated like we treat people," he said.

Attempts to arrange an interview with Rubashkin this week were not successful. His representatives told the Associated Press the 80-year-old butcher traveled to Iowa from Brooklyn, where he still runs the family's half-century-old butcher shop.

The family's history, though, is well-documented.

Aaron Rubashkin and his wife, Rivka, fled the Soviet Union after World War II and settled in Brooklyn, a world center of Hasidic Judaism. Rivka's uncles, the family has said, had been imprisoned in Siberia because of their religious beliefs.

In the 1950s, Aaron founded a kosher meat market in the city's Borough Park section. The family prospered in America.

In 1987, the Rubashkins made an incredible leap: Looking for a way to bolster an unreliable supply of kosher beef, the family bought an abandoned meatpacking plant in Postville.

Two of Aaron's sons moved to the small community in Northeast Iowa to oversee the operation, and a steady stream of Hasidic families followed. Soon, Postville, then a town with about 1,500 residents, was attracting immigrant laborers, too.

Suddenly, the town was infused with rabbis and other Jews, Guatemalans, Mexicans and expatriates from former Soviet republics. The town also hosted new ethnic tensions.

Postville became a regular stop for out-of-town reporters looking for a story about America's diversity. A documentary crew visited. National Geographic did a pictorial. Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa, wrote a book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America."

Amid it all, the company became a huge success, with popular brands such as Aaron's Best and Rubashkin's. By 2006, Agriprocessors had a second plant in Nebraska, run in partnership with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and annual revenue of $250 million.

In 2004, however, PETA, an animal rights group, recorded a gruesome video of the company's operation. The tape showed cattle staggering about in apparent pain after their throats had been slit and their tracheas partly removed. Agriprocessors, while defending its techniques as a religious ritual, agreed to change some practices.

In 2002, one of Aaron's sons, Moshe Rubashkin, an influential rabbi in Brooklyn, pleaded guilty to bank fraud after writing $325,000 in bad checks related to a family textile business. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

A son-in-law, Menachim Balkany, a political fundraiser who hobnobbed with mayors and congressmen, was charged in 2003 with misusing a $700,000 federal grant. The prosecution was dropped when he agreed to make restitution.

Agriprocessors also found itself battling a lawsuit filed by a bankruptcy trustee overseeing the remnants of a New York health and beauty supply company whose owner had pleaded guilty to a multimillion-dollar bank fraud.

The trustee said the company, Allou Distributors, had a host of suspicious transactions on its books, including $2.9 million in unexplained payments to Agriprocessors. The lawsuit demanded Agriprocessors return the payments, which the trustee claimed were part of the scheme to hide Allou's assets.

Agriprocessors insisted the company did nothing wrong and had been supplying Allou with surplus meat, but officials agreed last summer to pay $1.4 million to settle the case.

More trouble may lie on the horizon.

Moshe Rubashkin pleaded guilty this year to storing hazardous waste without a permit at a defunct, family-owned textile plant in Allentown, Pa. His son pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents during the investigation. They await sentencing.

Supporters say the Rubashkins aren't scofflaws, just unsophisticated businessmen who made some mistakes as their company grew.

"These are simple people. They are a family of butchers," said Dovid Eliezrie, a rabbi in California who assists the family with the media.

Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, has a different take. He calls the company's treatment of its immigrant work force "morally reprehensible."

"They blame the media. They blame us. They refuse to accept responsibility for anything that is going on in that plant," Frotman said.

State and federal investigators are looking into various alleged violations at Agriprocessors, such as employing underage employees, not paying workers, improperly using hazardous chemicals and not having alarms that employees could hear. The Rubashkins have not been charged.

"We are God-fearing people and we believe in the American system and we believe it will ultimately turn out OK," Getzel Rubashkin told the AP in a recent interview.

Getzel Rubashkin, 24, is a grandson of the family's patriarch and an employee at Agriprocessors.

He also said the family hasn't given up on Postville, which he has called home since age 10.

"There are people who would like to see us leave, but on the whole we have very warm relations," he said.

Associated Press writer Henry C. Jackson contributed to this report from Des Moines.