Workers leave the Agriprocessors meat packing plant in Postville after their shifts on Wednesday, Oct 29, 2008. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

A federal judge in Iowa says he was embarrassed the day he sentenced to prison several dozen illegal immigrants who had been working at a Postville meatpacking plant.

The Des Moines Register says that, in a documentary film, U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett described the 2008 proceedings as a travesty.

The film by Luis Argueta is titled “Abused: The Postville Raid.”

In it, Bennett says that after the 2008 raid at the Postville plant, prosecutors pressured the workers into signing plea agreements that included five months in prison.

He says in the documentary that he found the agreements “personally and professionally to be offensive, and I thought it was a tragedy.”

Bennett and prosecutors declined subsequent interview requests.