Today, it is at the center of an illegal immigration and bribery scandal that has resulted in the indictment of the state’s longest-serving sheriff, who has showcased the deportations of hundreds of people not authorized to be in the country.
A June 17 grand jury indictment accuses Sheriff James R. Metts, Lexington County’s top law enforcement official since 1972, of accepting cash bribes from Gregorio M. Leon, a 47-year-old restaurant mogul whose family founded the first San Jose restaurant in the state in the late 1980s. In exchange for the cash, Sheriff Metts, who pleaded not guilty this week, is alleged to have freed restaurant workers arrested in an initiative against illegal immigration and sent to the county jail he controlled.