The workers were members of cleaning crews hired through contractors by the Bentonville, Ark.-based chain. Nationally, more than 300 people were arrested at 61 stores following an investigation by federal officials and the Pennsylvania attorney general's office.

Wayne Samuelson, assistant U.S. attorney for the middle district of Pennsylvania, said those arrested will be let go if they have no criminal records but will face hearings before immigration judges. The others will be held in detention centers near Columbia and Myrtle Beach, he said.

Federal law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Wal-Mart had direct knowledge of the immigration violations. They cited recordings of meetings and conversations among Wal-Mart executives, managers and contractors.

"We have seen no evidence of this from the INS, and, if that turns out to be true, we will cooperate fully with law enforcement officials," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams said.

The workers were arrested as they finished their night shifts at Wal-Mart stores in 21 states. Agents also hauled away several boxes of documents from an executive's office at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville.

An employer can face civil and criminal penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants or failing to comply with certain employee record-keeping regulations.

Wal-Mart Stores had sales last year of $244.5 billion. The company has about 1.1 million employees in the United States, and it uses more than 100 third-party contractors to clean more than 700 stores nationwide, Williams said.

"We require each of these contractors to use only legal workers," she said.

The law enforcement sources said the investigation grew out of probes of Wal-Mart cleaning crew contractors in 1998 and 2001.

All of the arrested workers were in the country illegally, said Garrison Courtney, a spokesman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Wal-Mart is not the first big company to be targeted in an immigration investigation. Six managers at Tyson Foods, based one town away from Wal-Mart in Springdale, were charged in an immigrant-smuggling case in 2001.

One defendant shot himself to death a few months after being charged, and two managers entered guilty pleas early in the case. A jury acquitted the poultry company and three other managers.

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