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A Panda Express restaurant located on the North Side won’t be punished under Arizona’s new employer sanctions law despite having 11 suspected illegal immigrants arrested this week at one of its restaurants on identity theft charges.

“This is strictly an identity theft case,” said Officer Quentin G. Mehr, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety. “The investigation led to these employees. “This didn’t have anything to do with Panda Express.”

The eleven people were arrested Tuesday at the Panda Express restaurant at 2485 N. Swan Road, Suite 101, after a three-month state Department of Public Safety identity-theft investigation.

The seven men and four women were booked into the Pima County jail on suspicion of aggravated taking the identity of another person with the intent to obtain employment, Mehr said. The class 3 felony was created under a 2005 law that made it illegal to use a fake ID to get a job.

All 11 were employees at the Panda Express. Their names were not released as investigators were working to positively identify them. They are all suspected illegal immigrants, Mehr said.

Investigators won’t say what led them to the arrests. However, there are no known victims in the case, Mehr said. He wouldn’t say what types of fake IDs the people arrested had used to get jobs or where they obtained them.

More arrests are possible and the investigation is ongoing, he said.

“It’s not over yet,” he said Wednesday morning.

But DPS won’t be looking into whether Panda Express knowingly hired the illegal workers, which would be a violation of federal, and the new state law, which can revoke business licenses of companies that knowingly or intentionally hire illegal workers. The agency did not refer the case to the Pima County Attorneys Office or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mehr said.

“I don’t know what is going to happen with that, that is not the crux of our investigation,” Mehr said. “This was not done with the intent of going after Panda. . . We are not dealing with employer sanctions.”

The Pima County Attorney’s office has not received any reports of the case, said Deputy County Attorney Daniel Jurkowitz, who is leading the office's enforcement team on the new law. A complaint about a company employing illegal workers can come from an agency or a citizen, he said.

The Attorney General’s Office, which will handle the prosecution, said the case is based solely on aggravated identity theft and has nothing to do with the new state employer sanctions law, said Andrea Esquer. the agency’s spokeswoman.

The only involvement Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the federal agency that targets employers hiring illegal immigrants — will have will be placing holds on the 11 people arrested and seeking their deportation following the criminal proceedings, said spokesman Vincent Picard.

The California company that owns the restaurant released the following statement Tuesday evening:

"Panda Express has and continues to be in full compliance with all federal and state laws. Moreover, we have and will continue to cooperate with the Arizona Department of Public Safety in this matter," Monte Baier, a senior vice president for Panda Restaurant Group, wrote.