Massive Sweep Creates Havoc for Workers’ Families
NEW YORK - Families are still scrambling to get information about their loved ones a week after U.S. immigration agents arrested over 1,000 workers at meatpacking plants in six states in a massive operation targeting people working with false documents.
“A lot of people still don’t know where they are,” Olivia Figueroa, who runs a small grocery store in Worthington, Minnesota, told IPS. Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a hotline for family members to inquire about detainees, Figueroa said the information given is often contradictory.
Figueroa’s husband works at the Swift pork plant in Worthington, and he says production lines are slow because of missing employees. Figueroa said there are still workers who haven’t reported to the plant because they are afraid of another raid.
On Dec. 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents swept in on Swift & Co. meat processing plants in Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Iowa and Minnesota. Production lines stopped as thousands of workers were asked to provide proof of legal residency or citizenship. ICE said the raid was part of an investigation into a “massive identity theft scheme that has victimised hundreds of U.S. citizens”.
Within hours, ICE had arrested 1,282 workers on administrative immigration violations. Thus far, 144 people have been criminally charged for identity theft as well as other crimes such as illegal reentry to the United States.
The raids have reignited the debates about immigration reform that dominated the political landscape earlier in the year, but did not result in Congressional action.
The fault lines between those who advocate for the legalisation of millions of undocumented workers and those fighting for stricter enforcement of immigration laws have been brought into relief by last week’s raids.
“It’s just a front for the federal government to perform a ridiculous act coming in in full riot gear and terrorising the Latino community,” said Sylvia Martinez, director of the advocacy group Latinos Unidos in Greeley, Colorado.
On the other side are people like Mike McGarry, the acting director of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, a group favouring tighter control of illegal immigration. He says the raids are a sign that the federal government is taking long overdue action.
“The meatpacking industry is notorious for winking at illegal immigration,” he said, adding that raids by government agents can have a wider impact.
“You have consistently high-profile raids, they don’t have to be big, but symbolically it’s important,” he said. “People do get discouraged and do leave the country.”
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which represents workers at Swift meat processing facilities nationally, has organised food drives and legal support for their members who were arrested by ICE.
Darin Rehnelt, a UFCW representative in Worthington, where 230 workers were arrested, said the union hall has become ground zero for support operations for families. On Sunday, seven tonnes of donated food arrived from Minneapolis.
While some members of the community have been vocal in their approval of the raids, Rehnelt said many others have poured out support for the workers.
“There are some bad apples, but a lot of the churches have been really fantastic,” he said.
It could take weeks for federal judges to hear all the cases, since each person’s situation is different. In the meantime, the UFCW has filed suits against the ICE for civil and constitutional rights violations.
“They were not responsive to civil liberties, not giving access to union representatives or lawyers,” said Jill Cashen, a UFCW spokesperson.
“We’ve been doing triage in human misery,” said John Keller, an immigration attorney in Minneapolis. It has been difficult for lawyers to reach detainees, he told IPS, and many children are still wondering when they’ll see their parents again.
Most of the estimated 600 people originally held in Camp Dodge, Iowa were removed before attorneys could get access to them, Keller said.
“It happened extremely quickly,” he said. “By the time enough political pressure and lawsuits opened the gates, only 90 or 60 were left.”
Tim Counts, an ICE spokesman based in Minnesota, said some detainees were given the option to sign voluntary departure forms, which waives the right to appear before an immigration judge, and results in immediate removal from the United States.
Advocates say detainees were not allowed to consult with an attorney before signing. In Marshalltown, Iowa, where 90 workers were arrested from the Swift plant, Sister Christina of St. Mary’s Hispanic Ministry said many arrestees were sent to Mexico almost immediately.
“They had no way to contact anyone. They wouldn’t let us in. We tried to go on Wednesday but we were turned away at the gate,” she said in an interview. “They were taken on Tuesday, and by Thursday, they were already calling from Mexico.”
“There has to be a better way,” said community activist Sylvia Martinez. “It’s beyond just immigration, it’s about civil rights.”
Swift, the world’s second-largest beef and pork processor, has said it was surprised by last week’s raid, and said in a press release that it felt the government’s action violated agreements with the company. Its production is down which hurts suppliers and customers, though the company said it will be able to recover in the long term.
Since 1997, Swift has participated in a federal worker authorisation programme, known as Basic Pilot, in which the names and social security numbers of potential hires are run through government databases for verification.
ICE spokesman Tim Counts said that Swift has not been charged with anything and that “the Basic Pilot programme was never meant to be a silver bullet to catch every single illegal alien.”
Basic Pilot checks names and social security numbers against federal databases to see if they match. However, the federal databases are not infallible and discrepancies are not necessarily indicative of any illegal activity.
It is unclear how many workers will eventually be charged with identity fraud.
© 2007 Inter Press Service
I feel bad for the disruption caused by being an illegal immigrant worker. I am sure they simply want to earn money and admittedly, our country has done bad things in the name of NAFTA to Mexican (Latino)farmers and to our own workers. I am facinated though how this entire article uses the word “illegal” twice, both times in reference to those who want the laws of this country enforced, there is some irony for you.
I would note that the article points out that calls were already being made from Mexico, that is a good thing for helping the families.
Hopefully, workers demanding reform in Mexico will be successful.
I hold no ill will for our Mexican neighbors but only want our laws enforced.
Where is the prosperity that NAFTA was supposed to bring to the workers IN Mexico?
That’s the problem to be fixed!
if the roles were reversed and mexico instituted nafta in the united states….would this change how we respond to economic refugees?
We are supposedly the richest country on earth, so it seems to me we can very well afford to be the most generous. The various positions people take on the immigration issue are not in themselves complex. It is a winnowing process that simply sorts people out into the good, the bad and the ugly. When I listen to all the legalistic rationales of our xenophobic brethren, I am also mindful that I am listening to paranoid, mean spirited jerks for whom terrorizing honest working families is an appropriate way to address the root problems of immigration.
NAFTA was bad and signed by the leaders of all the countries involved, it was meant to protect corporations, not individual workers as has become apparent, we all new it before hand and charming Bill signed it anyway.
Xenophobic legalistic rationales aside, we are a contitutional republic with laws, in this case, pretty simple laws. Either you are here legally or not. I suppose there is a long list of those laws we would like to ignore but that is not really the question at hand. It may be easier to resort to name calling and berating fellow citizens but that does little to solve the problems the families are having at the moment and even less to solving the problems of “illegal” immigration for which there are already laws on the books. I am uncertain about the status of economic refugees but again it would depend if they were here legally as in New Orleans or Detroit or illegally.
Wanting the laws enforced and having emphathy for the families caught in the middle are not mutually exclusive nor the domain of any paticular group or person.
Support immigration reform and act now to address this enormous human rights crisis in our country….
For information about THE NEW SANCTUARY MOVEMENT, please visit www.newsanctuarymovement.org
THE NEW SANCTUARY MOVEMENT is a coalition of interfaith religious leaders and participating congregations, called by our faith to respond actively and publicly to the suffering of our immigrant brothers and sisters residing in the United States….