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TechnoratiHundreds of Workers Held in Immigration Raid
![[Federal agents and handcuffed workers at the Howard Industries plant on Monday in Laurel, Miss. Officials said at least 350 workers were in the country illegally. (Jeff Haller for The New York Times)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/immigrant raid.jpg "immigrant raid.jpg")
LAUREL, Miss. - In another large-scale workplace immigration
crackdown, federal officials raided a factory here on Monday, detaining
at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally.
Numerous agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on a factory belonging to Howard Industries Inc., which manufactures electrical transformers, among other products.
As of late Monday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed, said Barbara Gonzalez, an agency spokeswoman, but she said that dozens of workers had been "identified, fingerprinted, interviewed, photographed and processed for removal from the U.S."
The raid follows a similar large-scale immigration operation at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in May when nearly 400 workers were detained. That raid was a significant escalation of the Bush administration's enforcement practices because those detained were not simply deported, as in previous raids, but were imprisoned for months on criminal charges of using false documents.
The mass rapid-fire hearings after the Postville raid took place in a temporary court facility on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa. An interpreter was later sharply critical of the proceedings, saying the immigrants did not understand the charges against them.
An immigrant rights group in Jackson, Miss., the state capital, was critical of Monday's raid, saying families with children were involved.
"It's horrific what ICE is doing to these families and these communities," said Shuya Ohno, a spokesman for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. "It's just hard to imagine that this is the United States of America."
In Laurel on Monday afternoon, several dozen family members of immigrants waited for news of their relatives at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. There were several small children. A priest at the church who identified himself only as Father Sergio refused to allow interviews with the families or answer any questions, saying only: "People are afraid. We need to calm them. There are mothers and children involved."
Entrances to the sprawling plant, in an industrial section south of town, had been blocked off by ICE. A nearby fast-food restaurant was full of the blue-shirted agents, one of whom would say only that a "little inspection" was under way at the facility.
A woman entering the church grounds with four small children said several of the youngsters' parents had been detained. The woman, Mary Troyer, said she was a translator for many of the families.
"I don't like this at all," Ms. Troyer said. "I don't understand it. They have come here to work. It's very sad."
The ICE spokeswoman, Ms. Gonzalez, said the workers would be taken to an ICE detention center to "await the outcome of their cases." She said 50 would be "released into the community" instead of being sent to the center, for "humanitarian reasons," including medical difficulties or the need to take care of children.
She said no lawyers were present while the workers were being interrogated. "Everyone will have due process under law," Ms. Gonzalez said.
Late Monday afternoon, the grim-faced workers, some of them handcuffed, were lined up near white and silver buses as the rain poured down.
In a statement issued after the raid, Howard Industries, one of the largest employers in the region, acknowledged that it was "visited" by immigration agents trying to determine if its employees were citizens or otherwise legally authorized to work in the country.
"Howard Industries runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for jobs," the statement said. "It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants."
Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, called the Laurel raid a violation of human rights.
"We're very disturbed at what's happened," Mr. Chandler said. "It's a real contradiction between our proclaimed values of hard work and family in Mississippi and the actions of local law enforcement, and ICE. I think it's a real affront to our values. They're creating their own terrorism by going after workers."
After the Iowa raid, the federal interpreter said many of the immigrants did not understand the charges to which they pleaded guilty. But federal officials said the judges in the cases believed that the guilty pleas had been made freely and voluntarily.
35 Comments so far
Show AllIt's gratifying to see progressives here finally waking up to the issue of corporate insourcing of low-wage replacement workers (so-called illegal immigration) and overwhelming the stupid rhetoric of those who claim that anyone opposing plantation capitalism/neo-slavery is "hateful" or "anti-immigrant." How ridiculous and disgusting is that rhetoric! As if Cesar Chavez, the great United Farm Workers union organizer (who led marches to the Mexican border, protesting the recruitment of illegal migrant workers) was racist or anti-immigrant! As if Americans won't work meat-packing, construction or manufacturing jobs! Who do the corporate apologists think worked those jobs before the 12-20 million migrants came? Oh, don't get me started!
Here are a few facts regarding the Postville, Iowa raid, which the above story references. Hundreds of workers fled the Agriprocessors meat-packing plant there when ICE raided this summer. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune's story, Aftermath of Immigration Raid:
"[Illegal workers] came from Guatemala and Mexico to work grueling 12 to 14-hour days in the Agriprocessors plant, frequently standing in boots in knee-deep water, their hands cramped and swollen from shifts salting chickens or loading meat onto trays. They earned $6.25 to $7.25 an hour, with 20-minute meal breaks and, they say, often no overtime pay."
"Iowa Labor Commissioner's Office said an investigation had uncovered 57 cases of child labor law violations at the facility, which has also been cited for numerous safety and health violations."
In other words, neo-slavery! Not to mention union busting! This is what the corporate apologists here on Common Dreams attempt to justify!
But how would the poor meat-packing corporation possibly stay in business without their wage slaves? Again, from the Star Tribune:
"About 150 Somalis, refugees who live and work legally in this country, have arrived to work at Agriprocessors since the raid. At first, most were single men, but a growing number of women are starting to join them."
"It's a good place to be," said Aar, 27, who left his wife and three young sons behind in the Twin Cities. "I heard there was work here, so I came first to get settled. If it works out, then I will bring them."
That's right! The large Somali population in Minnesota, who have high unemployment and receive generous public subsidies, is already moving to Iowa to take those jobs. That's a win/win. No word yet, but since the Somalis aren't quite as desperate as the Guatemalans and Mexicans, perhaps wages and benefits will have to go up. Perhaps labor laws, and health and safety rules, will have to be obeyed. And that would be good too.
Now, if we can defeat the corporate apologists' rhetoric, perhaps we can pressure the administration (and Congress) to aggressively prosecute the illegal EMPLOYERS who are recruiting people in other countries to come here illegally and work as slaves, thus forcing them to change their hiring practices. As I have said before, illegal employers should be required to pay a $5000 severance bonus to each of their illegal employees. That would be compassionate to the illegal migrants (who are not at fault) and also quickly end the practice of insourcing wage slaves.
A great new book on this issue is "They Take Our Jobs!: and 20 Other Myths about Immigration" by Aviva Chomsky. Preview it here:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=8sqiIlQt16UC&dq=they+take+our+jobs+chomsky&printsec=frontcover&...
Once again I am disturbed and outraged by the misinformation perpetuated in the CD forum- usually one of the more sensible ones. THANK YOU COMarc for bringing some truth to the conversation, and pointing out that the “truths” argued by TruthTeller are no more than the propaganda spouted by the corporate machine to create a scapegoat for their anti-labor policies.
As a labor rights activist AND a working class woman, I highly resent TT’s statement that “The American working man (and woman) knows that hiring illegals hurts him, even if his progressive betters don't.” The problem is NOT that “They are taking work away from US citizens,” but that capitalist elites have disenfranchised yet another section of the population in their constant need for increasingly cheap labor (the SAME tactics used since the institution of slavery in our country). TruthTeller, Azgringo, Goose2- PLEASE consider the possibility that we should be fighting TOGETHER with the most oppressed peoples against the corporate oppressors.
Goose, you are right in that “A ready pool of labor that is afraid to complain or move jobs or organize is slavery.” Our country is completely run through slavery. But why should we then dehumanize, blame and abuse the slaves? It is only through MORE rights for the oppressed that we can fight the corporatist slave-drivers. Solidarity!
"Our country is run through slavery"? Who owns YOU? More to the point, how many illegals do you employ and stand to lose if we as a society FINALLY decide to put American workers, not corporate bosses and progressive employers of nannies, first.
Our Mexican (and other) brothers and sisters should be fighting IN MEXICO for a break up of the cartels (CEMEX, TELMEX, TELEVISA, etc), corrupt unions, and government monopolies (PEMEX, CFE, etc) that are keeping that country in poverty.
"The Iron Heel", by Jack London, is coming true today.
Hoa binh
The plant manager should have been walked out the front gate in handcuffs.
US elites are sporadically cracking down on Mexico's NAFTA refugees to buy the votes of anti-migrant groups. US elites know their cornering of the Mexican tortilla market is pushing Mexicans off their land and into the migratory labor pool while the anti-migrant groups haven't a clue or care why the migrants families are starving back in Mexico. US elites want to keep the trend going - to corner more foreign markets and push more foreign people off their land. They also want the economic activity of building the battlements of Fortress USA ever higher while also leaking migrants unimpeded to feed their appetite for dirt cheap labor. The crackdowns will cease after the elections, the floodgates will open, migrant wages will drop and tortilla prices will skyrocket. This is the elites' private control plan.
Your grip on economics is sporadic, at best. Rising tortilla prices are the BEST THING to happen to Mexican farmers for years, because they are getting more money for what they produce. City dwellers are screwed, but that is another story. One of the biggest complaints about NAFTA from progressives was that it would LOWER farm prices and push farmers off the land and into cities or across the border.
So, check my understanding. If farm prices are LOWER, that is a bad thing and a sign that NAFTA is bad. If farm prices are HIGHER, that is ALSO a bad thing, and a sigh that NAFTA is bad.
Funny, I guess there was no illegal alien problem at all before 1994? NAFTA must really be bad if it caused all the OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) picked up at this plant to come here illegally.
An interesting AP story HERE:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080827/D92QIKFG0.html
states that it was a tip from a UNION MEMBER working at the plant that led to the raid, and that the legal employees clapped as the illegals were led away. The American working man (and woman) knows that hiring illegals hurts him, even if his progressive betters don't.
Funny, I guess there was no illegal alien problem at all before 1994? NAFTA must really be bad if it caused all the OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) picked up at this plant to come here illegally.
350 workers will do more to fill a privately owned detention center than the 1 boss who knowingly hired them and profited from their vulnerability.
Joe
Funny, before 1924 there wasn't such a thing as "illegal immigration".
This is the best America has to offer or can do? Do we now accept responsibility for our actions, or is Dobbs more important than the abandoned children and families resulting from these deportations? The children are not responsible for their location, for their dependence, nor for who they chose as parents.
The question is how we choose to give our values expression. The answer to that question defines who and what we are. We either have human values which transcend the imperfections of law, or we accept being commanded, in order to avoid responsibility for the actions of our government "of, by, and for the people", as that criteria?
By a similar logic to that resulting in these arrests, will our soldiers be illegal aliens in Iraq if the Iraqi deadline for them to leave isn't fulfilled any better than the Russians have done in Georgia? Is there any international law, or are there international human rights above and beyond the might of any particular nation, or is there nothing else? We are responsible for where we stand in those areas, and will be judged by the same rules we impose on others.
"It is our sad experience that when people sre given authority over others, they immediately begin to excercise unrighteous dominion over them." (citation omitted and paraphrased)
No s--t?
You worried about losing your gardner or something? Don't worry, you can get an American one; you will just have to offer a competitive wage.
They need to deport every illegal in this country. People don't understand they are taking work away from US citizens. Everyone in this country is not college educated and would be glad to work. Also it would help the unions organise workers if they were legal residents. Do you think the unions could organize that plant with all those illegals working there?
>>Do you think the unions could organize that plant with all those illegals working there?<<
Absolutely right. A ready pool of labor that is afraid to complain or move jobs or organize is slavery. Illegal Alien labor is slavery. Why are we fighting about this? It is not a progressive position to support slavery!
We need to arrest and deport as many illegals as we can. We need to prosecute the employers and they need to serve time. We need to build a fence to keep as many out illegal aliens as we can.
It is of no interest or value to debate who was here first. I don't give a squat and 90% of Americans don't either. All that matters is now and what we can do to fix the problems.
It is simple economics that a force of cheap labor that will accept any working conditions will replace one that demands good - safe - clean conditions and fair pay. This is what the unions were all about and why they started. Now we progressives are siding against them? What is this about?
I agree with everything you say except the fence. A fence good enough to keep illegals out can also keep Americans IN. No thanks. Besides, if the employers start going to jail, there will be no need for a fence, the illegals will get the word real quick that the jobs are gone.
For precisely the reasons you state, employers LOVE illegals. I have never understood what is "progressive" about sticking it to the working class American by importing slave labor to lower his wages.
What would this country be without immigrants?? Memories are short.
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
~Philip K. Dick~
What would this country be without immigrants?? Amazing how the powers that be have everyone divided. What about the politicians, corporations, and various employers who are smuggling in workers to work for them?
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
~Philip K. Dick
This country takes in more LEGAL immigrants than every other country in the world, combined.
What would this country be withoug illegals? A far better place, that is what. To bad we cannot deport the human vermin who hire them too.
Hear! Hear!
I agree completely. This country would be far better off without illegal immigration and illegal aliens. This has to be the very first consideration of any progressive.
End illegal immigration - end slavery!
"The raid follows a similar large-scale immigration operation at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in May when nearly 400 workers were detained. That raid was a significant escalation of the Bush administration's enforcement practices because those detained were not simply deported, as in previous raids, but were imprisoned for months on criminal charges of using false documents."
Of course, you've gotta use those new concentration camps before somebody starts claiming "graft and corruption!" After all, they were built to handle immigration or bird flu victims. Just wait until they get to the "or such other programs as the president may specify."
Can you say martial law? I knew you could.
KBR and its multi million dollar contract to build detention camps throughout the United States is a premonition of things to come.
Once upon a time.........as illegal Mexican Immigrants became the enemy of the state for deprivng American Workers of their right to have a job, Americans chimed in, "Yes, those GD alens are getting free medicare, free housing, and a free eductaion. They are costing us billions of dollars!"
So what if Halliburton and KBR defrauded the U.S. of hundreds of billions of dollars. So what if the U.S has contracted companies like: Blackwater, DYN Corp etc. to hire 100,000 mercenaries at $1,200 a day per mercenary. So what if the U.S. paid Sunni Tribal Leaders billions of dollars to stop their insurgency even though the Sunnis were responsible for thousands of U.S. Soldiers´ deaths. So what if 1,260,000 Iraqis have died because of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq. So what if over 4 million Iraqis are living in "Detention Camps".....
Its those GD Mexicans.....Get your heads out of your butts. KBR has built those detention camps throughout the United States for greater purposes and the Mexican raids are merely experiments. You too will be detained without a trial if you complain.
Do not want to know the future of america, lived in CA in the 70's and mexican labors where exploted eveywhere. Had a friend with an Avocado farm and receive calls many time from them to translate, one Sunday evening was to pass that a group of slaves went to a swimming pond and because they do not carried IDs, not one knew the ful name of the one who drown. UNBELIEVABLE - INCREDIBLE - If this äliens" don't reap your vegetables, all of you will be eaten beef and shit
If these "aliens" do not pick our vegatables, we will end up paying a few cents a pound more for vegetables picked by Americans who are earning a living wage. Tough luck for the farmers who will lose a source of slaves, but good news for the rest of us.
How easy it is to hate. Classic fascist technique. Blame the 'other'. Blame the 'outsider'. Blame the 'immigrant'. Cover the results of their own grab for profits by trying to convince gullible fools to blame the 'immigrants' for the nation's problems.
There's plenty of blame to go around, but just because there are others to blame as well doesn't mean that illegal aliens deserve a pass. It doesn't matter how hard they work or what they speak or the color of their skin, they take jobs and depress wages for everyone. Get rid of them and prices rise, but so do wages or increases in technology. Right now there is no machine to pick strawberries. If farmers had to pay $25 an hour to Americans to pick, someone would build a machine and make a fortune.
Ag prices are FAR too low in the US because of NAFTA and illegal aliens. Here in the SF area, strawberries are 3lb for $1. Corn is 8 ears for $1. This is ag country I know, but these prices are criminally low because there is some illegal alien out there that is working themselves to death in the fields loaded with methyl bromide and pesticides. That is slavery. Cotton should have been so cheap!
End illegal work and eliminate slavery!
Hmmmm,
I wonder if TT will appreciate the gestapo tactics when they are used against him if he complains about HI too much.
Just a practice against those 'others' amongst us.
Remember - us good ol' boys will be the 'others' after 2030.
Nice feelings. I assume that, in your white collar, upscale profession, you do not have to worry about your employer cutting your wages in half and hiring an illegal if you do not like it. I would not want you to lose your nanny, gardner, or dog walker either.
As to those, like the (formerly middle class) black janitors of Los Angeles, well, screw them. Right?
Incidentally, from a personal perspective, I worked construction (unskilled as heck) in Annapolis, Md. in 1987 for $10 an hour. It was temporary for me, but a lot of the people I was working with were using it as a hook into the middle class. Not anymore. I doubt they even pay $10 for unskilled labor these days...
The problem is in believing the corporate propaganda that blames the lack of good jobs on 'immigrants'.
Classic fascist tactics. It was the Democrats and the Republicans who passed the trade deals that send out jobs overseas. They were the ones who tore apart the post-depression era restrictions on the crimes bankers could commit. Both parties have been in the corporate pocket and do anything to help their CEO friends get richer.
All of that is what's destroying the good paying jobs in this country. Did people really think we could send all of our ability to make stuff overseas, and still keep good jobs?
Now, as times get tougher, and people start to know they are really being squeezed, the corporate machine cranks up the 'blame the immigrants' propaganda. The very people who sold the good jobs overseas now point their fingers and poor hard-working immigrants, the very sort of people who once made this a great country, and they try to convince fools that its all their fault.
Yeah right. The amazing thing is that any one is so gullible as to believe it.
Aaaah TT, There weren't necessarily 350 illegal immigrants - or 350 legal residents willing to work for wages paid.
But I could be wrong !
This was another practice run to train to round up opponents of the fascist state.
Especially when elections are postponed!
Muslims will probably be the next group targeted.
GOOD GOOD GOOD. 350 more jobs just opened up for Americans, or for legal residents. Hopefully management is going to go to jail here, and for a while.
Note carefully the line that says 'no criminal charges' will be filed. Because it is the employer that would face criminal charges.
This is Mussolina's corporatists state. Attacks on the workers by the police. But no law at all for the corporate owners.
And you are a deluded fool if you cheer on any attack on any worker anywhere. Its all an attack on all of us. Our predecessors knew this when they formed unions. They knew any attack on any worker anywhere was an attack on all workers. And they had enough sense to stand together and oppose such attacks, instead of cheering from the sideline because people are so deluded as to think that an attack on an 'immigrant' worker some how is different from an attack on you.
Turn off Lou Dobbs and wake up, please!
Nah, Howard Industries will just make a few campaign contributions. As for things like electrical transformers and medical equipment - these things were only being made for American citizens. Now we can all suffer in darkness like the rest of our victims. Heckovajob when the ICEman Cometh.
Disgustingly, you are almost certainly right about the (lack of) consequences Howard Ind. will suffer. Still, that's 350 Americans they will have to pay a little more money to now, and 350 fewer human beings in serfdom.