Mississippi ICE Raids: No Children of Corporate Execs Were Affected
As I and others have been saying all along, the cruelty is the point.
"...many children of those arrested across the state are now left homeless with nowhere to go....some...as young as toddlers"
Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided seven chicken processing plants on Wednesday in Mississippi, arresting 680 people believed to be in the country illegally.
Southern District U.S Attorney Mike Hurst told the news media, “While we are a nation of immigrants, more than that we are first and foremost a nation of laws.”
Yeah, right. There’s tons more to be told about this story.
About 600 ICE agents were involved in the raids on the chicken processing plants, owned by five different companies, in the towns of Bay Springs, Canton, Carthage, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastopol.
The agency's acting director, Matthew Albence, told the Associated Press it was one of the largest enforcement operations against undocumented immigrants.
Mississippi has one of the smallest populations of undocumented immigrants in the country, totaling about 20,000, according to the Pew Research Center.
From the Jackson Free Press:
Advocates at the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, or MIRA, spent Wednesday afternoon scrambling to answer calls from distressed family members and to find out exactly what was happening. "We're now trying to deal with schools because of the children that may be left behind by ICE," MIRA President Bill Chandler said.
MIRA organizer Luis Espinoza traveled to Canton on Wednesday to help families trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what to do next, Chandler said. ICE agents attempted to arrest at least one U.S. citizen at the plant in Canton, Chandler reported.
"In Canton, there was a young man who was working there that protested the arrests because he was an American citizen," Chandler said. "And they tased him, knocked him to the ground, and put handcuffs on him before they finally figured out that he was an American citizen."
From WJTV:
For Christina Peralta who’s the godmother of two children whose mom was arrested, she’s helpless as she watches the boys wonder when they’ll see their mother again.
“He said his mom is gone, that he’s upset with Trump, he said he just wants his mom back,” Peralta continued. “And they’ve been crying all day long since they got home from school.”
But with the help of Clear Creek Boot Camp owner Jordan Barnes and other community leaders the kids will have a roof to sleep under at his gym for the night with donated food to eat.
Here are some other things you might want to know…
“These raids send a real signal to immigrant workers not to speak up, and we feel like these raids enable employers in the most dangerous industry to cut corners and violate labor standards,” said Debbie Berkowitz, director of the worker health and safety program at the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
More on this from Mike Elk’s reader-supported PayDay Report:
As buses full of poultry workers arrived pulled up to the Mississippi National Guard base at Flowood, Mississippi 70 family members and supporters families gathered shouting at the armed guards, “Let Them Go! Let Them Go!” as workers were taken into the makeshift detention facility.
The detention suffered by immigrants is yet another abuse suffered by immigrant poultry workers employed by Koch Foods Inc in Morton, Mississippi.
In 2018, following a nearly eight-year-long legal battle, Koch Foods Inc*. settled a $3.75 million brought by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Koch Food Inc at the plant. The lawsuit alleged that Koch Foods Inc supervisors engaged in both racial and sexual harassment of Latina workers at its Morton, Mississippi plant.
The lawsuit brought by the EEOC against Koch Food Inc’s alleged “that supervisors touched and/or made sexually suggestive comments to female Hispanic employees, hit Hispanic employees and charged many of them money for normal everyday work activities.”
[*Koch Foods is NOT owned by the infamous brothers]
Needless to say, no executives or managers from the chicken processing plants were arrested. ICE says some may face charges at a later date.
https://twitter.com/LaurieBlackSD/status/1159489957938880514?s=20
In 2008, according to MIRA president Bill Chandler, ICE raided Howard Industries in Ellisville, Miss. and arrested about 600 immigrant workers, and most were deported.
More from the Jackson Free Press:
In 2009, Howard Industries executive Jose Humberto Gonzalez pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for hiring undocumented immigrants. A court sentenced him to six months of house arrest and a $2.5 million fine.
"The only Latino administrative person in that company was the one that was charged with recruiting these workers. ... They raided that plant and it was in many instances very violent when they went inside the plant," Chandler said.
So don’t hold your breath waiting for future prosecutions.
From Buzzfeed News:
Prosecutions of employers and owners of companies who knowingly hire undocumented workers can be rare. Researchers at Syracuse University found that in the 12 months before March, just 11 employers had been prosecuted.
Luis Cartagena, a pastor in Morton, Mississippi, said he witnessed ICE agents surround the local chicken processing plant. “It looked like an invasion in a war,” he said, noting that there were dozens of agents, buses, and helicopters were roaming the air. Cartagena said the operation had already traumatized the Latino community.
Here’s some other background, via an eye-opening investigation from ProPublica:
Mississippi is the fifth-largest poultry-producing state, with more than 1,300 chicken farms. In a state where the population is 38% black, only 96 of those farms were operated by African Americans in 2012, the most recent USDA data available. From 2009 to 2017, Koch Foods went from having contracts with four black farmers in Mississippi to zero.
Koch (pronounced “cook”) Foods is based outside Chicago and supplies chicken, often sold under other brands, to major restaurants and retailers such as Burger King, Kroger and Walmart. The company, which is privately held, is not part of the business empire of the conservative billionaires Charles Koch and David Koch. The owner of Koch Foods, Joseph Grendys, has a fortune that Forbes estimates at $3.1 billion.
****
https://twitter.com/originalgriz/status/1159471836343808000?s=20
These raids came as the president turned a day that was supposed to be about the lives lost in mass shootings and their grieving families into a campaign video to promote himself.
***
And THIS...
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1159196836864962561?s=20
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