ICE Arrests in Mississippi Leave Children Devastated
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed multiple federal criminal search warrants at seven agricultural processing plants across Mississippi Wednesday morning as part of an ongoing Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) worksite enforcement criminal investigation. Even though the raids resulted from a year-long investigation, the actual arrests took place just hours before Trump arrived in El Paso, a majority Latino city on the Mexico border where 22 people were killed over the weekend.
More than 600 agents executed warrants in conjunction with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi in several locations, including one run by Koch Foods, in Morton, Mississippi. The Koch plant in question is one of the largest poultry processors in the U.S. with more than 13,000 employees. Another plant that was raided is located in Canton, Miss., and is owned by Peco Foods Inc. and is the eighth-largest poultry producer in the United States.
ICE has confirmed that “approximately 680 removable aliens who were unlawfully working at the plants” have been arrested and are currently being detained, making this the largest raid to occur since Trump took office. A lead worker at the Koch plant in Morton told reporters that ICE agents came into the building and demanded that employees line up and walk outside and then multiple buses left the area with detained workers. The worker speaking to reporters estimated that half of the plant had been detained and expressed concern over what would happen to the children of the workers.
Video was posted on social media by Elizabeth Iraheta showing a girl crying after her mother was arrested and begging a police office to be allowed to see her mother. After showing her passport to the officer, the girl is then led away by the officer who detained her to take her before a judge.
The officer (speaking to the woman filming): “Here’s the deal, all right. She just went. Her mom got on the bus. We took her mom’s documents, all right. She’s going to be processed, because she doesn’t have papers to be here legally.”
Iraheta: “[But] because she’s the only caretaker of the child.”
Officer: “She’ll be released this afternoon. So with [Angie] being a U.S. citizen and being 12 years old … she’s going to be issued a notice to appear, she’ll have to see an immigration judge, she’ll be released this afternoon."
Iraheta: “Today?”
Officer: “Yes, yes. But I’m going to tell you something, she’s not going to be deported because she has a United States citizen child.”
Hundreds of people waited in parking lots near Koch Foods in Morton overnight hoping for family members to be returned to the poultry processing plant and buses did bring back a few detainees. But by Thursday morning at 10 a.m., a security guard told people who were not working to leave the property and ultimately part of the plant had to be closed due to a worker shortage.
The worst aspect of the raids is the children who are left devastated without their parents and nowhere to go. Many of had no family to go to and nowhere to spend the night and some had even walked home from school to find out they were locked out of their own homes with no way to get in because their parents were detained in the raid. A spokesperson for ICE told reporters that detainees were asked “if they had any children who were at school or child care and needed to be picked up” and cellphones were made available for arranging childcare. This statement was made with the complete lack of understanding that many parents had no one to call or simply didn’t trust ICE with any information about their children.
“I’ve been working on that plant for 19 years. We came here to work, and [the agents] are not looking for criminals. They’re looking at work sites for people who came to this country to work, who came to fight for their family…The girl is devastated for her mom. We still don’t know if she will be released. The girl is in bad shape, very sad. We’re waiting for her mom.” — Elizabeth Iraheta, U.S. Citizen, who filmed the deportations outside of the Koch plant
Children who were left behind were taken to a local gym where the owner of Clear Creek Fitness, Jordan Barnes, arranged for food and transportation and other locals donated supplies. The children who were sheltered there were between 4 and 15 years old and they were all reunited with a guardian by Wednesday evening. But despite being in a safe location and fed a meal, the pictures of the children speak for themselves and show the trauma inflicted by this type of raid. Perhaps Jordan Barnes summed it up best when he told reporters,"I understand the law and how everything works and everything needs to have a system. But everybody needs to hold the kids first and foremost in their minds, and that's what we've tried to do here."
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Amee Vanderpool writes the “Shero” Newsletter and is an attorney, contributor to Playboy Magazine, analyst for BBC radio and Director of The Inanna Project. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.