Trump administration agents swept up nearly 700 people, “mostly Latino workers,” in what’s “believed to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation's history," CNN reports, raiding seven food processing plants in six cities across Mississippi on Wednesday. The government’s brutality and cruelty was intentional: Authorities planned the raids for the first day of public school in the state.
WJTV in Jackson, Mississippi, reported that kids came home from school to empty houses. Neighbors “and even strangers” drove them to a community center to be looked after. Local business owner Jordan Barnes volunteered his gym, while one elementary school reopened as a shelter. “Bus drivers were told to monitor each drop-off to make sure someone was home.” Other community members donated food. Still, it was all little consolation for the traumatized and weeping children.
“Government, please show some heart,” 11-year-old Magdalena Gomez Gregorio cried for her dad. “I need my dad and mommy. My dad didn’t do anything, he’s not a criminal.” Christina Peralta, the godmother of two kids whose mom was arrested in the raid, said, “The children that I’m with, their mom’s been here for 15 years and she has no record. A lot of people here have no record. They’ve been here for 10-12 years.”
One person who witnessed one of the raids said, “It looked like an invasion in a war,” with dozens of agents and helicopters descending to arrest food workers.
Workers taken into custody by ICE “filled three buses—two for men and one for women—at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in tiny Morton, 40 miles east of Jackson,” the Clarion Ledger reports. “They were taken to a military hangar to be processed for immigration violations. About 70 family, friends and residents waved goodbye and shouted, ‘Let them go! Let them go!’ Later, two more buses arrived.”
In what is surely no coincidence at all, last year “Koch Foods Inc. settled a $3.75 million [lawsuit] brought by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Koch Food Inc. at the plant” after workers said “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 … many immigrants rights advocates have speculated that workers are targeted for raids after their facilities get investigated for worker abuse.”
BuzzFeed News reported that some parents caught in the raids were eventually released, with kids who had been sheltered at Barnes’ gym reunited with family members that night. It’s unclear about kids sheltered at the school, however. Other parents remain separated from their kids. Dianne, who gave only her first name for her protection, is caring for three children—their dad and mom were both detained by ICE. “You see these kids hurting and crying, knowing their parents aren’t coming home soon. I’ve seen that all day,” she said. “People are freaking out.”
The damage will reverberate past Wednesday. When ICE raided a meatpacking plant in Tennessee last year, hundreds of kids skipped school the next day, terrified that their families could be disappeared. “Jessica Bailiff looked out at her class and saw empty desks where her students were supposed to be,” CNN reported. “The physics teacher's heart sank. She knew why they weren't there.”
