U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said his office is working to assist Ohio families devastated by a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raid, targeting a large nursery, that resulted in over 100 arrests, including at least one U.S. citizen minor:
He told reporters it's "immoral" and "an insane policy" to separate small children from their families, as the arrests of 114 workers at Corso's Flower & Garden Center did, and to deport civilians to places they fled because of violence.
"Tearing families apart will not fix our broken immigration system," said Brown. "It will mean more problems for all of us. There is no good reason, ever, to separate children from their parents."
"This is a major humanitarian crisis unfolding," said immigrant rights advocate Veronica Dahlberg, whose organization, HOLA Ohio, came to immediate aid of families. "In some cases, both sets of parents were seized, and we know of many children left with babysitters, including babies and toddlers."
”All I could think about was my mom, because I didn’t know where she was at,” Salma Sabala, a Corso’s employee, told The Washington Post before breaking down into tears.
According to Dahlberg, a U.S. citizen who witnessed the raid told her that undercover federal agents lured employees into a break room “with three boxes of donuts, announcing a company meeting”:
"As people gathered to listen, dozens of agents moved in shouting orders for U.S. citizens to line up on one side, and those "not born in the U.S." to line up on the other," she wrote. "After a long time, some were released who had papers, others were loaded on buses, including several U.S. citizen high school students, and taken to the Border Patrol station.
According to Splinter, ICE “released at least seven individuals who were arrested. The individuals released were teenagers who are U.S. citizens; for some this was their first job.”
Advocacy group Central Ohio Worker Center is calling on Republican Gov. John Kasich to stand by his claim that “immigrants are welcome in Ohio” (a petition is available here to sign, and information on a rally in support of families is available here), while other elected officials, activists, and faith leaders continue to speak out against raid.
“This latest event in Erie County,” said Bishop Nelson Perez of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, “again makes clear that our current immigration system contributes to the human suffering of migrants and the separation of families”:
Toledo Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur released a statement on Wednesday night that said her office is also "in direct contact" with ICE and local advocates in regards to those who were questioned and detained in the raid. She said her office will share more information as it becomes available.
"In this tense environment created by an Administration intent on dividing us, we want to make sure everything about this action is above board and that individuals are being treated with dignity and respect," her statement said. "The tragic reality is agricultural workers are vulnerable and targets for those looking to exploit them. Congress must regularize the seasonal and migrant labor flow across the Americas and we must end modern-day indentured servitude that is all too commonplace."
Dahlberg’s group kicked into gear as reports of the raid broke, writing in a Facebook post that Brown’s office helped release a 16-year-old U.S. citizen who had been swept up in the raid. Other advocates did intakes for families missing a loved one.
Mayela, whose husband was arrested in the raid, has three young kids, the youngest only three months old. “This is an injustice,” she told Spanish-language outlet Telemundo, “because we are here working. My husband doesn’t have a criminal record.”
Dahlberg told columnist Connie Schultz, who is married to Sen. Brown, that Norwalk, where many of these families live, has turned into a “ghost town … people left their cars. There were boxes spilled open. People just disappeared”:
“Most of the children were born here, but many of their caregivers fled because they're undocumented, too, and they're afraid of being arrested."
“They rounded up and bound the wrists of more than 100 immigrant workers, most of them Mexican and undocumented, some of them U.S. citizens,” Schultz continued, “They marched them to waiting buses as if they were armed criminals instead of the people who bring all those hanging flower baskets and weedless lawns into the summer lives of Ohioans.”
“Notably, none of the employers who hired them was arrested or charged. They may have to add their business to the growing pile of community casualties of this new immigration policy. Oh well. Ain't America great again?”