A California church drew national attention this holiday season after a photo of its nativity installation depicting baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in cages went viral on social media. Its accompanying message? What if this, the most well-known refugee family in the world, sought refuge in our country today?
While this imagery speaks directly to the anguish of families at the border, it can also help us empathize with the present torment of immigrant-rich communities throughout the interior of our country.
This month, as Americans enjoy the holidays with their loved ones, many will roast turkeys and share a special family meal together. Meanwhile, the humans who lives are enmeshed in the slaughter and processing of our nation’s poultry are suffering like never before.
Following the summer’s raid on poultry plants in Mississippi—now known to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement action in U.S. history— the families of nearly 700 workers who call Mississippi home are grappling with the effects of detention, deportation, and criminalization. Some parents have been separated from their children for nearly five months now, while others returned home, unemployed and preparing for their imminent deportation.
In Morton, Mississippi, where I worked with the Mississippi Poultry Workers’ Center between 2002 and 2008, fully 10 percent of the population has been incarcerated or fired. Without the income they relied upon to scratch out a meager living, families are sinking deeper into poverty and despair, forced to rely on the goodwill of others in their community to keep food on the table. Even the small but meaningful act of charity that many workers came to anticipate from their employers around the holidays—the gift of a Christmas turkey—will be absent from their tables this year.
Even more troubling, many of those caught up in the raids now face criminal charges. U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst, a Trump administration appointee, has chosen to aggressively prosecute over 100 workers with felony document fraud, misuse of a social security number, and false claims to U.S. citizenship, despite a perverse legal system that makes it virtually impossible for undocumented people to support their families without shouldering such risks. Recent reporting suggests that the prosecutions break with a decade of practice and contradict Justice Department guidelines that instruct prosecutors to assess whether there exists an adequate non-criminal alternative to prosecution.
Employers regularly turn a blind eye to the practices of identity loan, sometimes even arranging the use of borrowed documents for their workers. Unsurprisingly, despite federal laws that exist to hold employers accountable for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, no charges have been filed against the poultry giants themselves. These companies continue to stockpile profit on the backs of the undocumented and hyperexploitable.
Hardships resulting from the raids are being felt far beyond the families of detained workers. In the rural Mississippi towns I know and love, entire communities are hurting. From schools and childcare to restaurants, stores, banks, health clinics, and housing, virtually all sectors of society provide goods and services for poultry workers. This Christmas, immigrant and non-immigrant Mississippians, black, brown, and white, are feeling the economic and social effects of the raids.
Beyond Mississippi, more than eleven million undocumented people and their U.S. citizen loved ones across the country live in fear that their workplaces and communities could be next in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants. The White House reportedly ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to conduct dozens of additional raids by year’s end, with ICE instructing field offices across the country to identify at least two locations in their regions as potential targets for future enforcement actions.
While we can’t foresee the President’s next steps, we do know that all across our nation in rural, urban and suburban spaces, industrial agriculture runs on the exploitation of undocumented workers. Yet despite relying on immigrants to do this hazardous work for pennies, our nation’s policies are criminalizing and targeting for removal the people who form the very backbone of our nation’s food chain.
The anxiety running rampant in immigrant communities today as a result of Trump’s white nationalist agenda is at an all-time high. For the millions of Americans who know and love undocumented people, this reality is hard to swallow. It should also be objectionable for the hundreds of millions more who benefit from their exploitation and suffering.
As we prepare our holiday meals in the comfort of family and friends, and as many among us celebrate the story of Jesus’ birth, let us call upon our national, state, and local leadership to recognize immigrants’ humanity. We must put an end to their criminalization. Our own humanity depends on it.
