I was perplexed by the ICE raids in Mississippi.
Why was this done in a thoroughly red state, and not, for example, a sanctuary city?
Given the degree to which the immigration and deportation infrastructure has aggressively adopted the nakedly partisan goals of the Trump administration, it did not make sense.
Fortunately, Mike Elk at Payday Report provides some needed context, and it appears that ICE decided to raid companies based on successful unionization efforts and EEOC complaints:
Today, ICE carried out what is believed to be the largest immigration raid in decades when they detained 680 workers at seven poultry plants in Morton, Mississippi.
The workers, many of them members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), were employed by a company called Koch Foods Inc, which employs 13,000 workers throughout the US. (Koch Foods Inc. has no connection or relation to the billionaire political donor Koch Brothers).
The UFCW, which represents workers at the plant, has been meeting with community groups and immigrants rights activists to mobilize community and legal support on behalf of the workers.
………
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.”
………
In June of 2018, ICE raided a unionized Fresh Mark meatpacking plant in Salem, Ohio; arresting 140 workers.
A week before the raid on a Fresh Mark’s Salem facility, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined Fresh Mark $211,194 for three separate incidents in which proper guards for dangerous machinery were not in place. OSHA found that the lack of safety guards resulted in the death of an undocumented worker.
………
Suspicion was also raised that workers complaining about working conditions in plants lead toa raid at the Southeastern Provision in Morristown, Tennesse. The raid came after federal authorities were tipped off by a local bank that the owner of the plant may have been paying undocumented workers under the table.
………
“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, who served as chief of staff of OSHA under Obama from 2009 to 2013 and now serves as the director of the worker health and safety program at the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
The pattern is unmistakable.
I have no doubt that ICE is deliberately targeting operations where workers are attempting to assert their rights under the law, and I have no doubt that this is with the approval, and probably direction, of the Trump administration.