ICE brings panic to a Mississippi town

IN THE largest single workplace raid ever, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on Howard Industries in the small town of Laurel, Miss., and took some 600 workers into custody on August 25.

"I was crying the whole time. I didn't know what to do," Fabiola Pena told the Associated Press. "We didn't know what was happening because everyone started running. Some people thought it was a bomb, but then we figured out it was immigration."

The raid created a wave of panic among the immigrants of Jones County, Miss. The superintendent of the county school district reported that about half of the 160 Hispanic students were absent from school the next day.

"Basically, they create a major humanitarian crisis for families and spouses and children," Bill Chandler of the Jackson-based Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA) told the Hattiesburg American. In some cases, he said, both parents were now gone in the raid, leaving their families totally alone.

"The question is what they are doing with people when they are arrested," Chandler said. "It's an immoral, very anti-human, anti-family act. They split families and create terror in the Latino community. They go in, shake down the plant, put people in shackles and chains, carry them to jail, have them arraigned and often they are put in jails with real criminals."

About 800 people worked at Laurel's Howard plant, which manufactures ballasts for office lights, neon tubes and transformers--making it the largest employer in the town, 85 miles southeast of Jackson. About half of the workers are Latino. Workers picked up in the raid were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

The Laurel plant closed down for the day, because it couldn't keep up operations. ICE also raided corporate headquarters at Howard Industries in Ellisville.

The ACLU is investigating cases of civil rights abuses that took place during the raid. "We are deeply concerned by reports that workers at the factory where the raid occurred were segregated by race or ethnicity and interrogated, the factory was locked down for several hours, workers were denied access to counsel, and ICE failed to inform family members and lawyers following the raid where the workers were being jailed," Mónica Ramírez, a staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project who is meeting with family members, said in a statement.

Not only were the workers taken to a detention facility 200 miles from their homes, but that prison was located in Jena, La.--the site of last year's persecution of six Black high school students. You can't help drawing the comparison between the conditions immigrants face with the Jim Crow South before the civil rights movement.

As activist Alan Bean wrote on the Friends of Justice Web site:

Almost 600 people were taken into custody yesterday in Laurel, Mississippi. Of this group, 450 were immediately shipped off to the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) prison in Jena, Louisiana.

That's right, Jena.

As I have previously mentioned, Jena's prison has a painful history. Originally opened as a private (for profit) juvenile facility, the Jena prison was forced to close in response to accusations of racially motivated abuse. The facility reopened post-Katrina as an overflow facility for state inmates from New Orleans. Once again, allegations of racism and abuse shut the prison down.

Hope springs eternal, however, especially in the prison business. If you build it, they will come. No matter how badly you screw up, you will be forgiven. The Jena facility reopened this year as an ICE prison designed for the sort of people arrested in the Mississippi sweep.

ICE HAD been preparing for the raid on Howard for months. According to a report by the Associated Press, federal officials say a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating. One worker caught in the raid said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody.

Robert Shaffer of the Mississippi AFL-CIO told reporters, "Jackson, Hattiesburg, Laurel and all areas along the coast, it's a little Mexico. I'm not against people trying to make a living. I have a compassion for those folks. But at the same time, the taxpayers of Mississippi shouldn't be subsidizing a plant that won't even hire their own workers."

This is a backward statement. If they miss the opportunity to take a firm and active stand against the anti-immigrant raids, Mississippi unions will find themselves in a weaker position--a situation they can't possibly afford.

Like much of the South, Mississippi is a so-called "right to work" state and one of least unionized states of any. In 2003, only 5 percent of workers in the state were members of unions, compared with the national rate of 12.9 percent. About 2,600 of Howard Industries' 4,000 workers are union members.

Employers like Howard, in coordination with ICE, believe that they can use a divide-and-conquer strategy to keep workers pitted against one another, weak and distracted from the real menace to their job security. The company alone will benefit from the fear and hysteria caused by the raids.

The company clearly knew beforehand that the raids were going to occur. A billboard had gone up the week before the raid, advertising that the company was hiring. Two days after the raid, hundreds of desperate people were lined up outside the plant to apply for jobs.

These raids go hand in hand also with a climate created by some Mississippi politicians who are cynically exploiting the immigration issue. Earlier this year, the Mississippi legislature and Republican Gov. Haley Barbour passed into law the draconian Senate bill 2988, which makes it a felony to work without authorization in Mississippi.

The law requires businesses with 250 or more workers to use the E-Verify system--a national, and oftentimes inaccurate, database operated by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. SB 2988 imposes a one- to five-year prison sentence and huge fines of $1,000 to $10,000.

The Laurel raid comes on the heels of a number of ICE raids. In May, some 400 immigrant workers were detained at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. And in smaller workplaces around the country, workers are being faced with raids.

In some places, activists have found ways to organize against these attacks on immigrant workers. One thousand people turned out to attend a protest in July against the raids in Postville, some traveling from other parts of the country to register their outrage. In a suburb of Philadelphia, where ABM Janitorial Services worked with ICE in their raid on immigrant employees on July 31, Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, the union that represents workers there, organized a rally in their defense on August 5.

More actions that link the struggles of all workers--unorganized and organized, documented and undocumented--will be key to pushing back the government and corporate attack on immigrant workers.