Undocumented Immigrants and Families

As immigration raids rise, human toll decried

Arrests across US break up families

By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff  |  March 20, 2007

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Dec. 16, arresting 99 workers who could not prove they were in the country legally, then-governor Tom Vilsack was livid.

Immigration officials "chose to pursue a solitary path that limited the operation's effectiveness, created undue hardship for many not at fault, and led to resentment and further mistrust of government," Vilsack wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The ICE raid was part of the agency's largest-ever enforcement operation, hitting Swift & Co. slaughterhouses in six states and resulting in the arrests of 1,297 workers. As of March 1, 649 of those workers had been deported.

Like the March 6 raid on the Michael Bianco Inc. leather goods factory in New Bedford, in which more than 300 workers were arrested, the Swift operation left some children stranded for hours, and many others in the care of friends and relatives. ICE flew many detainees to an out-of-state federal detention facility before immigrants' advocates had a chance to speak with them about their children. Some detainees were not initially honest with ICE investigators about whether they had children, fearing they, too, would be taken into custody even though some of those children were US citizens.

And like the New Bedford raid, the Swift raids drew harsh criticism from the governor, who criticized ICE's limited cooperation with state officials, including its refusal to release information in a timely fashion on who was detained and where.

Immigration raids nationwide have increased in recent months. Scenes similar to those in New Bedford and Marshalltown have played out in cities like Worthington, Minn., and Stillmore, Ga., where a poultry plant was raided last Labor Day. In Santa Fe, 30 undocumented workers were arrested in a raid in February, and Mayor David Coss said he was outraged that "families are being torn apart, literally."

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