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Solidarity needed

Racist ICE raids terrorize immigrants

Published Dec 21, 2006 1:27 AM

This time of year an added emphasis is put on sharing with children. However, for the children of Swift and Co. meatpacking workers in six states, it’s a time of misery, fear and anger.


Latin@s Unidos and supporters from the
Farm Labor Organizing Committee,
Welfare Rights, MECAWI, Students for a
Democratic Society and various UAW
locals demanded 'Stop the raids, free the
workers' at the Detroit Homeland Security
office on Dec. 15.
WW photo: Cheryl LaBash

Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, armed with military weapons, stormed into the unionized workplaces of Swift on Dec. 12, terrorizing nearly 1,300 workers in what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said was an attack on “illegal immigration.”

According to a statement by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents these workers, ICE agents “marched into plants Thursday morning with military weapons, herding, segregating and terrorizing workers. Plants and plant gates were locked down. ...

“Families have been ripped apart leaving traumatized children stranded at school waiting to be picked up. In some cases, their parents are being transported to detention centers in distant cities and denied the opportunity to call anyone to make arrangements for their children. Workers at the Swift plant in Grand Island, Neb., have been bused to Camp Dodge, Iowa, six hours away from their families, with no guarantee of return transportation.

“Workers at the Greeley, Colo., plant reported that gunshots were fired. Representatives and attorneys with the UFCW, who have standing to represent these workers, have been denied access to the detained workers.”

In Marshalltown, Iowa, the local news service reported that a priest and nun were forced to give up trying to find the mother of a baby she had been breastfeeding due to non-cooperation from ICE officers. After driving to Camp Dodge, which people had been herded into, they received no cooperation.

They “wouldn’t tell us anything about anybody,” said Rev. Jim Miller, a priest from St. Mary’s Parish. He also inquired about an asthmatic child’s father and a 7-year-old girl who repeatedly asks why her mother was taken.

By the next day, the baby was refusing any food or the breast milk of another parent.

According to some reports, immigration agents were also stopping cars and knocking on residents’ doors late at night. Understandably, people are afraid to go to work. Some are in hiding or taking sanctuary in churches. Many fear what this terror campaign will mean for a community forced to live from paycheck to paycheck and thus unable to buy food or pay rent and heating bills during winter.

Racist, anti-worker raids

Many are pointing out the racist nature of these attacks. The Hispanic National Bar Association reported on Dec. 18 that “’non-Latinos’ and light-skinned employees were provided blue wristbands which exempted them from questioning, while ‘Latinos,’ persons perceived to be of Hispanic or Latino origin, underwent immigration processing. ... The serious concern is the use of police and immigration officials to sort amongst workers and determine upon unknown criteria who is Latino, and then to assume that all persons perceived to be Latinos are illegal.”

The spin from Homeland Security, being mouthed by the corporate media, is that these raids were justified due not just to lack of documents but to illegal activity, like identity theft. However, 95 percent of those arrested were not charged with either identity theft or any other criminal activity, other than illegal immigration. Out of the nearly 1,300 arrested, 65 were charged with identity theft and/or other crimes.

If the reason for the raids was to stop illegal immigration, one would think the government would go after the companies that lure workers to their plants and sometimes even provide them with Social Security numbers. Instead, however, Homeland Security officials emphasized that only Swift’s workers, not the company, had been charged with wrongdoing.

The fact is, immigrant workers create billions in profit for employers here and the absence of their labor would devastate the economy. According to a report in the Dec. 14 New York Times, businesses “shuddered” after hearing the news about the Swift raids and the CEO of Swift warned that production levels would temporarily fall below normal.

“This is any business’s nightmare, whether you are in the meat industry or outside the meat industry,” said Janet Riley, spokesperson for the American Meat Institute.

Instead of being about targeting terrorism, crime or illegal immigration, as Chertoff claimed, this is all about targeting workers, especially unionized workers. The attack on immigrant workers is the wedge used against all working people in this country.

The raids targeted UFCW workers and stripped them of any union rights they had. Union officials were not even allowed to approach their members.

This is nothing more than an attempt to take the militancy seen on May 1 out of the immigrant community and intimidate workers out of their unions. The Department of Homeland Security and the “war on terror” provide the means.

Role of U.S. economic and military warfare

In explaining the raids to the media, Homeland Security officials endorsed the Bush administration’s attempt to push through a new version of indentured servitude, a new spin on the Bracero program that ripped off Mexican workers in the mid-20th century.

Bush’s “guest worker” proposal would allow employers to “invite” workers across the border to work and un-invite those wanting higher pay or a union.

Chertoff also urged Congress to pass legislation allowing Social Security officials to pass along information about valid Social Security numbers being used in multiple workplaces. This would be especially handy to “justify” future raids against, say, Smithfield meat processing workers in North Carolina. Workers there, in mid-November, won back the jobs of co-workers fired for not having proper Social Security match-ups.

The Bush administration and the Democratic Party, too, know that U.S. imperialism’s economic and military warfare causes immigration. It is well documented how President Bill Clinton’s introduction of NAFTA—the North American Free Trade Agreement—impoverished workers abroad. NAFTA is a form of economic warfare. But that is not the only type of U.S. warfare that has destroyed economies and living conditions, forcing immigration to the U.S.

The workers arrested in the Dec. 12 raid were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Sudan and Ethiopia, plus other countries.

In Guatemala, workers are still reeling from the CIA overthrow in 1954 of elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, which forced an end to his successful land reform that gave peasants desperately needed land.

In Honduras, the U.S. military invasion in 1905 and support and training of death squads years later ensured that today 65 percent of the population in Honduras lives in poverty.

In El Salvador, the U.S.-created death squads and the arming of its military against the poor and workers in the 1970s exacerbated poverty and homelessness, forcing many to emigrate in search of a better life.

The history of U.S. involvement in Africa is one full of fueling civil wars to weaken and attempt domination, as it has tried in Ethiopia and Sudan.

Instead of deportations, the U.S. government should be dismantling its huge military and handing out reparations to those attacked.

Working people and all progressive organizations must unite to fight this most dangerous threat by Homeland Security. A vital step: solidarity with the workers at Smith & Co.