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Solidarity needed
Racist ICE raids terrorize immigrants
By
John Parker
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
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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.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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