ICE was clearly attempting to avoid the criticism that has been generated by similar workplace raids after children have been left abandoned in local schools or their homes when their parents were jailed. One of the most brutal effects of these raids is to divide families, some of which have resided in the US for many years.
The search warrants released by federal officials provided for the arrest of 697 individuals.įederal authorities announced that 56 of those detained Monday were subsequently granted supervised release, most of them to make arrangements for the care of their children, who in many cases are US citizens. It was unclear, however, whether the large numbers of ICE agents assembled in Iowa would strike again. On Tuesday the plant reopened, despite having had fully one third of its work force hauled away in shackles. It was launched in the midst of a nationwide crackdown on immigrant workers that has created a reign of terror in many towns and cities across the country. The raid was the biggest ever conducted in Iowa and may be the largest single-facility arrest ever carried out by US immigration authorities. The local press reported that the first of these hearings took place Tuesday, with ten workers, shackled at the waist and ankles, herded single file into a ballroom to face a judge. ‘They were looking at me,’ she said, her voice breaking, ‘There was nothing I could do.’”īecause of the large number of detained immigrants involved, judges and court personnel are being brought in to conduct summary legal proceedings in the fairgrounds. Some asked her to make a phone call for them, others asked her to take their belongings and cell phones home with her. The Gazette reported: “On her way out of the plant, she said, she walked past a group of detainees, many of whom she knew. To be released, workers had to present proof of their legal status, forcing Aleman to call her husband to come to the slaughterhouse with her passport. Violeta Aleman, a worker at the plant and a US citizen since 2003, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette that the armed agents herded the workers into the cafeteria and ordered them to form two lines, “one for US citizens and one for legal residents,” while the undocumented immigrants were told to remain seated. Meanwhile, 76 women were crowded into the Hardin County Jail. Over 300 male employees were taken to a makeshift detention camp at the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in nearby Waterloo, Iowa, where armed guards were posted at the gates. The bulk of them were charged with Social Security fraud for using false numbers-a supposedly criminal offense that results in their forfeiting the contributions deducted from their paychecks-or with the civil offense of lacking proper immigration status.Īfter being interrogated and handcuffed at the plant, the workers were taken away in Homeland Security buses with covered windows. Most of those arrested were from either Mexico or Guatemala, while some others were immigrants from Israel and Ukraine. In all, 16 local, state and federal agencies were involved in the raids, which had been prepared for months. in Postville, Iowa, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the world, while two government helicopters hovered overhead. Heavily armed squads of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, backed by state and local police, stormed Agriprocessors Inc. In one of the largest ever government dragnets against immigrant workers, federal agents swooped down upon a meatpacking plant in northeastern Iowa Monday, rounding up nearly 400 workers.