NEWS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Human Rights Violations in the Largest Immigration Raid in U.S. History
continue unchecked

CONTACT:
Elizabeth Barnhill, Executive Director
Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Tel 515.244.7424
director@iowacasa.org
or
Kathryn Xian, Executive Director
The Safe Zone Foundation
Tel & Fax 808.599.3931
iinfo@worldsafezone.org

An immigration raid on December 12th carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has resulted in the prohibition of due process, egregious human rights violations, racial profiling and the separation of children from their parents.

1,282 people, mostly of Mexican decent, were rounded up and taken away from their workplaces in buses for interrogation and deportation. They worked for U.S. company Swift & Co. beef plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, Marshalltown, Iowa, and four other states. Only 65 of the 1,282 arrested were charged criminally. During their incarceration, no one could access any of these people, no family, no legal counsel, not even clergy.

Many arrests were made by racial profiling and threats of arrest were given to Latino-Americans who endeavored to help notify the immigrants of their rights. The children of those incarcerated may eventually face foster care and the chance that they will not see their parents again.

1100 of the 8000 students who are in the Grand Island, Nebraska school system have parents who work at Swift. 261 were arrested for identity theft, although only 1 was criminally charged. In the meantime, children were without parental care and teachers volunteered their time and homes to help care for the children until more could be learned about their incarceration.

Those targeted for the raid are not terrorists or any other kind of political dissident. They are people born into poverty seeking a better life for themselves and their families in the U.S., like the kind of people who founded this country just a few hundred years ago.

Regardless of that commonality, these immigrants were treated like animals, separated from their children, racially discriminated against, deported or forced to flee with no money to pay rent, eat, or make a phone call for help.

Swift & Co. has more than $9 billion in annual sales and is the world’s second-largest processor of fresh beef and pork. The company’s headquarters is located in Greeley, Colorado. Six Swift facilities were targeted in “Operation Wagon Train,” a nation-wide investigation involving undocumented immigrants using stolen Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens to gain employment.

However, no investigations for the federal crime of trafficking aliens into the U.S. for cheap labor was conducted, nor how Swift accrued such significant numbers of illegal immigrants to employ.

Social service workers still do not know the whereabouts of those still detained.

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