Shelf Life: Immorally Detained in the Immigration Raids

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More than 6,200 people were arrested for showing up to work in 2008, casualties of an unprecedented surge in raids by immigration officials. The workplace raids made big headlines, which dutifully announced staggering arrest counts in Postville, Iowa (389), Greenville, South Carolina (330), Laurel, Mississippi (592), and other cities and towns.

In the absence of meaningful immigration reform, we’ve arrived at a de facto policy that punishes workers, not the corporate bosses who benefit from their low wages and long hours. Just 135 of last year’s 6,200 workplace arrests were owners, supervisors, or managers, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. What’s more, a raid puts a community through the ringer: People are afraid to leave their homes to go to the grocery store or to their jobs. Children, some who are U.S. citizens, unknowingly sit through math class while their parents are hauled off to a remote detention center. Once-flourishing church congregations wilt and wither.

The raids are the most visible symptom of a dysfunctional system—and, perversely, the government may be stepping them up to push for the policies that corporate America wants. Writing for the Nation (Oct. 6, 2008), David Bacon argues that the dramatic expansion of workplace raids is part of ICE’s strategy to convince Congress to pass “an immigration reform package centered on guest-worker programs,” which by nature tend to stifle workers’ rights by limiting their ability to organize.

In the meantime, ICE dabbles in its own brand of union busting. A Washington Monthly (May-July 2008) investigation found “disturbing evidence to suggest that unscrupulous employers are leaning heavily on ICE” to threaten undocumented workers involved in unionization drives or complaints about working conditions. In These Times (Nov. 2008) notes that the Howard Industries electronics factory in Laurel, Mississippi, site of the largest workplace raid on record, “was in the midst of contentious union contract negotiations” when agents stormed in on August 25. And a May raid on the Postville, Iowa, Agriprocessors plant stopped a unionization drive dead in its tracks, reports Labor Notes (Sept. 2008). Just another example of the ICE acting as a “rogue agency,” a union spokesman told the magazine.

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