GateHouse Media
June 22, 2018
Crying toddlers being snatched from their parents’ arms and
images of young people huddled behind fences in detention centers exploded into
a political crisis for President Donald Trump and Congress, as they sat idle
while people of every persuasion denounced the practice of separating immigrant
children from their families.
Caving under mounting political pressure, President Trump
signed an executive order ending the separation of families at the border,
despite administration officials’ insistence that only Congress could resolve
the situation.
The anguish doesn’t stop at the border. Two weeks ago, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 114 workers at a gardening
company in Ohio. In April, ICE raided a meatpacking plant in rural Tennessee
and arrested 97 immigrants. In January, ICE raided dozens of 7-Eleven stores
nationwide, adding to the mounting arrests.
This week, ICE arrested 146 immigrants at a meat-processing
plant in Northern Ohio. ICE said a year-long investigation into Fresh Mark
revealed that the company may have knowingly hired undocumented workers.
“Unlawful employment is one of the key magnets drawing
illegal aliens across our borders,” Steve Francis, a special agent in charge
for the Homeland Security Investigations, said in a statement obtained by the
Washington Post. “Businesses who knowingly harbor and hire illegal aliens as a
business model must be held accountable for their action.”
Although ICE released several suspects for “humanitarian
concerns, such as health or family considerations,” the agency said most of the
undocumented workers “will be detained in facilities in Michigan and Ohio while
awaiting removal proceedings.”
The tragic impact of the investigation is readily apparent.
Families separated, children afraid to go home, parents in fear of further
arrests. Those left behind unable to support themselves.
However, that is only the initial impact and it is concentrated
on those directly attached to the arrests. In time, those indirectly connected
will begin to feel the pain of these raids.
Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate Professor of Latin American
Studies and Geography at the University of Arizona, conducted research in
Massachusetts, Iowa, and South Carolina during the President George W. Bush
era. She found that large-scale raids are local disasters, even for those not
directly affected.
In an article first published in The Conversation, she cited
the impact of mass immigration arrests.
Postville, Iowa, suffered immensely after an ICE raid on a
company known as Agriprocessors. The company nearly collapsed after losing its
workforce, devastating the small town’s economy. The plant stopped paying
property taxes, real estate values plummeted, and local restaurants and other
businesses closed.
To stay in business, Agriprocessors hired a string of
temporary legal workers, mostly young, single men, including early release
prisoners, and homeless people. The sense of instability and unease in the
town, made inhabitants yearn for the undocumented workers and their families.
Oglesby wrote about an ICE raid in 2007, at the Michael
Bianco factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The plant made backpacks for the
Pentagon. Six hundred ICE agents arrested 361 people causing economic hardship
throughout the region.
In 2008, ICE raided the House of Raeford poultry plant on
the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina, arresting more than 300 workers.
A House of Raeford manager told the Charlotte Observer that
90 percent of his 800-person plant is Latino and turnover exceeds 100 percent a
year.
It is unclear how many illegal immigrants work in the
labor-intensive, unskilled poultry industry, reported the Observer. One 2006
study estimated more than a quarter of meat-processing workers nationwide were
undocumented.
The residual effect of an immigration raid not only removes
the illegal workers from their jobs but also the law abiding legal immigrants
and the able-bodied red blooded American citizens, as well.
Postville lost one-third of its population after the 2007
raid, as undocumented workers who evaded arrest fled. Oglesby described how
high school students in Postville made a photo banner to remember friends whose
desks were suddenly empty.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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