Raids by US immigration officials at Mississippi food processing plants near Jackson resulted in the arrest of about 680 Latin American workers who could not produce valid documents for their stay in the country.
Carthage, Morton, Sebastapol, Springs, Canton, and Pelahatchie were the towns that were hit by the raid. From the Koch Foods Inc. Premises alone, nearly 600 workers were rounded off and filled into three buses – two for men and one for women.
As if that was not enough, the authorities needed two more buses later on to transport the arrested workers. They were taken to a military hangar so that they would be tried for illegal entry into the country.
It was not a very pleasant sight – A spokesman of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that they had search warrants for seven locations around the state and most of them were for these types of food processing companies.
While the workers were being taken away, their friends and family pleaded to let them go but the enforcement officials were in no mood of letting them off.
And even children were seen weeping for their parents. Some of the workers tried to flee but couldn’t make it due to increased police presence.
The officials also seem to be amazed – One of the resident agents of the operation later said that they didn’t expect something of this scale to happen over there.
They also had to set up a place for trial at a hangar in the Mississippi National Guard in Flowood along with 2,000 meals so that the workers could be tried for immigration violations.
It may be mentioned here that Koch Foods of Illinois employs more than 13,000 people and is one of the largest poultry producers of the country with an annual turnover of USD 3.2 billion. Moreover, the factory at Morton produces greater than 7,00,000 tons of poultry feed annually.
The workers were treated like petty criminals as their hands were tied with plastic bands and personal deposits collected.
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