The federal government continues to hold hundreds of detained workers from Tuesday’s six-state “Operation Wagon Train” raid on Swift meatpacking plants, and the fallout continues.
In Iowa, governor and presidential hopeful Tom Vilsack (D) expressed displeasure with the Department of Homeland Security, which has opted to bar access to detainees by family members or lawyers. DHS is changing its policy, Vilsack’s spokeswoman said.
The operation — which was the largest federal immigration raid in U.S. history — may not have gotten much play in the national media, but made a profound impression on the communities which lost hundreds of members overnight. “The sight of federal agents raiding the local packinghouse is nothing new. In fact, it’s happened several times over the past 15 years,” reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune of the Worthington, Minn. raid. “But never quite like this… .
“Never before had so many workers — 230 — been detained or arrested. Never before had the fallout of the raid created so much fear and distrust among so many.”
In Iowa, one Latina teen said she thought the raids had an effect on her community as profound as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “When 9/11 came along, everyone remembered it,” said Isis Diaz, a 14-year-old freshman. “I think everyone will remember this.”
DHS insists it hasn’t arrested a single person who was working legally in the U.S. But we’ve been hearing otherwise. A memo yesterday prepared by one Minnesota lawyer following the Worthington raid said at least one U.S. citizen had been swept up and was being detained. And Priscilla Falcon, a professor at the University of Northern Colorado, told me yesterday afternoon that she knew of students whose parents were legal U.S. residents, but were nonetheless detained after the Greeley, Colo. raid, which netted over 260 arrests total.