JWJET'S RAPID RESPONSE COALITION RESPONDS TO ICE RAIDS
IN CHATTANOOGA: INTERIM REPORT
April 2008
by Fran Ansley and Dave Linge

Background
Jobs With Justice of East Tennessee has been involved for several years in organizing support for the rights and well-being of low-wage immigrant workers in our area. Back in 2005 we helped create broad-based community support for efforts of Latino workers to organize a union at the Koch Foods poultry processing plant an hour north of Knoxville in Morristown, Tennessee. That effort resulted in a successful election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board in which the workers won the right to be represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW), and the election was followed by a second significant victory when the company and the union signed a collective bargaining agreement in 2006. Since that time, JWJET has continued to look for ways that we could support efforts of immigrant workers to defend their rights and to enforce U.S. labor standards. We have also tried to find opportunities to promote better understanding and cooperation between native-born workers and immigrant newcomers

Creating Rapid Response Capacity
Not long after our work with UFCW on the Koch Foods campaign, JWJET members heard with alarm the reports about raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Swift Food plants across the country. We also heard about a raid at a garment factory in New Bedford, others in trailer parks near Smithfield's giant plant in Tarheel, North Carolina, and another in south Georgia where the doors of people's homes were broken down as local law enforcement attempted to make political hay with anti-immigrant constituents. In all these cases, whatever their differences, it seemed clear to us that raids brought fear and chaos in their wake for the immigrant community. Meanwhile for the native-born community, such raids created high-profile media moments that presented prime opportunities for education and mis-education alike.

In this atmosphere, JWJET decided that those of us interested in labor and human rights in East Tennessee should take steps to get prepared in the event a raid of this kind were to happen in our area. Since late fall 2007, we have been working in collaboration with the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, Highlander Research & Education Center, Interfaith Worker Justice and a number of other interested groups and individuals to create what we are calling a Rapid Response Coalition (RRC). We are trying to build our capacity to mount an effective and coordinated response in the event of immigration raids in workplaces or communities in East Tennessee.

Our immediate goals are to prepare immigrants and their allies ahead of time to better meet the stress of immigration enforcement actions, to reduce separation and other trauma for affected children and families, to protect the rights and monitor the treatment of people detained by the authorities, and also to educate the public about the root causes of mass labor migration and about the deep reform of our labor laws and immigration laws that will be necessary in order to address the 'immigration problem' in a meaningful way. The longer-term goal is to help build a movement for labor and human rights that is broad enough and strong enough to win these deep reforms.

Crisis in Chattanooga
Our Rapid Response Coalition recently had its first chance to be an up-close witness to the effects of a workplace immigration raid. Early on Wednesday, April 16, we were informed that an ICE raid was being carried out at the Pilgrim's Pride poultry processing facilities in Chattanooga, a couple of hours southwest of our office in Knoxville. Seven members of RRC left immediately for Chattanooga. Our delegation represented people active not only in JWJET but also the Glenmary Commission on Justice, the Latino Ministry of the Knoxville District of the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church, El Puente, St. James Episcopal Peace Fellowship, and the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.

Once in Chattanooga, we made the acquaintance of a lively network of local groups involved with the Latino community there and in nearby Dalton, Georgia. They had gathered to share information and make plans, and they welcomed us into an impromptu council that included service providers, immigrants' rights advocates, and staff members of the United Steelworkers, which represents the workers at Pilgrim's Pride in Chattanooga. We were told that some of those arrested would face deportation for non-criminal, 'administrative' charges of entering the country illegally or not having valid work visas, while others would face felony charges for using forged or incorrect documents (a subject we discuss in more detail below). In the latter cases, the government would seek their criminal conviction in federal court. We were also told that the impact on local families was likely to be great. Based on past experience with raids, people were especially concerned about the potential impact on children.

We sat up that night into the wee hours planning how to respond to the crisis and working to organize assistance to the families of the almost 150 immigrant workers who were believed to have been detained earlier that day. A huge problem facing the group was our inability to find out where the detainees had been taken. It later became clear that information that had been given out by ICE up to that point was incomplete or at times misleading. In any case, without knowing where in the city, state, or country the Pilgrim's Pride detainees were confined, and without knowing the names of those in custody, we were not even in a position to start blind calls to detention facilities. The union had been told it would soon receive from the company a list of those detained, but it was not in hand that night, and as things turned out, no such list was turned over, even as the week drew to a close.

This black-out by the authorities is apparently not unusual in such cases, but we learned how arbitrary and oppressive it could be. Families were unable to confirm that loved ones were well or that their medical needs were being met. Detainees were deprived of information about the welfare of families left behind. We were also hampered in our efforts to help detainees get access to legal advice. We felt quite sure that many in detention were unaware of their rights under U.S. law, and we suspected that some people were being pressured to make important decisions under great stress, without key information, and in unwarranted isolation.

Without knowledge of the names of detainees and their whereabouts, however, our options were limited. We had heard rumors of many different places where the workers might be sent -- some of them a discouragingly long way from Chattanooga, some in remote rural locations. We were also warned by veteran lawyers that ICE detainees in this situation can be shifted often and rapidly without notice. It seemed unwise to spend time trying to line up contingent legal support in all the rumored or suspected locations that our detainees might land or pass through.

There were other barriers to finding legal help for the detainees as well as for the many families that were likely to face legal questions of their own about matters like child custody and property. Lawyers who know immigration law in our region are scarce, and lawyers with experience in deportation defense of low-wage workers are even scarcer. Likewise, questions of family law or property law that might be relatively simple under ordinary circumstances, can be greatly complicated if they intersect with questions of immigration status and foreign nationality. Immigrants' rights organizations around the country are presently striving to help local communities develop lay knowledge relevant to the legal questions that come up in raid situations, and that is tremendously valuable work. But lawyers are still a crucial component of any effort to protect the rights of people in detention, and lawyers are often still needed to help family members make informed decisions about children and property.

By being in Chattanooga in the immediate aftermath of the raid at Pilgrim's Pride we felt we got an advanced tutorial on the subject of a progressive community response to immigration raids. We saw how difficult it can be for people in a community to create the emergency networks and communication channels that are needed under these sudden high-stakes circumstances. For instance, families were often left without money or resources as their breadwinners were taken to prison. Many service providers, educators, and clergy were concerned about meeting the needs of families and were pitching in to help. In fact, there were people in the city government in Chattanooga who showed a praiseworthy concern that whatever the situation with the detainees themselves, families and children should not be hurt. But the circumstances of low-wage immigrant life and work in places like Chattanooga and Dalton make it difficult to get out the word about how people can access resources or good information. Even when word is spread, immigrant families are understandably wary about who they can trust or where they can turn without endangering themselves and their children even further.

At this writing a few days after the Pilgrim's Pride raid, its consequences are not yet clear. Events are still unfolding, families are still trying to locate loved ones, advocates are still trying to get detainees connected with legal advice, and ICE has yet to say exactly how many people were arrested and what the charges will be. Advocates and service providers in Chattanooga are still in the early phases of assessing the damage. What lessons most people will draw from the raids about immigration and labor policy are not yet clear. Certainly immigrant workers in Chattanooga and elsewhere in the state were taught a vivid lesson about their vulnerability and the power of the company working in concert with government agents to utterly disrupt their lives and drain their resources.

Here in Knoxville, we know much of the work still lies ahead. We hope we can continue to support efforts in Chattanooga to mobilize a response that protects the rights of immigrants, advances the ability of all workers to defend themselves, and educates the broader community about justice in today's global economy. We also hope this experience can help us be better prepared if there is another raid in East Tennessee. At this preliminary point, we would like to offer at least a few observations about the actions of ICE and Pilgrim's Pride.

We noticed several things about the way we understand ICE conducted the operation. First, they used new procedures that were developed by the agency in response to vigorous protests about the callous and careless way ICE agents have swept through families and communities in the past. These procedures are supposed to avoid leaving children without proper care or subjecting individuals with serious health and other needs to the hardships of detention. ICE has apparently instituted a protocol in which detainees are interviewed by 'health services' teams to identify those who are primary care givers of minor children or have other special needs. Those people (some 22 of those taken in this case) were released back into the community on their own recognizance. ICE is still pursuing deportation for them, and all now sport ankle bracelets pending their court appearance, but at least they were allowed to return home to care for their children, and perhaps they can now make calmer and more reasoned decisions about their options for the future. For some of us it was galling to hear ICE officials talk about how much the agency's leaders are concerned for the welfare of immigrant children. Nevertheless, it was gratifying to know that vigorous advocacy by the immigrants' rights movement has won this reform, that 22 immigrant workers could return to their homes at least for now, and that some Chattanooga children will be less severely hurt than otherwise might have been the case.

A second noteworthy feature of the raid was how ICE framed the matter for the media. The immigrants' rights movement has won significant public relations victories in the past when ICE agents bullied and battered their way through communities. The authorities have not always been able to convince the American public that herding low-wage workers from the factory floor into paddy wagons, or separating young mothers from their breast-feeding babies, has any rational relationship to promoting national security. Today, it appears that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are putting great stress on 'identity theft' as the evil they are working to eliminate when they trick workers into a so-called safety meeting and then have a phalanx of agents sweep in for the catch. When interviewed about the Pilgrim's Pride raids B which took place not only in Chattanooga, but at a number of other locations around the country B ICE officials stressed that they were going after thieves who victimized innocent Americans by stealing their documents. They referred repeatedly to the harms caused by these immigrants to 'identity theft victims,' thus playing on the legitimate fear many people now have about theft of their identity.

Those of us witnessing the situation in Chattanooga felt strongly that ICE's banner of Aidentity theft' was misleading. Because of the requirements of U.S. immigration law, all job applicants must present employers with a social security number in order to be hired. Undocumented immigrants present false social security numbers in order to clear this hurdle. Certainly in some cases, this number will belong to another living person, and in some smaller number of cases, that person may suffer a negative consequence if that number ends up getting used for some other purpose as well. (For instance, ICE has worked hard to find and showcase people whose credit has suffered, or who were thought to have been guilty of a driving violation that in fact was not their own.) These problems do exist and should not be ignored. But in the vast majority of cases, the primary consequence of low-wage immigrants' use of false numbers is that our public treasury is accumulating vast sums of money withheld from the meager paychecks of undocumented workers who will never be able to claim the benefit of the taxes they paid in someone else's name.

The Department of Homeland Security should be concerning itself with protecting the nation and its people from real threats to our safety. It is absurd for ICE to depict low-wage poultry workers from Mexico and Guatemala as the equivalent of those who steal credit cards to go on a buying spree or hack into bank accounts to appropriate the funds of others. Besides, ICE should know better. The agency is in a position to understand all too well how thoroughly broken the immigration system really is. Its officials should be helping to push for decent reform, not staging arbitrary raids for show, raids in which those least powerful and most vulnerable are made to pay the price for the policy blunders, the greed, and the hypocrisy of others.

Pilgrim's Pride, one of the nation's largest poultry processors, has been widely criticized in recent years for its alleged company-wide practice of hiring undocumented workers in order to take advantage of their vulnerability. Immigrant workers, especially those without proper documentation, are far less likely than native-born workers to complain about company violations of worker rights. Throughout the poultry and meat-packing industries, the recent transition to immigrant labor has gone hand-in-hand with lowered wages, degraded working conditions, increased violations of health and safety standards, and decreased enforcement of labor law. But it is hardly the immigrants themselves who are to blame.

Another noteworthy feature of the raid is that both ICE officials and the company itself stressed in their public statements that the company knew about the raid in advance and had fully cooperated. They indicated that no charges would be brought against the company, an outcome in accord with the 'safe harbor' provisions announced earlier by ICE in connection with its problem-plagued computer verification system, currently the subject of a federal court injunction because of the many flaws and inaccuracies in the massive computer data on which it is based. Worker rights advocates wondered if the company had gotten itself off the hook by, in effect, turning 'state's evidence' and making immigrant workers pay the price. Of the approximately 1,350 workers at the Chattanooga plants, some eighty-five percent are Latino immigrants.

Those reflections on ICE and Pilgrim's Pride will end our report for now. We will try to provide updates in the future. We in the RRC send thanks and best wishes to the fine folks we met in Chattanooga, including: St. Andrew's Center, La Paz de Dios, the Holston United Methodist Federal Credit Union, and the United Steelworkers in Chattanooga; and the Coalicin de Lideres Latinos in Dalton, Georgia. We are also grateful to other groups that have come forward to lend a hand with the situation as it is now unfolding, including the ACLU of Tennessee, Justice for Our Neighbors, and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition in Nashville; the Alterna Community in LaGrange, Georgia; and several regional and national groups that have provided invaluable support and informal advice, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and the Southern Poverty Law Center.