More Than 1,200 Arrested in Six-State Immigration Raid

At least 1,280 workers have been arrested in a series of immigration raids targeting meatpacking plants owned by the company Swift. The raids took place in Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Iowa and Minnesota It marks the largest sweep of its kind ever against a single company.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff justified the raids saying many of the detained men and women were using false or stolen identities.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has filed an emergency lawsuit in an effort to release the workers who they say were illegally detained and are being held without access to legal counsel. In Iowa, immigration lawyers have accused the federal government of holding the arrested workers at the military site Camp Dodge near Des Moines.

* Mariano Espinoza, executive director of the Minnesota Immigration Freedom Network. The group is working with community in Worthington, Minnesota.
* Sylvia Martinez, a leader of the community group Latinos Unidos in Greeley Colorado.
* Kim Salinas, an immigration rights attorney who was inside an immigration detention center yesterday trying to meet with some of the detained workers.
* Jim Papian, spokesperson the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

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