Meatpackers union sues on immigration raids

“I was arrested last Dec. 12 for doing my job,” he told the World in a phone interview. “They took 400 of us into the cafeteria where they searched and handcuffed us. Then they started to interrogate us one by one. They told me that if I was really from Mississippi I should be able to give them driving directions to Mississippi from Iowa. They kept us in there with no access to lawyers, no food or water, and did not even allow us to use the bathroom for 12 hours.”

After U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was finished with the 400 workers in Marshalltown, its agents continued the terror by rounding up 11,600 additional union workers at Swift plants in Hyrum, Utah, Cactus, Texas, Greeley, Colo., Grand Island, Neb., and Worthington, Minn. Every single union member arrested was found to be either a permanent resident or a U.S. citizen, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers, the union that represents the workers.

Without warrants, the Bush administration had arrested all 12,000 on suspicion of being “illegal immigrants.”

Nine months later, the workers and their union held the Sept. 12 press conference to begin their fightback. The UFCW sued federal immigration authorities that day, alleging agents violated the workers’ rights.

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