Union: Someone should stand up for detained workers
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas, says agents unlawfully detained workers and violated their constitutional rights during raids at six JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plants. The lawsuit also demands that the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pay damages to the workers.
ICE officials investigating identity theft arrested 1,297 workers at the plants, but union officials have said more than 12,000 workers were detained against their will during the operation. The plants raided were in Cactus, Texas; Grand Island, Neb.; Greeley, Colo.; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn.
Union president Joseph Hansen said workers who weren’t accused of breaking any laws were handcuffed and held for hours and denied access to phones, bathrooms, legal counsel and their families.
What happened to the Swift workers and the workers in other plants that Hansen did not name ‘‘is absolutely an outrage,’’ he said Tuesday.
‘‘If we don’t stand up for workers when this happens, who the hell will? I just think that this is not only a union obligation, it’s absolutely the right thing to do,’’ Hansen said.
According to ICE, 274 of the people arrested during the raids were charged with identity theft or other crimes unrelated to violating immigration laws. Almost all 274 were convicted, ICE spokesman Tim Counts said Tuesday.
Of those arrested for being in the country illegally, 649 had been removed from the United States as of March 1, according to the most recent numbers available. Those arrested were from Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Peru.
Eight workers and the union are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, but union officials expect at least three times that many to testify against federal agents. In addition to stopping the raids, the lawsuit seeks incidental damages for workers who say their rights were violated, citing the Immigration and Nationality Act and the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
