Immigration agents raided a workplace in a Tennessee town. The town fought back
Immigration agents descended on a Tennessee town. Almost 100 people were rounded up, tearing apart families and a community
One morning in April, federal immigration agents swept into a meat packing plant in this northeastern Tennessee manufacturing town, launching one of the biggest workplace raids since U.S. President Donald Trump took office with a pledge to crack down on illegal immigration.
Dozens of workers fled, some wedging themselves between beef carcasses or crouching under bloody butcher tables. About 100 workers, including at least one American citizen, were rounded up — every Latino employee at the plant, it turned out, save a man who had hidden in a freezer.
The raid occurred in a state that is on the raw front lines of the immigration debate. Trump won 61 per cent of the vote in Tennessee, and continues to enjoy wide popularity. The state’s rapidly growing immigrant population, now estimated to total more than 320,000, has become a favourite target of the Republican-controlled legislature.
In 2017, Tennessee lawmakers passed the nation’s first law requiring stiffer sentences for defendants who are in the country illegally. In April, they passed a law requiring police to help enforce immigration laws and making it illegal for local governments to adopt so-called sanctuary policies.
Morristown, a town of 30,000 northeast of Knoxville, has drawn migrant workers from Latin America since the early 1990s, when they first came to work on the region’s abundant tomato farms. As stepped-up security has made going back and forth across the border more difficult, many of these families have settled into the community, enrolled their kids in school, and joined churches where they have baptized their American-born children.
The day Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the Southeastern Provision plant outside the city and sent dozens of workers to out-ofstate detention centres was the day people in Morristown began to ask questions many hadn’t thought through before — to the federal government, to the police, to their church leaders, to each other. Donations of food, clothing and toys for families of the workers streamed in at such volume there was a traffic jam to get into the parking lot of a church. Schoolteachers cried as they tried to comfort students whose parents were suddenly gone. There was standing room only at a prayer vigil that drew about 1,000 people to a school gym.
Here, based on interviews with dozens of workers and townspeople, and in their own words (some edited for length and clarity), is how it happened.
Angela Smith, 42, a longtime resident of the area: My first thought was one of sorrow. Oh my goodness, this is going to hurt so many people in the community. It’s going to hurt their kids, our kids. It’s going to have a ripple effect throughout the entire community because these people are part of Morristown. Immediately, I drive over to the parish centre to see what I can do to help. I had to park way at the end because it was so packed. I go in, I said, I’m an attorney, how can I help?
The April 5 operation signalled a return to the high-profile immigration raids that last happened during the presidency of George W. Bush. President Barack Obama’s chief workplace enforcement tactic was to conduct payroll audits and impose fines on businesses found to employ unauthorized workers. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has vowed to quintuple work site enforcement.
All 97 workers taken into custody in the Tennessee raid now face deportation, though several have been released pending hearings. Up to 160 U.S.-born children have a parent who could soon be ordered to leave the country; many families are relying on handouts.
Nataly Luna, 12, whose father was detained: My mom had told us one day it could happen, that one day one of them would be taken. The hardest thing is talking about it.
After the raid, immigrant advocates organized a peace march, and Nataly carried a sign bearing the image of her father, a native of Mexico who had been working in the United States without papers for 20 years before he was taken into custody at the meat plant that day. The town
Nestled between two mountain ranges and flanked by two large lakes, Morristown is the county seat and industrial hub of Hamblen County, where most of the plant workers’ families reside.
The Latinos who arrived here, especially those who came after the late 1990s, were part of a swelling wave of migrants bypassing traditional gateway states like California and Texas to seek opportunity in the fast-growing South. Word reached their villages that jobs were plentiful. More recently, Tennessee has been struggling with a meth and opioid epidemic. As drug abuse sidelined many working-age American men and women, local employers have increasingly turned to immigrants.
These days, Latinos make up about 11 per cent of Hamblen County’s population and account for one of every four students in its public schools. Immigrants toil in meat, poultry and canning plants, as well as at automotive parts, plastics and other factories that dot the area.
Marshall Ramsey, president of the Morristown Area Chamber of Commerce: We don’t get into immigration issues. As long as they are pulling their weight as workers, that is what we appreciate. We’re very proud of our diverse heritage. My wife is actually a seventhgrade schoolteacher here in town and about 50 per cent of her class is Hispanic. She raves about parent-teacher conferences. The parents show up. The kids know that the parents have high expectations of them. The parents feel like the kids have been given an opportunity.
Not everyone in town has been welcoming, though. One theme many expressed: The workers were lawbreakers who got caught. In the parking lot of the local Walmart, where several people were talking about the raid at the meat plant, one woman said it could open up employment opportunities. Carol Jones, a retired nursing home worker: Send them back. There will be jobs for Americans, if they get off their butts.
Charles Atkinson, a retired truck driver: You can’t get no Americans to work on the farm or nothing. Mexicans get right in there and do the work. The plant
Unauthorized workers from Mexico and Guatemala formed the backbone of the workforce at Southeastern Provision, located16 kilometres north of Morristown. They killed, skinned, decapitated and cut up cattle whose parts were used for, among other things, oxtail soup and a cured meat snack exported to Africa. Immigrants were critical to the family-owned abattoir’s growth over the last decade.
Many of those affected by the raid, fearing further action from the authorities, spoke on the condition that only their first names be used.
Elisabeth, 38, whose husband was detained in the raid: He worked there for nine years. When he started, there were only around 10 people. The plant expanded thanks to the Hispanics. It was hard work. He would come home tired and say, ‘We killed 300 cows today.’ In the early years, they’d kill only15 cows a day. A few months ago, the workers were talking about striking for better pay and work conditions.
With the $11.50 (U.S.) hourly wage that her husband, Tomas, made at the plant and the $9 she earns as a seamstress, Elisabeth and her family could afford the $700 rent for a house big enough to accommodate their six children, three from her previous marriage, and live a relatively stable life, she said. To be sure, the work was heavy, gory and low-paying. Day after day, the workers endured the smell of manure, blood and flesh. But Southeastern Provision offered a major advantage over other businesses: The management, several workers said, didn’t seem to expect them to bother with fake work authorization documents.
Federal authorities said there was evidence that the company had run afoul of the law.
In an affidavit, the Internal Revenue Service said the company had withdrawn millions of dollars in cash and told bank employees the money was needed to pay “Hispanics” — suggesting that the company knew it was hiring unauthorized workers and evaded payment of federal employment taxes.
An informant hired at the plant in 2017 told investigators that workers felt they couldn’t complain about poor working conditions because of their immigration status. Some had to work unpaid overtime, the informant reported. He said he saw others required to work with “extremely harsh” chemicals without protective eyewear.
Stephanie Teatro, coexecutive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition: So far, it has been the workers who have borne all the consequences of the employer’s violations. ICE could have decided to audit this employer, and forced him to pay fines and correct his practices. Instead they conducted a raid that left over 160 children without a parent from one day to the next.
No charges have been filed against the company. A federal criminal investigation is ongoing, said Bryan Cox, an ICE spokesman. The owner, James Brantley, said he couldn’t talk about the case. His lawyer, Norman McKellar, also declined to comment. The raid
It was just after 9 a.m., about two hours after more than100 workers had arrived for the 7 a.m. shift, when shouts of “inmigracion, inmigracion” rang out across the plant. Alma went numb. In the cutting line, another worker, Raymunda, put down the butcher’s knife she was holding and raced toward an exit. So did dozens of others, their blood-smeared smocks and protective aprons weighing them down. They soon realized that ICE agents, backed by state law enforcement, blocked every door.
Agents cornered and grabbed workers, sometimes barking “Calma!” in Spanish to those who cried and screamed. Some workers reported that agents pointed guns at them to stop them from fleeing.
Raymunda: We didn’t come here to kill or to steal. We came here purely to work. I have a sister and we were both picked up at the same time.
Within minutes, all the Latinos at the plant were rounded up, including at least one American citizen and several other people who had legal authorization to work. One of the workers who is an American citizen: An officer with an ICE vest on grabbed me by my shoulder. He grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. I told him he was hurting me and he told me to shut up. Basically, all the Hispanics, because of their colour, were handcuffed. The white people just stood there.
In groups of about a dozen, according to several workers interviewed, Latinos were placed mainly in plastic handcuffs, escorted to white vans with tinted windows and transported to a National Guard Armory.
Veronica Galvan, 29, a well-known figure in the Latino community: I started getting message after message. “Is immigration in town? Do you know?” I started going through my news feed. I need to find out, especially because my mom works at one of these plants. I pull up to the armoury. All these text messages were coming. “Are you there? Are you there?”
Galvan described how she arrived to a crowd amassed behind yellow police tape surrounding the armoury, as state troopers stood guard. Relatives of plant workers were crying and obsessively checking their cellphones for news. Inside, workers said they waited hours to be interviewed and fingerprinted by agents, a process delayed by computer glitches.
By late afternoon, agents had released a handful of people, mainly those in frail health or who had proved they had the legal right to work in the United States.
Angela Kanipe, a third-grade teacher and bus driver: Two non-Hispanic kids on the bus were having a conversation about how they were worried about their friends. And they were talking about how God was going to be mad because he doesn’t want you to be mean to people. Why would someone take away someone’s parents? When I think about it, it just breaks my heart. It’s hard not to cry.
Families were gathering in an elementary school across from the armoury. By nightfall, about 100 people, including teachers, clergy, lawyers and other community members had assembled. Volunteers distributed pizza, tamales and drinks.
Jeff Perry, superintendent of Hamblen County Schools: I got a call from some of our staff members that they had detained several of the parents at the armoury. So we had several hundred people beside the road of the armoury. As the numbers grew, the situation became more and more dangerous. We provided access to a school facility to keep folks safe. A lot of our administrators were there, several of our principals there to comfort kids.
As the night wore on, about 30 of the detainees, including Raymunda, were gradually released. A little after 1 a.m., the agents announced that no one else would be let go. Workers still in detention — 54 in all — were put on buses to Alabama and then Louisiana. The church
St. Patrick Catholic Church’s parish centre was converted into a crisis response centre. All day, people arrived with food, clothing, toys and supplies for the affected families. At one point, six trucks waited to unload donations.
Volunteers, who showed up by the dozens, received colour-coded tags: Yellow for teachers, white for lawyers and pink for general helpers, who prepared meals in the kitchen, packed grocery bags and performed other tasks.
Bleary-eyed immigrants packed the main room. In smaller rooms, teachers entertained children with stories while their parents received legal services.
Colleen Jacobs, a youth ministry co-ordinator: There was definitely crying, but you could tell you were in a place of people of faith. You still felt love and connection, more than you felt sadness and despair.
Hundreds of children missed school after the raid. On the evening of April 7, about 120 teachers and school staff packed the church’s basement to talk about how to assist students. On a poster board, they scrawled their feelings. “I cried Thursday night wondering which of my students were without parents that night,” one teacher wrote. “I feel helpless,” wrote another.
Jordyn Horner, a school librarian, on Facebook: These past two days have been the hardest of my career and I wasn’t prepared. Finding ways to com- fort your students who are in tears, upset, angry and afraid is nearly impossible.
On Monday, three days after the raid, a prayer vigil at Hillcrest Elementary School drew nearly1,000 people who sat in the bleachers, in folding chairs on the court and, when the chairs ran out, they stood along the walls. A 16-year-old named Ramon stood up to speak. Ramon: I want to see my mother again. My mother is the only person I have. I live alone now.
Two nights later, St. Patrick Church’s centre still brimmed with activity as immigrants and supporters gathered to make posters and banners for a procession through downtown Morristown. Smith, the longtime resident, brought her 8-year-old daughter, Laurel, figuring it was an important lesson. The procession
Aweek after the raid, about 300 people took to Morristown’s downtown streets in the evening to draw attention to the plight of the families. Some people, like Colin Loring and his partner, Margaret Durgin, drove for an hour to participate.
“We are here to support our immigrant neighbours. The system needs to be fixed,” said Loring, who is retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Durgin arrived with a $540 check to help the immigrants.
Before setting out, a nun led the marchers, who wore white and clutched white flowers, in prayer. “We are here to send a message of love and unity,” they chanted before heading down Main Street. Along the way, a driver shouted an expletive at the crowd from inside his brown truck and sped off.
Pulling to the front of the line was Raymunda, her youngest children, Johnny, 15, and Brittany, 7, by her side. She said she had a notice to appear in court for deportation proceedings.
Raymunda: The truth is, we don’t know what is going to happen next. We have fear, a lot of fear. What else can I say? My husband is incredibly scared. My greatest fear in the world is to have to leave my children.