Vol. 71/No. 36      October 1, 2007

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) filed the suit September 12 in a U.S. district court in Amarillo, Texas. It charges that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents unlawfully detained workers and violated their constitutional rights during the raids.

The UFCW lawsuit asks that ICE carry out any future raids in accordance with “the due process clause and equal protection guarantee” of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit also demands that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE pay damages to the workers.

ICE agents 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, Nebraska; Greeley, Colorado; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minnesota.

UFCW officials said that some workers who weren’t accused of breaking any laws were handcuffed for hours and denied access to phones, bathrooms, legal counsel, and their families.

According to ICE, 274 of the people arrested during the raids were charged with identity theft or other crimes unrelated to violating immigration laws. Nearly all were convicted.

Of those arrested for being in the country illegally, 649 had been removed from the United States as of March 1, the most recent numbers available.

Two Marshalltown Swift workers, Michael Ray Graves and Alicia Rodriguez, are among eight people named in the federal civil rights lawsuit. Union officials expect at least three times that many to testify against the federal agents.

In the lawsuit, Rodriguez said she was held for six hours, and “assaulted and battered by at least one ICE agent.” Union officials told the press that they have photographs of the bruises she suffered during her detention. She told the Des Moines Register that she was never advised of her rights to remain silent or to counsel or permitted access to an attorney.

One of the workers at the Greeley, Colorado, plant, Sergio Rodriguez, told the Associated Press that he was taken from the plant and detained for about 12 hours at a Denver detention center before federal officials found out he was a legal permanent resident. Rodriguez, 46, said he unsuccessfully asked officials six times to use the telephone. He also said he was handcuffed tightly using temporary plastic handcuffs that left marks on his wrists for more than two weeks after his arrest.

“Work is not a crime, and workers do not leave their constitutional rights at the plant gate,” UFCW International President Joseph Hansen said.
 
 
Related articles:
Minnesota meat packers rally to defend union
NLRB calls decertification election
Political activist fighting deportation speaks at N.Y. forum
51 arrested in Iowa immigration raid  
 
 
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