The United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) has filed a lawsuit recently against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The lawsuit seeks to protect the fourth Amendment rights of legal immigrants and citizens after a raid on Swift meatpacking plants in six states.

On Dec. 12, 2006, ICE agents, armed with military-style weapons, raided the six plants and separated the Latino workers from the whites. The white workers were generally allowed to move freely throughout the plants, while Latinos were all detained and questioned about their status.

The raids resulted in the detainment of 12,000 Latino workers. Many were legal immigrants or in the process of legalization. The reason for the raid, according to ICE, was identity theft, as a few of the workers without legal status had used stolen Social Security numbers to secure their job.

Out of the 12,000 detained, only 65 people were eventually indicted for identity theft.

The detained workers were denied access to bathrooms and telephones, and others, U.S. citizens and legal residents, have complained about not being told of their constitutional rights. Several female workers have accused ICE of forcing them into strip searches.

“Obviously they (ICE) haven’t checked the Constitution lately. You apprehend individuals in the American justice system,” said Jim Papian, a spokesman for the union, “Would they go into Citibank and do the same thing? The UFCW doesn’t condone illegal activity but the Feds know how to do their job in accordance with the law.”

Many of the workers were sent to detention centers hundreds of miles away from their homes. In many cases, both the adult members of families worked in the same plant, which left hundreds of children stranded at schools or daycares.

“The Department of Homeland Security routinely violates the Constitution and federal law when it conducts work place raids to detect undocumented workers by engaging in mass detentions of all workers without any basis for believing that they have violated any laws,” said Peter Schey, the lead counsel in the suit, in a UFCW press release, “Such mass detentions have long been considered unlawful by the U.S. courts.”

The UFCW argues that these raids were a way of intimidating and terrorizing immigrant workers and a blatant violation of the fourth amendment rights of the legal status workers. The fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.

“In effect, ICE criminalized people for going to work. Essentially they were saying, if you come in the plant gates, you leave your Constitutional rights outside,” Papian said.

According to the union, the meatpacking industry was a source of a middle class living for decades until recently. In spite of long hours and backbreaking work, a meatpacking job guaranteed a comfortable life. Following the anti-union practices of the companies in recent years, the job has lost the strong wages and benefits it used to possess.

The immigrants, who are fleeing poverty in their own countries, are desperate for work in the U.S. But without citizenship and union protections, they are ripe for exploitation and abuse at the hands of the employers, and allegedly federal law enforcement.

“Immigrants come to work, they pay their taxes, and they can’t reap any of the benefits,” said Ima Paz, a senior and international studies major, “And now, they’re being demonized by the government and the media, saying they’re coming here increasing crime and stealing jobs and services when all they want is the American Dream.”

Many anti-immigration supporters argue that the immigrants are in fact responsible for the depressing of wages in general and preventing the meatpacking industry, among others, from providing a decent life for employees.

Many people feel that the mass wave of illegal immigrants is damaging the nation as a whole, taking away services from hardworking American citizens and taxpayers.
“My message to them is, not in two weeks, not in two months, not in two years, never,” said Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) at an anti-immigration rally, “We must be clear that we will not surrender America and we will not turn the United States over to the invaders from south of the border.”

Despite the detainments and alleged discrimination by the Federal government toward the Latino working population and the attitudes of elected officials, the foodstuffs continue to be produced and continue to be consumed by the American public and the demand for immigrant labor is still vital to the industry’s survival.

“The UFCW (through the lawsuit) is telling ICE, ‘You did something illegal, something against the Constitution and that’s wrong,'” Papian said, “You have to take responsibility for that.”