https://themilitant.com/2019/08/17/stop-the-raids-amnesty-for-immigrants-in-the-us/
Stop the raids! Amnesty for immigrants in the US!
Capitalist rulers aim to divide working class
??By Seth Galinsky
Vol. 83/No. 31
August 26, 2019
???We march so no other kid has to go through what we did,??? 18-year-old
Dulce Basurto-Arce said at Aug. 11 protest in Canton, Mississippi. Some
signs read, ???Our parents are not criminals.???
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
???We march so no other kid has to go through what we did,??? 18-year-old
Dulce Basurto-Arce said at Aug. 11 protest in Canton, Mississippi. Some
signs read, ???Our parents are not criminals.???
The arrest of 680 immigrant workers at seven poultry processing plants
in six Mississippi cities Aug. 7 and the threat of their deportation is
aimed at instilling fear among the millions of undocumented workers in
the country and dividing the working class by pitting foreign-born and
U.S.-born workers against each other.
Desiree Hughes was working at the Koch plant in Morton when the raid
started. Heavily armed cops surrounded the plants and helicopters flew
over as if they were seeking dangerous criminals.
Immigration cops let Hughes go when she told them she was born in the
U.S. But two of her friends were arrested. ICE agents ???wouldn???t let me
get their keys, cellphones, speak to them,??? she told the press.
At one point family members and friends gathered outside the plant, many
chanting ???let them go,??? as buses drove by with those who were arrested.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement bragged that this was their largest
immigration raid ever. In 2008, nearly 600 were arrested at Howard
Industries in Laurel, Mississippi.
???You have to try to fight, try to find a lawyer, try to get them out,
try to fight the system,??? Maria Elizabeth Tello, another U.S. citizen
who works at Koch, told the media. ???These people haven???t done anything.
They???re just here to work.???
While many U.S.-born workers, like Hughes, oppose the raids and
deportations, some workers in the plant have been taken in by the
virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric of sections of the U.S. ruling class.
They yelled, ???Take them away??? during the raid, Tello reported.
??The next day supporters of immigrants rights held a press conference
and protest meeting at the NAACP offices in Jackson.
Jason Coker, field coordinator of the Jackson-based Cooperative Baptist
Church, took part in the meeting. He told the Militant?? in an Aug. 12
interview that he went to Canton after the raid there at Peco Foods.
???These people have been here 14, 15, 16 years and all their children
were born and raised in Canton,??? he said. Coker called the raid and
possible deportations ???diabolical.???
Wayne Daniels, president of the Jackson chapter of the NAACP, told the
meeting it will do whatever it can to support the families of those
detained.
The day after the raid, more than 300 of those held had been released,
according to ICE, but had to wear GPS ankle bracelets.
Federal prosecutor Mike Hurst told a press conference that the raids are
equally aimed at undocumented workers and those that employ them ???who
use illegal aliens for competitive advantage.??? But the raids, in fact,
aid the bosses in their efforts to drive down wages by increasing the
fear of undocumented workers that they might be seized by ICE.
Two of the factories raided, a Koch Foods plant in Morton and the Peco
Foods plant in Canton, are organized by the United Food and Commercial
Workers. Union officials, however, did not issue a call for preventing
the deportation of the workers but for their ???right to due process.???
President Donald Trump defended the raids Aug. 9, saying, ???I want people
to know that if they come into the United States illegally, they???re
getting out.???
His policy stands on the shoulders of previous administrations. Until
2008 factory raids were routine. But in the wake of massive protests by
immigrant workers in 2006 ??? including a May 1 strike of more than a
million protesting proposed anti-immigrant legislation ??? almost every
raid was met by protests that included significant numbers of U.S.-born
workers.
After 2008, the U.S. government shifted to so-called silent raids,
firing thousands of workers at plants after ICE conducts immigration
???audits.???
The Trump administration has brought back factory raids. Nonetheless,
the rate of deportations under his administration is still less than
under Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
The U.S. rulers for now have no intention of carrying out mass
deportations. They depend on immigrant labor to compete against their
rivals around the world.
In fact, in the face of what many bosses see as a labor shortage,
Washington has been expanding its ???guest worker??? program by more than
tripling the number of visas since 2017 to more than 250,000 this year.
Under the program, workers get temporary visas that allow them to work
???legally??? in the U.S. But if they quit or are fired, they are subject to
deportation.
???Working people need to overcome the competition and divisions among us
fostered by the bosses and their political system,??? said Candace Wagner,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey General Assembly. ???We
need to demand amnesty for workers without papers and an immediate end
to the raids and deportations.???
In This Issue
Front Page Articles ???Stop the raids! Amnesty for immigrants in the US!
???Protesters in Kashmir say, ???India get out of our country???
???SWP presents working-class candidates, road forward
???Blackjewel miners win solidarity in fight for jobs and stolen wages
??????Workers need to organize unions to fight to change our conditions???
???End censorship of the ???Militant,??? Walmart workers tell Florida prisons
Feature Articles ???Fight to end US embargo of Cuba discussed at Nepal forum
Also In This Issue ???Hong Kong protests demand Beijing grant political rights
???US Steel ???doesn???t care about health of Mon Valley people???
???Layoffs, workers??? debts refute gov???t claims of ???good times???
???Ebola outbreak worsened by wars wracking Congo
???New Puerto Rico governor defends US colonial rule
??????Militant??? reporters head to Puerto Rico
Books of the Month ???Women???s emancipation requires ending domestic servitude
25, 50 and 75 years ago
?? Copyright 2019 The Militant?? -?? 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor -?? New
York, NY 10018?? -?? themilitant@xxxxxxx
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George Carlin
??? Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe,
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??? George Carlin