rolling US immigration reform thread for 2013 and beyond

In the wake of the largest-ever immigration raid in a single state, child welfare services were left grappling with children who came home from school to find their parents had been arrested at one of the seven Mississippi food processing plants targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday.

The agency said it took some precautions to ease the burden on families, but as one ICE official said, “We are a law enforcement agency, not a social services agency.” The official said that any advance notice to welfare agencies or schools could have alerted undocumented immigrants to the raid and botched the operation.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/what-ice-did-did-not-do-kids-left-behind-mississippi-n1040776

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/09/poultry-industry-recruited-them-now-ice-raids-are-devastating-their-communities/?fbclid=IwAR2cqCxa0htZvqtMRGUepccZKhKkqj9sDOcLbJ3bVljzhYI7k2iN2uqyTE0

In a nutshell:

1) African American workers start to organize against bad conditions and low pay
2) poultry plants replace them with immigrant workers who they obviously know are going to be mostly undocumented -- in fact, they go out of their way to encourage these workers to bring their family and friends, some of whom probably even cross the border for the jobs
3) eventually these immigrant workers also start to complaint, protest, raise issues about conditions
4) suddenly, whaddyaknow mass raids
5) no evidence that "American" workers benefit, jobs will probably eventually be filled with undocumented immigrants again, who will now be more circumspect about complaining (or else Trump will create some kind of bullshit "guest worker" program to fill them)

Here's acting USCIS director Ken Cuccinelli saying on NPR this morning that the Statue of Liberty plaque should be changed to read, "give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge." pic.twitter.com/q8OoNn3k6r

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2019

In keeping with the values of the French Republic, of course.

As the meeting ended, Miller held up his hand to make a final comment. “I didn’t mean to come across as harsh,” he said. His voice dropped. “It’s just that this is all I care about. I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life.” https://t.co/TA6oFlZ1cq

— Grace Panetta (@grace_panetta) February 21, 2020

ProPublica: ICE Guards “Systematically” Sexually Assault Detainees in an El Paso Detention Center, Lawyers Say

The allegations, detailed in a filing first obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, maintain that guards systematically assaulted at least three people in a facility overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — often in areas of the detention center not visible to security cameras. The guards told victims that no one would believe them because footage did not exist and the harassment involved officers as high-ranking as a lieutenant.