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Immigrant Raids Must Stop
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As members of Congress, we have traveled to remote corners of the world and had our eyes opened to some of the worst human suffering imaginable -- abject poverty, meager wages, poor working conditions, paltry access to legal counsel and a jarring lack of fairness in the courts.
We never imagined that we would witness the same injustices in a small American town just a five-hour drive from Chicago.
During a visit to Postville, Iowa, last weekend, site of the May 12 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, we saw firsthand how a broken Immigration system devastates a small town.
Mothers bound to electronic bracelets were allowed neither to work nor to return to their home countries, leaving them without recourse to pay rent or feed their children. Wives and children -- many of them U.S. citizens -- were left to wonder where their husbands and fathers had been taken, or where they would go next. To this day, more than half of the wives do not know where their husbands are.
Meanwhile, a 16-year-old boy spoke of working 17-hour shifts, six days a week, without overtime on the kill floor of a meatpacking plant. Women from the slaughterhouse spoke of male supervisors demanding sex in return for decent hours, decent pay and decent treatment on the job. These workers were victimized, only to be herded like animals when ICE swept the plant and left their employers without punishment.
There is no mistaking that these men and women are suffering at the hands of the U.S. government and our president. Our broken Immigration system has paved a way to the objectification of human beings at the expense of our labor laws, U.S. workers' safety and basic family values.
Instead of taking a stand against the outright victimization of workers -- many of them minors, and all of them legally entitled to labor protections -- the Bush administration decided that meatpackers posed a greater threat to our security than suspected terrorists or physically abusive employers.
Almost two years to the day before the administration sent 900 ICE agents to storm Agriprocessors, President George W. Bush appeared before the American people and declared: "We're a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We're also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways. These are not contradictory goals. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time."
See more stories tagged with: raids, postville, immigrat rights
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' Immigration Task Force and Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., is chair of the caucus.
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