Join Mississippi immigrant workers calling on President Biden to undo the harm inflicted by Trump’s mass workplace raids
President Joe Biden
Add your name to call on President Joe Biden to undo the harms committed by the Trump Admin against indigenous, undocumented workers in Mississippi.
In 2019, in one of Trump and ICE's many racist and anti worker actions, over 680 factory workers in central Mississippi were targeted, rounded up, and detained. Two years later, workers are still suffering from those raids- many deported, many still detained, and many still working at those factories, with the constant threat of deportation hanging over their heads. Today, immigrant workers and their families are calling on President Biden to undo that harm—bring people home, defer deportations, and provide the work authorization that would keep workers safe.
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On August 7, 2019, ICE detained 680 workers from poultry factories in Mississippi in the largest workplace raid in our generation. The raids targeted factory workers who had denounced rampant workplace abuses, including sexual harassment and discrimination, and secured a precedent-setting court settlement. The workers targeted in Trump’s raids are predominantly indigenous Maya from Guatemala.
To date, hundreds of workers have been deported and many are still detained. Meanwhile, many of these workers are still laboring in the same factories, excluded from federal COVID relief, with the threat of deportation hanging over their heads, unable to speak out about workplace abuse or unsafe work conditions.
Tragically, last month, we learned of the tragic murder of Edgar Lopez in northern Mexico. His body was identified as one of 18 people, primarily migrants, who were murdered and burned in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Mr. Lopez was one of the 680 workers who faced the super-exploitation we know of. He had been detained while leaving work, and then spent one year in ICE migrant prisons, before being deported. He was trying to get home to his family in Mississippi.
The violence that immigrant families in Mississippi have confronted can only happen when there have been years of dehumanization, by Trump, by ICE, but also by too many employers and government officials that turned a blind eye to constant abuse, while these hands literally prepare the food we all eat. There must be a point where the dehumanization stops—and we reaffirm the simple notion that all human life is essential.
President Biden, I join my voice in support of the Mississippi undocumented, indigenous, and immigrant working families still suffering from the ongoing harms inflicted by the Trump administration and ICE. We ask that you take these specific actions that are, today, in your power.
1) Returning workers that were deported as a consequence of ICE’s August 2019 raids to their families and communities in Mississippi;
2) Release those that are still detained as a result of these raids;
3) Grant deferred action from deportation + work authorization for all of the workers in the factories targeted by Trump’s racist raids; and
4) Pardon those who suffered convictions stemming from ICE’s raids, including for ID theft related to working, or for returning to their families.