Huge Tragedy:Tennessee Workplace ICE Raid = 27:16
Morristown, Tennessee subjected to the largest workplace raid by immigration
authorities in over a decade.
with
Camila Fyler, Integration Director, The
Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition who has been stationed in
Morristown since the raid to help coordinate financial Assistance to the
families and secure legal representation for immigrant
detainees.
and
Beatrice who has
experienced the loss of many of her family member in the raids.in which
hundreds of families have been impacted
Federal agents, with the assistance of the Tennessee Highway Patrol,
stormed into Southeastern Provision, a meat-processing plant in Bean
Station, TN. As helicopters circled above the factory and agents blocked
doors, around 100 workers were rounded up and filed into buses without any
opportunity to explain who they were, how long they had been there, or
whether they were subject to federal immigration law at all. 54 community
members living in East Tennessee for decades, some of whom had devoted over
ten years of labor to that factory, were shipped out of the state without
even a chance to say goodbye to their spouses and children. Their families
were told nothing, and were left to wonder what had happened to loved ones
who never came home.
This is a humanitarian crisis. At least 160
children are missing a parent, nearly 600 students in a single school
district have stayed home out of fear, and participation in the economy and
community has been chilled. Hundreds of
families whose lives have been torn
apart.
It's hard to imagine another kind of crisis that would cause 5%
of the district's children to stay home that wouldn't trigger some kind of
intervention or at least public response. We’ll talk with the people in
Morristown and its surrounding
communities about the human costs of this
unconscionable abuse of power on the children devastated by this assault on
their families, and on the thousands who are rightly afraid to go to work,
take their kids to school, or even leave their
homes. The disaster stemming
from the recent immigration raid continues to unfold. But, we know from
similar raids in previous decades that the impact on children's health, on
the school system, and on the local economy can last for
years to come.
This is no time for silence!
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