IV. Worksite Enforcement Actions in the Study Sites
T
he central focus of this report is on the impact of the ICE worksite raids on children at the three study sites. These raids were large in scale and had a dramatic and long-lasting impact on the communities in which they were
conducted. Arrested immigrants often experienced long and difficult periods of detention and uncertainty about their future. To understand the impact on children, it is important to first review how the raids were conducted and how arrested immigrants flowed through the ICE system of detention, release, appeal, and deportation following the raids. The discussion of these issues in this section of the report is not meant to be exhaustive, but only to provide a context for our later discussion of the impact of the raids on children and services provided to them.
THE DAY
OF THE
RAIDS
Greeley, Grand Island, and New Bedford experienced among the largest worksite enforcement actions that ICE – or any U.S. immigration authority – has ever conducted. They involved a large-scale show of force with hundreds of agents involved in each site. Greeley and Grand Island were two of the sites for “Operation Wagon Train,” in which 1,297 undocumented immigrants in total were arrested at six Swift & Company meatpacking plants on December 12, 2006.14 New Bedford was the site of a raid on the military contractor Michael Bianco, Inc., in which 361 undocumented immigrants were arrested on March 6, 2007.15 These large-scale operations involved substantial logistical support, as hundreds of arrestees were moved across different locations, processed, detained, and then released or deported. They evinced significant community reaction and gained substantial attention in the media. Most of what we learned about the days the raids took place corroborated media reports. NCLR ◆ Page 21