Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children
restrooms, and other necessities. Other respondents claimed that ICE did not allow for breaks or access to food and water for long periods of time. In general, the comments about ICE’s conduct of the raids were much more positive in Grand Island than in the other two sites, suggesting there is some variation in enforcement actions depending on the ICE staff involved and the nature of the action. However, in all three sites, arrestees were held for several hours at the plants before boarding buses for other locations where they were to be held for processing, and during this time had no access to legal counsel or communication with their family members about their circumstances. Arrestees were generally placed in handcuffs or had
IMPLICATIONS
plastic bands tied around their wrists during their transportation from the plants to the processing facilities. In New Bedford some of the
Large-scale worksite raids
arrestees also had their legs shackled during their transportation to
involve an extensive show of
detention facilities in Texas.
force on the part of immigration authorities, and
In all three sites, crowds gathered outside the plants over a period of several hours during which the raids took place. Many were relatives, friends, or others seeking to provide documentation, but others were community leaders and members. In Greeley and Grand Island,
older children – especially adolescents – may witness force used against their parents, which can include handcuffing or shackling. The
several high school students left school when they heard about the
large-scale nature of the raids
raids and went to the plants. There were no incidents of altercations
and the follow-up raids in
or violence outside the plants at any of the three sites, however.
Greeley and Grand Island kept the immigrant communities
Much smaller follow-up raids occurred in both Greeley and Grand
living in a state of fear.
Island. In Greeley, several immigrants were arrested at a plant
Pervasive fear and the
subsidiary, and a small number of people were arrested at their homes on the same day as the plant raid. In Grand Island, ICE continued to search for a handful of ID theft suspects by going door to door in the community over the course of several days following the plant raid.
DETENTION, RELEASE, OF PARENTS
AND
experience of witnessing force used against their parents could leave a lasting psychological impact on children and adolescents.
DEPORTATION
Arrestees from Greeley and New Bedford were initially processed at ICE facilities within Colorado and Massachusetts, but arrestees from Grand Island were moved to a National Guard camp in Iowa for their initial processing. Initial processing generally involved identifying and recording arrestees’ true names and nationalities; collecting fingerprints; checking names and fingerprints against ICE, national criminal, and other databases; and determining whether arrestees should be released, detained, or allowed to leave the country voluntarily.
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