‘The Day That ICE Came’ recalls infamous workplace incidents surrounding an immigration raid
A new report from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), The Day that ICE Came: How Worksite Raids Are Once Again Harming Children and Families, documents how families and communities remain shattered months and even years, after workplace immigration raids.
“While all eyes are focused on the southwest border, immigration raids have also been separating families in the interior of the United States, and the American people need to know about it,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at CLASP, and lead author of the report. “Worksite raids are an immoral tactic that brings needless and lasting harm to immigrant families and children, including many American citizens.”
In 2019, CLASP visited three states that had experienced workplace immigration raids under the Trump administration, Mississippi, Ohio, and Texas, interviewing families, service providers, lawyers, and other community members. August 7 will mark one year since Mississippi was subjected to the largest workplace raid in U.S. history, and the future of this type of enforcement tactic will be debated in the coming months.
“I will never forget the pain on parents’ faces as they talked about their family’s experiences during and after these raids,” recalled Cervantes. “The aggressiveness of these militaristic operations; the young children stranded while their parents were detained; the expense of fighting legal cases while also losing income; the agonizing decisions about the future; and the mental trauma experienced by each and every member of the family have been truly devastating. Every parent I talked to was far more concerned for their children’s wellbeing than they were about their own.”
“The Day that ICE Came” documents three major trends across all sites:
- Children, families, and communities experienced profoundly destabilizing traumas with lasting impacts.
- The usage of worksite immigration raids to harass and intimidate immigrant workers, the majority of whom are parents to U.S. citizen children.
- The local response to each of these raids also revealed another side of America: the power of community and resilience.
See the complete report, “The Day that ICE Came: How Worksite Raids Are Once Again Harming Children and Families,” and executive summary.
