Nearly 500 workers in Southeast Georgia since mass immigration at modern manufacturing sites Rosie Harrison Said the phone she organized has been ringing with panic families in need.
“We have individual calls every day, but the list won’t end.” Harrison explain. She runs a non-political non-profit called Grow Initiative, a program that connects low-income families (immigrants and non-immigrants) to food, housing and educational resources.
Since the raid, Harrison “Families are experiencing new levels of crisis,” said the
Of the 475 people detained in workplace raids, most of them called the biggest attacks in two decades – Koreans and returned to South Korea. But many non-korean immigrants trapped in repression are still in legal trouble or otherwise unintelligible.
The raid began on the morning of September 4, and workers almost immediately began calling Immigration Rights Southeast, a local nonprofit that links immigration to legal and financial resources. Spokesman Vanessa Contreras said a small organization with about 15 employees made calls to people in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela.
Contreras said all day long, people described federal agents taking cell phones from workers and lined them up. Some workers hid for hours to avoid capture in air ducts or remote areas of huge properties. The Justice Department said it was somewhat hidden in a nearby sewage pool.
People said the organization was frantically seeking the whereabouts of loved ones who worked at the factory and were suddenly unable to reach.
Like many Koreans working at the factory, lawyers and attorneys representing non-Kria workers were stranded in the raid, saying some of the detained people are authorized in the United States by law.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security, immigration and customs enforcement responded to an email request issued Friday. It is not clear that those detained in the raid are still in custody.
Atlanta-based attorney Charles Kuck, representing detained Korean and non-Kria workers, said two of his clients worked legally under the extension action of the childhood extension program, created by former President Barack Obama. He said one person has been released and “never arrested” while another remains in custody because he was recently accused of driving under the influence.
He said Cook’s other client was in the process of seeking asylum and had the same documents and work as her unarrested husband.
Rosario Palacios said a valid Georgia driver’s license is illegal and the license is illegal. Some families who called the organization were unable to access traffic due to people in custody, which was the only one who could drive.
“It’s hard to say how they choose who they want to release, and who they want to detain,” Palacios said, adding that some of the arrested people did not have an alien ID number but were still not eliminated.
Cook said the raid showed how far the crackdown in President Donald Trump’s administration is, despite their assurance that they target criminals.
“Redefining the term ‘criminal’ includes everyone who is not a citizen, or even some, is also a problem here,” Cook said.
Many families making phone calls Harrison’s The initiative says their detained relatives are the only breadwinner in the family, making them crave basics like baby formula and food.
The financial impact of the attack on the construction site was the financial impact of the battery plant operated by HL-GA Battery Co. Harrison explain.
The growth program does not check immigration status, Harrison But almost all families she contacted said their detained loved ones have legal authority to work in the United States, which has left many people on why their relatives were detained in the first place.
“The worst call is the one you make your kids cry, screaming, ‘Where is my mom?'” Harrison explain.
