Nearly six hundred illegal invaders were detained in Laurel, Mississippi, creating panic among dozens of families in this small southern town.
The superintendent of the county school district said about half of approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday.
Roberto Velez, pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Peniel, where an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the two hundred parishioners were caught up in the raid, said parents were afraid immigration officials would take them. "They didn't send their kids to school today," he said. "How scared is that?"
One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the plant said fellow workers applauded as the illegal invaders were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.
Fabiola Pena, 21, cradled her 2-year-old daughter as she described a chaotic scene at the plant as the raid began, followed by clapping. "I was crying the whole time. I didn't know what to do," Pena said. "We didn't know what was happening because everyone started running. Some people thought it was a bomb but then we figured out it was immigration."
About 100 of the 595 detained workers were released for so-called humanitarian reasons, many of them mothers who were fitted with electronic monitoring bracelets and allowed to go home to their children, officials said.
About 475 other workers were transferred to an ICE facility in Jena, La. Nine who were under eighteen were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. (Let's hope that means resettling them in their home countries.)
Eight of the invaders appeared in federal court in Hattiesburg on Tuesday because they face criminal charges for using false Social Security and residency identification.
Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.
"We have kids without dads and pregnant mothers who got their husbands taken away," said Velez's son, Robert, youth pastor at the church. "It was like a horror story. They got handled like they were criminals."
And that is exactly what they are—criminals. I can only ask why it took the federal government so long to intervene and arrest them. Not enough has been done and the mothers and children should be sent back to their home countries as well. It's time the first world countries took action and refused to be invaded by the third world's offscouring.
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