Meatpacking Plant ICE Raid Lawsuit Settlement Favors Tennessee Immigrant Workers
When a meatpacking plant in Bean Station, Tenn., became the location of a federal immigration raid in 2018, nearly 100 immigrant worker arrests were made. After a five-year-long lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough on Monday ordered the U.S. government pay $475,000 to six individual plaintiffs and an additional $550,000 to a class settlement fund, a local news outlet reports.
The lawsuit filed following the event says agents did not have warrants for the arrest of workers. Instead, the warrant was to execute an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) search for business financial documents and tax violations related to James Brantley, the plant’s owner.
During the raid, Latino workers were targeted, arrested and a majority of the workers were placed in deportation court proceedings with at least 20 deported shortly after.
According to the lawsuit, workers were not asked about their immigration status until after being handcuffed, and many arrested in the raid complained of being “manhandled and threatened at gunpoint.” The lawsuit also reports at least one worker had legal immigration status, was handcuffed and held against his will for more than two hours, even after producing his papers.
Additionally, a Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigation later found many of the workers had been operating in dirty, dangerous conditions and had been receiving wages as low as $6 per hour with no overtime pay, local news reports.
The lawsuit, filed by a large number of the workers against federal agents of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of Homeland Security, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, claimed the Southeastern Provision workers’ fourth and fifth amendment constitutional rights were violated.
Monday’s decision is considered to be the first-ever class action settlement over a workplace immigration raid in the U.S.
