ICE arrests 680 workers at Mississippi food processing plants

The largest single-state worksite immigration raid in American history took place today. Under orders from openly racist U.S. president Donald Trump, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 680 Latinx people who worked at numerous food processing plants throughout the state of Mississippi.

US Atty Mike Hurst announces todays immigration raids led to detention of approx. 680 people at 7 sites in 6 cities in MS, setting a new record in a single state. @MSTODAYnews pic.twitter.com/C4A3pDQ5oI

— Michelle Liu (@mchelleliu) August 7, 2019

The arrestees are identified as being Latinx.

The raids are racially targeted, but ICE denies it.

Think of the detainees' children, spouses, grandparents, and other dependents tonight.

ICE clustered the raids in various small towns near Jackson, where the labor workforce is almost entirely immigrants from central America and Mexico. Communities that were raided today include the towns of Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol.

About 600 agents fanned out across the plants involving several companies, surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing, AP reports.

The raids, planned months ago, happened just hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to visit El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latino city where a man linked to an online screed about a "Hispanic invasion" was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead in the border city.

Workers filled three buses two for men and one for women at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in tiny Morton, 40 miles east of Jackson. They were taken to a military hangar to be processed for immigration violations.