Since Massive immigrant raid Nearly 500 workers in southeastern Georgia have been swept over at Hyundai’s manufacturing site, and Rosie Harrison said her organization’s mobile phones are ringing non-stop with panicked families in need of help.
“We have individuals who return calls every day, but the list doesn’t finish,” Harrison said. She runs a non-political non-profit called the Grow Initiative, which connects low-income families (both immigrants and non-immigrants alike) with food, housing and educational resources.
Since the attack, Harrison said “families are experiencing a new level of crisis.”
A majority of 475 The ones detained in workplace attacks were what US officials called the biggest in 20 years – Koreans; I’ve returned to Korea. But lawyers and social workers say that many of the non-Korean immigrants caught up in the crackdown remain in legal sphere or otherwise not explained.
When the attack began on the morning of September 4th, workers almost immediately began calling Migrant Equity Southeast, a local nonprofit that links immigrants with legal and financial resources. A small organization with around 15 employees has submitted calls on people in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela, spokesman Vanessa Contreras said.
Throughout the day, people explained that federal agents were taking cell phones from workers and putting them in long lines, Contreras said. Some workers hid for hours to avoid air ducts and remote capture of vast property. The Justice Department said some people were hiding in a nearby sewerage.
Offsite people called the organization desperately to find a place for their loved ones who were working in plants and suddenly became unreachable.
Like many Koreans who worked in the factory, advocates and lawyers representing non-Korean workers caught up in the attack say some of the detained had legal approval to work in the United States.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to requests via email of comments on Friday. It is not clear that the number of people detained during the attack is in custody.
Atlanta-based lawyer Charles Cuck said the two clients are legally working on behalf of both Korean and non-Korean workers. Deferred behavior for childhood arrival programswas created by former President Barack Obama. One was released and “he was never arrested,” he said, while the other was still in custody after being charged with driving under the influence.
He said Kak’s other client was in the process of seeking asylum and had the same documents and work as her husband, who was not arrested.
Some even had a valid Georgia driver’s license that is not available to people in the country, said Rosario Palacios, who supports equity in the southeast. As the detainee was the only person who could drive, the family who called the organization was left without access to transport.
“It’s hard to say who they are trying to release or how they chose who they are going to be detained,” Palacios said.
Kack said the attack indicates a far-reaching measure of President Donald Trump’s administration’s crackdown. Despite assurances that they are targeting criminals.
“The redefinition of the term “criminal” to include everyone who is not a citizen is a problem here,” Cuck said.
Many of the families who called Harrison’s initiative said their detained relatives were the only producers of the family, and they desperately left basics like baby formulas and food.
The financial impact of the construction site attack is HL-GA Battery Co. It’s gotten worse by the fact that another large employer in the area combined – International Paper Co. – It closed at the end of the month and laid off an additional 800 workers, Harrison said.
The growth initiative has not checked the immigration situation, Harrison said, but almost every family member who reached out to her said there was legal approval for their detained loved ones to work in the United States, confusing many as to why their relatives were detained in the first place.
“The worst phone call is you kids crying and screaming. ‘Where is my mother?'” Harrison said.
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Riddle is a legional member of the Associated Press/Report’s American State University News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit, national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on infiltrated issues.
