Bishop calls Mississippi ICE raids 'a man-made disaster'

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent taking part in a Florida raid March 21, 2018. Some 680 undocumented workers were arrested Aug. 7 at food processing plants in Mississippi in the largest ICE workplace operation in a decade. (Photo in public domain). 

August 9, 2019
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
Catholic San Francisco

After U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 680 people at food processing plants in Mississippi, a Catholic bishop denounced the raids in his diocese as a  “man-made disaster.” 

“These folks are our neighbors. They’re not criminals, the vast majority of them. They’re hard-working people,” Bishop Joseph Kopacz of Jackson, Mississippi, said in an interview with America Magazine. 

The Aug. 7 operation, carried out by more than 600 ICE agents brought in from around the country, arrested mostly Latino workers at seven businesses across Mississippi for immigration violations. It was the largest workplace operation in a decade. 

“This was a textbook operation, carried out in a safe manner, and done securely,” ICE's acting director Matthew Albence told the Washington Post.  “Officers were able to execute these warrants in a safe fashion.”

Bishop John Stowe of Louisville, Ky., criticized the raids on Twitter. "While the nation is still in mourning, especially the vulnerable immigrant population, ICE separates more families with massive raid," he said. "The cruelty must stop!"

The arrests left some children coming home from school without any parents to care for them, forcing them to stay at neighbors' homes or in one case, a local gym. 

Lea Anne Brandon, a spokeswoman for Mississippi’s Department of Child Protection Services, expressed frustration that her agency had not been contacted by ICE to care for the children. “We have resources on the ground, trained, ready and licensed to respond to emergency situations, and we could have provided services that instead appeared to be put together in a makeshift fashion,” she said. 

Agency officials said they notified schools after the raids had begun, and offered phone calls to parents to make arrangements for their children. 

More than 300 of those arrested had been released by Thursday morning with notices to appear in immigration court, according to an ICE spokesman. Many of them were bussed back to the plants where they arrested.

Father Mike O’Brien, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Canton, told the Associated Press he waited outside one plant until early Thursday for workers. Father O’Brien said he had visited with parishioners whose family members had been arrested.

“The people are all afraid,” he said. “Their doors are locked, and they won’t answer their doors.”

Family and friends had stepped in to watch children whose parents were in custody, O’Brien said. 

“They’re circling the wagons that way and taking care of each other,” he said.

Bishop Kopacz said the diocese will consult with its parishes about what families will need in the aftermath of the operation, noting the significant financial pressure families will face because of the loss of income.  

"As time goes on this month, there’s going to be some real crises,” he said. 

The Diocese of Jackson and Catholic Charities of Jackson have both begun accepting donations to support families who have been affected by the raids. 

Catholic Extension said it would send help immediately and also begin fundraising to benefit those in need through its Holy Family Fund, a program it launched earlier this year to financially help husbands and wives and children left without their main breadwinner because of detention or deportation. 

"The program seeks to help bring some stability to what is a terribly destabilizing moment for families," the organization said in an Aug. 8 news release.

Father Jack Wall, president of Catholic Extension, said ICE enforcement raids show the "human toll of our broken immigration system; suffering amid our nation’s inability to find a commonsense legislative solution to this pressing issue."

Joe Boland, vice president of mission at Catholic Extension, said that even though some of the nation's leaders say laws must be enforced to prevent "chaos in this country," the raids themselves cause "massive chaos" as parents are forcibly removed from their children.

"This is not only bad for these families and bad for the church, to which many of the detainees belong, but it is especially bad for the future of our society," he said. "When we break up families, no one wins."

Catholic News Service contributed to this report.