Morton and nearby towns in central Mississippi saw the biggest workplace ICE raids in the country in 2019, when nearly 700 workers were arrested from chicken processing plants. Five years later, the impact is still felt here, even as activists and immigrants brace for more workplace raids under a second Trump term.

Summary

The 2019 ICE raids on Mississippi poultry plants, which detained 680 workers, have left the immigrant community in Morton scarred and fearful of renewed workplace raids under Trump, who plans mass deportations.

Residents recall the trauma, with children left stranded and families torn apart. Local businesses, reliant on immigrant workers, suffered economically, while poultry plants quickly resumed operations.

Activists and nonprofits are preparing families for potential detentions, emphasizing the economic and social impacts of such raids.

Many undocumented workers fear another round of disruptions and family separations.

  • @kava
    2•3 days ago

    There’s also obviously plenty of, for lack of a better word, entrepreneurs

    Yeah, it’s interesting.

    Over the course of the last two decades or so, the government has slowly been enforcing the I9 verification process. Where employers have to get some information from you when they hire you. Social security number, driver’s license, etc. This makes it so illegals shouldn’t be able to work most jobs.

    Of course, there are ways around it. I’ve worked for smaller sized publicly traded companies that simply look the other way. I knew a middle manager who was illegal and the company knew about it- but didn’t really care. So they just cooked the books, so to speak, so the employee could continue working. I remember when he got deported. His wife wanted her niece from their home country to come visit and stay with them for a couple weeks. Girl was 16. Customs officer thought it was suspicious, started asking girl some questions. Officer did not like the responses.

    So they waited at the airport with the girl until employee went to go pick up his wife’s niece. Officer then questions employee, he doesn’t have appropriate documents. 8 months later, after the standard deportation procedures (which involves going in front of an immigration judge, etc), he was deported.

    Moral of the story? If you have to pick up someone from the airport and you’re illegal… find a friend with documents and send them instead. Safer

    One way to get around as an illegal that seems to be very popular is just to start a company and work as a 1099 subcontractor.

    So for example, you don’t need documents to start a business. You start a business, apply for an EIN number with the IRS under that business. Then when you go work for some construction company, you don’t work as an employee. You sign up as a 1099 contractor.

    That way the company hiring you is not legally liable for anything - they are simply hiring a company to provide a service. They aren’t hiring illegals to do work- whoever the contractor chooses to hire or not is not a concern of the host company. Uncle Sam gets his taxes and everybody is happy.

    Vast swathes of the construction industry work using that system. I don’t want to name names, but some very big-name companies would suffer quite a bit should we actually deport even a small % of illegals.

    My main point is that the system is designed to keep undocumented immigrants in the “informal economy” by paying under the table

    I understand the point you’re making and I agree with you. It’s designed to keep them in the shadows. Although keep in mind, it’s not always under the table. Like I outlined above, a lot of it ends up being taxed and documented properly. I know illegals that get paid $2000 weekly salary, have a work truck assigned to them, and have their rent paid for. They do their yearly taxes and Uncle Sam doesn’t care because he’s making his cut.

    There’s a high demand for people that speak both English and Spanish and have both a) technical skills (aka can work spreadsheets, emails) and b) have construction experience. It’s really hard to find these people and many of them tend to be illegals.

    You want to really hurt illegals? Get rid of the ability to do what I just outlined. But then Uncle Sam would lose $$$. So that’s what I’m curious what Trump is actually gonna do.

    There absolutely are illegals being put in similar situations as Dubai does with the Indians. For example, the Chinese love doing this. They’ll start a Chinese restaurant and then import Chinese to live and work there for pennies on the dollar. Other examples are Mexicans working in agricultural in the SW of the country.

    But that certainly isn’t the only way and in my experience isn’t that common.