The federal Court of the Eastern District of Tennessee ordered this Friday the publication of the videos of security cameras that recorded the raid of the Service of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, for its acronym in English) on April 5, 2018 in a packing plant of Grainger County beef.
Almost a hundred undocumented immigrants were arrested in the operation, and many of them were deported.
The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center led a class action lawsuit against ICE on behalf of the workers, alleging that the federal agency arrested them in the operation on racial or ethnic grounds.
"The operation against Latino workers was carried out in a humiliating and unnecessarily violent manner," said NILC attorney Michelle Lapointe, according to the MeatPoultry website.
[Most in the US believe there is an invasion of immigrants]
Local television station WBIR 10, an affiliate of our sister network NBC News, obtained the videos on Friday.
In them, the agents are seen leading a group of people with their hands behind their necks in a warehouse, and violent episodes during the operation.
Screenshot of a video of the ICE raid .NBC 10
One officer in particular, John Witsell, is singled out in the class action for alleged abuse of force.
Federal authorities had asked the court not to show the public a security video showing him subduing a Latino employee.
According to a court document consulted by the aforementioned media, the Department of Homeland Security argued that the publication of the video could "incite riots, contaminate the jury, and lead to the conviction of the agents" and argued that a written description of the video " would satisfy" the public's right to know what happened.
Meatpacking facility in a 2018 ICE raid.NBC 10
But the judge decided his arguments were inconclusive and his concerns unfounded, WBIR 10 reported.
“There has been public interest in this particular case: various media outlets have published stories about the raid, and it appears that there has been a peaceful demonstration,” the judge said, “but such news and a peaceful demonstration are not civil unrest.”
Noticias Telemundo has reported on the operation, as well as other news organizations, and the Netflix
streaming
network made a documentary that reflects the profound consequences it had not only on the workers but on the entire local community.
The owner of the meat plant was sentenced in 2019 to 18 months in prison for the illegal hiring of immigrants, and
the process for the deportation of 97 people began.
Nearly 160 children were affected by their parents' arrests, and several got into trouble at school, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.