>> We're actually learning even more about the situation at the chicken processing plant
in Mississippi where a 700 workers were detained by ice.
Last year, Koch Foods settled a $3.75 million lawsuit for racial discrimination, national
origin discrimination, and sexual harassment against its Latinx workers in that very same
Morton, Mississippi, facility.
And I wanna show you a little bit of what was alleged in the lawsuit, okay?
Supervisors touched and or made sexually suggestive comments to female Hispanic employees, hit
Hispanic employees, and charged many of them money for normal everyday work activities.
Many workers were reportedly either discharged or or subjected to other forms of retaliation
when they complained.
Now, this suit was brought forward by EEOC.
And as part of the settlement, Koch Foods not only paid out a massive sum to the victims,
but also agreed to implement training for employees, and set up a 24-hour hotline for
reporting discrimination complaints in both English and Spanish.
The settlement lasted three years, and that means Koch Foods is still under supervision
to continue efforts to reduce discrimination in its workplace.
And a lot of people, including the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, they are
worried that these ICE raids after this settlement will discourage workers from reporting abuses
and unsafe work conditions.
As labor reporter Mike Elk notes at Payday Report, it may not be a coincidence that the
Morton plant was raided.
There have been at least two other plants, one in Salem, Ohio, and another in Morristown,
Tennessee, where ICE raids have followed complaints of worker conditions.
Last year, for example, the occupational safety and health administration, OSHA, fined Fresh
Mark more than $200,000 for three separate incidents in which proper safety guards were
not in place in its Salem meat packing plant.
A week later, it was raided by ICE.
Definitely not a coincidence.
Yeah.
It doesn't happen three times in a row, and it's a coincidence.
No way.
So there are two possible explanations.
I'm actually hoping that it's one that is less terrible.
So the one that would be most terrible is they're like people wanna complain about workplace
harassment, let's go round them all up.
I actually don't think that that's the one.
I don't know, maybe I'm not, after all this, I might still be naive and there might be
terrible people in the Trump administration who think it's a two-fer, we round up undocumented
immigrants and hey, if you complain about sexual harassment that our boss does, or we
all do, or whatever, we're gonna round you up.
But I, again, I think that's less likely.
I think the more likely thing is it's just easy and they're lazy.
So they're like we just did that case with the undocumented immigrants and they were
being sexually harassed, or they had unsafe work conditions, etc.
Well, we know they're undocumented immigrants, so we'll call ICE and it's easy.
Then they don't have to bother doing research and figuring out who has undocumented immigrants,
cuz we already know.
And there might also be a directive within the Trump administration if you know, if any
government department knows of undocumented immigrants, they must turn it over to ICE.
So that's the more likely scenario.
But think about how terrible that is anyway.
Cuz that means if you go to seek help from law enforcement in any way, shape, or form
that reaches the federal government, they're gonna turn on you and they gonna ruin your
lives.
So the system is already set up in a bad way.
Yeah, so there's two components of that.
One is, well, Jesus, these people came to you for help and then you buried them.
So thanks a lot, we really appreciate it.
But the second part is actually even worse because now the word on the street is going
to be, after seeing these raids over and over again, don't ever complain.
If you're getting sexually harassed, assaulted, whatever it might be, unsafe work conditions,
suck it up.
Because if you complain to the Trump government, they're gonna deport you and they're gonna
ruin your family's life.
And so, and then the third part of how bad that is is that the employers start to realize
and think we've got free reign, we can do anything we want to these workers and they
can't ever complain cuz if they do, they get deported.
So now, God help these workers.
Right, I think the most tragic part of the story was that it was the first day of school
in Morton.
Yeah.
So could you imagine the level of trauma and PTSD that these children are going to experience
for the rest of their lives, going to school wondering if something terrible's happening
to their parents or their loved ones while they are there.
And that's if they're actually reunified with their families.
The other piece of that is let's talk about the economy, right?
So the cost of these ICE raids, they said that- They worked on this for a year.
Yeah, and that they brought 600 ICE agents to arrest almost 700 people or detain them.
So we're not talking about the flights and the travel and the actual operation, but the
fact that it costs almost $200 a day per person that they detain.
It ends up, I saw another article that said it ends up being $3 million a month, and it
ends up being $36 million a year.
And we're talking about the numbers for this specific group.
What does that do to the actual economy?
We're not talking about every other state, we're talking about just this isolated raid.
And then, when you look at the president of the United States, he would have us believe
that migrant workers and asylum seekers are criminals, rapists, drug dealers, they're
violent people.
But in reality, his own administration said there's an estimated 11 million undocumented
people, but yet they bring in $12 billion in tax revenue.
Yeah.
I wanna show you guys, cuz I have another note about something you said.
You brought up the children and we talked about them yesterday.
So a spokesman for Child Protective Services actually told the Washington Post that look,
we have resources here on the ground, we could have helped with this.
There were kids sleeping in gyms, kids not having anywhere to go after school, we could
have help with this.
And saying that they were not contacted before or even after the fact.
And here we are two days after the fact, and Child Protective Services still weren't contacted
by the government in order to help with the situation.
At this point you realize that there are gonna be a lot of kids displaced.
And also, we have a little girl on the show yesterday.
She's 11 years old and JR found even more of her begging for her father's release.
And I wanna show it because she's 11, and this little girl is so strong.
And I think that the level of strength that you can tell that she has, that has to go
to show how she's being raised by these people who that are being called monsters over and
over again.
So take a look.
My dad didn't do nothing.
He's not a criminal or something.
That's why the immigrants took him.
Please let him free.
I want my dad to be free and everybody else.
Their children are crying because of their dad and mom missing.
And I want my dad.
The Hispanic people are not doing nothing bad, they're not stealing nothing.
The immigration just went inside the company, just get our dads out of there.
That's not fair on immigrants.
Just see what I'm doing.
I'm crying because of my dad.
A lot of children are crying and their wives and their husbands are now, because the immigration
took them.
Can you do nothing, but please open the door for the parents.
She's saying immigrants in place of ICE.
She's 11.
Yeah, of course.
So- I've seen it ten times.
But you know what, though?
I'm sorry, l get this is really tragic, but let's just keep it real.
We're talking about, again, going back to sociopaths.
They're not motivated or inspired by frothy emotional appeal.
Even when you look at conservatives, fiscal conservatives, the first thing they say is
it's just about economic stability and safety.
And so, the thing is if the only thing that is standing in the way as an impediment to
developing better policies for immigration and asylum seekers is the fiscal aspect, why
aren't we talking numbers?
And I think that, let's keep it real, it's not just the Trump administration that feels
this way about immigrants and asylum seekers.
It is people in the Democratic Party who have also said that they are a strain on our economy.
We are having a hard time figuring things out for ourselves and our families, and our
benefits and our needs.
So immigrants and asylum seekers or undocumented people, they're taking away from our American
dream.
And that couldn't be the farthest thing from the truth.
So when we present these numbers, such as the fact that the state, local, federal tax
ends up being $12 billion of a community that's only 11 billion.
It's important to really underscore that when we're having these conversations, especially
in the policy development stage.
So let me build off that because I'm so tired of Democrats being incompetent on this issue.
So the undocumented immigrants a pointed out, pay more in taxes than they get out of the
system.
So for God's sake, say it, say it every time, not only that, hold the press accountable.
Say that every time a Republican says that they're taking from us, call them a liar,
cuz that's what they're doing, they're lying.
Or they're mistaken, they're fools, they're idiots, and show them the numbers.
Do you know the numbers if you're in the press?
You don't know the numbers, do you?
Then do your goddamn job.
And then, in terms of crime, they keep saying that they're more likely to be criminals.
That's just not true, it's not factual.
They commit crime, undocumented immigrants commit crime at half the rate of native born
Americans.
So it's not true.
If you say it, you're either a fool or a liar.
Press, are you ever going to do your job?
Democratic Party, are you ever going to do your job?
Against the monsters in the Right-wing who constantly put out this massive propaganda
filled with complete and utter lies.
And follow the money, too.
The fact of the matter is that they are monetizing the immigration system, the immigration system,
ICE, all of this.
These privatized detention centers.
There's money in it.
So people hear wow $36 million a year just for this small group.
And there's millions more where that came from, and it's only gonna continue to grow
the more we continue ordering these raids.
It's going to then increase the need for private detention centers, which is gonna be an opportunity
to make money.
Of course, and then they donate back to the Republican politicians and they get money,
and that circle of corruption continues.
Look, it's our job to be fair and bring the facts.
So in the case of ICE, they did do a couple things right here in the midst of the horrors
of the overall operation.
They let half the folks go so they could take care of the kids.
They gave them phones so they can call and have the kids picked up.
They didn't let Child Protective Services know, but they did let the school know after
the raid.
The reason they didn't let anybody know before the raid was because of Donald Trump.
What?
Well, it turns out, because he's such an idiot, that if you let the White House know that
you're about to do a raid, the moron tweets about it.
And so, he's ruined a couple raids, thank God, accidentally.
So they stopped telling anyone, including the White House, cuz they're like he's too
stupid to keep a secret.
He'll just blabber away on Twitter, and we spent a year on this operation, so we're not
gonna tell the White House.
They did take some of those precautions.
But at the schools, a lot of the kids didn't show up today, not just the ones from the
parents, but also other folks.
Kids didn't show up, because they're scared to death.
And the school say no, it's okay, we're a safe haven.
I love you, but you're not.
There is no safe haven.
It's the Trump years, you think they won't- We're still in this country.
You think they won't ambush a school, ICE won't ambush a school?
Of course they will.
You have Betsy DeVos at the head of the Department of Education and it's just there is no safe
space.
There have people arrested and detained while dropping their kids off at school.
We've seen that story.
That started happening really soon after Trump became president.
Yeah, just to be clear, they wouldn't be coming for the kids, I hope not.
Yeah.
But they do come after the parents picking up their kids, so that's why the kids don't
go.
Well, you saw the video where they busted out the car window to get to the father, to
the driver, while the kids were in the backseat with the mother.
So this stuff is not a game.
I see on Twitter, people have been tweeting rights, know your rights.
So if they come to your door, you have a right to ask this question, or you can say and do
that.
But now, we're seeing agents quite literally assault those people they're trying to detain.
Yeah.
And the last thing, guys, is that the story about how the federal government is targeting
anyone that complained about workplace harassment and other issues is why we have sanctuary
cities.
So if you wonder what does that mean, why?
Because the reason the sanctuary cities isn't to say, hey, we will take all the undocumented
immigrants, and we don't care, we're never gonna prosecute them for anything including
crimes.
No, no, no, no.
So of course, that's Right-wing propaganda.
The reality is that they exist because they say, look, if there's a crime in our city,
we want undocumented immigrants to report it, whether it's done to them, to a family
member, or to someone else, or to be a witness.
If we say we're gonna turn them in to ICE if they cooperate with law enforcement, then
no one will cooperate with law enforcement.
It is to keep the city safer.
And by the way, sanctuary cities, another fact, have less crime then than other parts
of America.
So and the reason is because they cooperate with law enforcement.
I know Trump's against cooperating with law enforcement, in general, right, when it comes
to his own business dealings, etc.
But the reality is, if you make it a problem and a deterrent for people to work with the
government, they will stop doing that completely.
And then, you have a real crime issue, and then you have real harassment issues and you
have all these issues.
The sanctuary city idea's a logical one, not just for the protection of the immigrants,
but for the protection of the whole city
and the cops.