The Victims Behind: Mississippi ICE Raids

 The Victims Behind:    Mississippi ICE Raids   

Mississippi Rising

Illustration by Alex Charner | Source: Latino USA podcast

Name of Episode: Mississippi Rising

Program Date: October 15th, 2021.

Listening Date: October 25th, 2021.

The episode "Mississippi Rising" from the Latino USA podcast was hosted by Maria Hinojosa and Reynaldo Leaños Jr. They  travel all the way to Mississippi on August to meet again some of the immigrant employees that worked at the chicken processing plants that got affected by the 2019 ICE raid. The program presented some updates from the people interviewed on the last episode that covered the same topic. We get to know more about Elena, Yesenia, and Lorena Quiroz families and how them and many other latino families are dealing with this situation. 

Maria Hinojosa interviewing Yesenia and her
daughters in Forest, Mississippi.
Photo by: Reynaldo Leaños Jr. | Source: Latino USA podcast

I liked from this episode that they gave some information from the past of the topic. I learn that historically, "the poultry industry across the South exploits and relies on the most vulnerable workforce" (Latino 19:49 - 20:02), the racism and exploitation that the latinos are going through in this type of companies once happened to black people. "According to the Economic Policy Institute, it's estimated that there are almost 500,000 workers in the animal slaughtering and processing industry. Of those workers, nearly 35% are Latino, with 70% of those being non-citizen" (Latino 22:48 - 23:09).

Community members at a vigil in Canton, Mississippi
to commemorate two years after ICE raids of 2019.
Photo by: Reynaldo Leaños Jr. | Source: Latino USA podcast

I found an article related to the topic covered in this episode of Latino USA podcast, titled: "Family Separation as Slow Death", written by Stephen Lee for the Columbia Law Review Association. The connection I encounter with this specific article is that many families, just as the interviewed people claim in the podcast, had to separate from their loved ones in the U.S. and go back to the country they came from, due to the Mississippi ICE Raids. Lee states that "during the Trump Administration, disturbing images of immigration officials forcibly separating parents from their children at the U.S.–Mexico border have rightly invited an onslaught of criticism" (Lee, 2319).

I think what happened in the chicken processing industries in Mississippi was a very unfair situation. Despite being in the country illegally, there are working families that help maintain and grow the country, and not only the workers got affected, some of their families are still living the consequences of the separation. Lee talks about immigration and the struggles that families go through with this "immoral" actions and policies. This conditions are interpreted by the author as a slow death. He explains that "reframing the experience of migrants in terms of slow death can help recontextualize immigrant suffering in terms of family separation thereby drawing the public’s attention to the need for systemic, and not just episodic, change" (Lee, 2319). Maria, the host of the program stated, there's a lot that can be done to end mass worksite raids, one idea is  to "create new policies that encourage all workers, even those who are undocumented to report labor violations without the fear of deportation" (Latino 56:29 - 56-49). 

Works Cited

Leaños, Reynaldo, and Hinojosa, Maria, hosts. "Mississippi Rising". Latino USA, episode 174, PRX, 15 October 2021, https://www.latinousa.org/2021/10/15/mississippirising/.

Lee, Stephen. “FAMILY SEPARATION AS SLOW DEATH.” Columbia Law Review, vol. 119, no. 8, Columbia Law Review Association, Inc., 2019, pp. 2319–84, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26844592.