Video confirms abuse of immigrants by federal agents in East Tennessee slaughterhouse raid
Video obtained by the Tennessee Lookout confirms that a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent stepped on the neck of a Grainger County slaughterhouse worker who was facedown on the floor with another agent on his back during a controversial raid in April 2018.
Additional videos and depositions obtained also show that federal agents seized, searched, cursed, handcuffed and detained all Latino workers at the Southeastern Provision slaughterhouse in Bean Station, Tenn., without any proof of wrongdoing but allowed white workers to go free without further investigation.
The Tennessee Lookout earlier this month filed a motion seeking the unsealing of video footage from the slaughterhouse raid that federal agents sought to keep under wraps. U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Seger unsealed the footage and related documents, including excerpts of deposition testimony, two days later.
The video and documents are part of a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed on behalf of Latino plant workers against federal agents and the U.S. government after the raid — which was supposed to be a search for tax-related records but was, instead, one of the nation’s largest workplace immigration raids in recent history.
The workers contend the raid was designed to bolster then-President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to get tough on illegal immigration.
Agents spent nearly a year planning the raid, including obtaining dozens of plastic zip ties to use as handcuffs, securing use of a National Guard armory in a neighboring county as a makeshift immigration detention center and lining up buses to transport Latino workers, but never sought to determine if any of the plant workers were in the country illegally before storming inside the plant with guns drawn, records reviewed by the Tennessee Lookout show.
https://www.rawstory.com/video-confirms-abuse-of-immigrants-by-federal-agents-in-east-tennessee-slaughterhouse-raid/
This happened just outside my former hometown. Even the ordinary citizens there were furious about it.