A bakery in Otay Mesa, a south part of San Diego, was the target of an Immigration and Customes Enforcement raid on the morning of Oct.13. The bakery owner along with three other supervisors are facing severe criminal charges.
Out of the 41 people detained, most have already been deported, and 19 are being held as material witnesses in an elaborate scheme to further push criminal charges on the workers. The article published on SignOnSanDiego.com only scratches the surface of the terrorizing experience and extreme hardships that the affected families are being subjected to, even to this day.
ICE was established in 2003 as a federal task force with the sole purpose of subjecting the poorest working communities and families to fear, displacement, and acts of police brutality. ICE raids occur after an investigation, and are highly publicized to strike fear and terror into working class immigrant communities.
The morning of Oct. 13 proved to be no different for a particular family, whose members have established themselves as hard working and dignified residents of their community. Accounts of the raid were presented at a San Diego PSL Class the Saturday following the raid, where two family members of the workers detained in the raid were present.
The raid took place at the bakery and at two different houses in which employees and family members of the targeted workers live. At the PSL meeting, family members who witnessed the house raid described how the police and federal agents forced their way in, pointing guns at everyone in the house, women and children alike. The ICE agents, showing no remorse, dragged away parents from their young children, subjecting the children to what is potentially the most traumatic experience a child can endure.
The daughter of one of the workers facing federal prison time came forward and met with PSL members to raise awareness of the case, and to help build a fight back movement denouncing the raids. She told PSL how this has greatly affected her family, creating great displacement and turmoil.
“My family, American citizens and undocumented, will never be the same. We have been humiliated in such a way that we will never be able to forget what they’ve done to us”, she said when asked how the raids will affect her family.
“I personally always felt that I couldn’t count on our local police…I felt as if I were to call for help they would take my parents instead of helping us. And as for ICE, well I’ve always had encounters with them ever since I can remember, but this encounter tops it off…”, she stated when asked how she felt about ICE and the local police.
During the Bush administration, ICE raids occurred often, and received substantial attention from the media, a calculated effort to humiliate working families and use their targets as examples of what can happen to other undocumented working families. Obama’s current administration openly continues these racist policies and practices of police repression, now more than ever targeting businesses and employers who are suspected of hiring undocumented workers.
