It seems as if ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the new name for the INS) is out to break records as fast as the gold medal swimmers in the 2008 Summer Olympics. After undertaking the “largest single-site operation of its kind in American history” when ICE raided Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville Iowa, last May, ICE apparently decided they could best that record and did so at the Howard Industries plant in Laurel, Mississippi last week. In Postville 900 ICE agents detained roughly 400 undocumented immigrant workers. A 60 acre cattle fairground was turned into a concentration camp for the detainees, off limits to cameras and most of the media. One court interpreter, Prof. Erik Camayd-Freixas, described the scene as the detainees were brought into the trailers that served as courtrooms on the fairgrounds… “Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignme...

Some of the most innovative and essential work being accomplished by both the labor movement and the movement for immigrant rights is, once again, happening right here in Chicago. The Chicago Committee Against No-Match Letters and the Rapid Response Network, lead by the UE (United Electrical Workers Union), Chicago Workers Collaborative, UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) Local 881, Interfaith Worker Justice and other Chicago area workers centers, has organized a fight back against Social Security “no-match” letters and ICE workplace raids in an effort to make Chicago a no-match and ICE raid free zone. The goal is to make the economic, political and social costs of terrorzing immigrant workers through no-match letters and workplace raids so high for employers and their friends at DHS (Department of Homeland Security) that they will be forced to back off. This is an extremely important effort, as no-match letters and ICE raids are a key strategy of the anti-immigrant forces who a...

David Bacon is one of the most insightful and forward thinking advocates for immigrant rights in the U.S. labor movement. His analysis of the relationship between trade and migration is essential to understanding the importance of the immigrant worker's struggles to the overall revitalization of the organized labor in the U.S. He has also consistently called for the most militant and thoroughgoing strategies to care the immigrant workers struggle forward. David circulated the following statement among immigrant rights groups in California last month. The type of working class solidarity, David calls for here is not only vital if we are to win the fight for migrants rights, but could lead to a radical transformation of union locals away from the type of business unionism that has dominated for decades toward a return to unions as vital organs of social change in the broadest sense… A Solidarity Campaign in Response to No-Match Letters: In the late 1980s, when anti-immigrant raci...