The Current - Trump deportation threats open up old wounds in Mississippi

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Hundreds of undocumented migrants were arrested in ICE workplace raids in Mississippi in 2019, resulting in deportations that split families apart. In his documentary Practically Mexico Now, the CBC��s John Chipman went there to meet people still living with the fallout, amid fresh fears over U.S. President Donald Trump's threat of mass deportations.

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncovered, available now.

This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. US President Donald Trump's promised deportation blitz has quickly picked up steam since he took office last week. On Monday alone, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, says it detained almost 1,200 people for being in that country illegally. While the arrests are on the rise, they are not new. One of the largest workplace immigration raids in US history happened five and a half years ago during President Trump's first term. Hundreds of ICE officers swept into seven food processing

plants in central Mississippi. By the end of the day, they'd rounded up 680 undocumented workers. CBC radio producer, John Chipman visited Mississippi to learn more about the lasting impact of those raids. Here is his documentary, Practically Mexico Now. now. In central Mississippi, chicken is king. A multi-billion dollar industry employs tens of thousands of people. Processing plants run 24-7. It's the backbone of the local economy.

Very heavy work. Adalis Fontanez has worked at one for more than 16 years. It's very cold. Sometimes they don't let you go to the bathroom. Very hard work. Adalice wears her dark frizzy hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her job is at the end of the processing line. She lines the boxes with plastic bags, then makes sure 40 pounds of chicken ends up inside.

Yes. I had to go ahead and move as fast as I could and throw the boxes because if I didn't throw the boxes on time, then the chickens wouldn't be able to fall in there. Adalaz was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She moved to Mississippi in search of better wages. She found them at a chicken plant. And in the break room there, she found something else, a husband.

I asked her if it was love at first sight. No. No. Well, what happened then? What happened? It was like a month later. How did he win her over? He would talk to me.

And I saw that he was a very nice man and that is why I got together with him. He worked in de-boning at the factory. They married in 2010 and soon had two daughters. But Adalice was always worried. She's a U.S. citizen. Her husband? He's from Guatemala. And he's undocumented. I wanted to make him legal with his papers. I didn't want to stay alone with my daughters. Adalice had a lawyer working on his case, but her husband wouldn't take time off work to do the physical exam that was part of the application process. I always wanted to fix his situation, but you know how Hispanics are. They are very determined to go to work and they don't like to miss any dates. So life for the family continued.

Adalice moved to a different chicken plant, her husband stayed, and then everything changed. U.S. officials confirming some major ICE raids in Mississippi. 680 people rounded up by Immigrations and Customs... It was August 7, 2019. Officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, raided seven poultry facilities, including the one where her husband worked. Bernarda Rodriguez was working at the same plant.

She was in the back when she noticed a commotion. Everybody started running and screaming, and the doors were closed, and they didn't know what was going on. Bernarda ran over to the break room. A woman there told her it was an ice raid. No one could leave. Immigration enforcement officers were outside. Bernarda scrambled to find a place to hide. And since that company has a second floor, which is where they make the boxes, I went upstairs to that second floor and I hid behind the boxes.

Several other workers huddled alongside her. When the agents realized that there was not everybody there, they went and looked at the cameras and the cameras were able to show where the people had gone. There were about three officers that went upstairs and they told us to get out. It was the first day of school. I took out my phone and I called my husband and I told them that I was being detained by immigration and that he needed to take care of the children. I said what about my children?

My children are at school. What's going to happen with my children? The officers took away Bernarda's phone, handcuffed her and shackled her feet. She and the other undocumented workers were marched out to waiting buses and taken to a detention centre near Jackson, the state capital. Around 4am the next morning, ICE released some of the workers they deemed were primary caregivers, with ankle bracelets to track their movements. The others, including Bernarda and Adalice's husband, were taken to an immigration

detention facility in Louisiana. Fighting back tears, 11-year-old Magdalena Gomez-Rogorio expressed to us her devastation being alone without her dad. Media reports at the time captured how the raids affected the workers' children. I remember very well feeling this urgency first and foremost in trying to figure out what do we do about these kids. Cliff Johnson is a civil rights lawyer at the University of Mississippi. When the raid started, his phone began ringing off the hook.

People didn't know who to talk to, but they knew something really serious was happening and something bad. And what immediately became apparent, John, was that the reality of these kids sitting on the curb at the school, principals at the school, having no idea this was going to happen, having no idea whether to put the kids on the school bus and hope somebody's on the other end to receive them when they get off the school bus. Do I keep them here? Like I don't have facilities to keep children overnight.

Where can I send them? Cliff is not an immigration lawyer, but he felt like he had to help. We got on a conference call that night at 7 30. And you know how on these old school conference calls where you dial into a number, it beeps every time someone jumps on the call. Well, it sounded like an old-fashioned pinball machine when the call started. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep Morse code. And there were 130, 150 people on the call and nobody knew one another. The first day was an absolute mess. We were lost.

Jason Burduo had just finished his first day of grade 5. His mother was a single parent. At the time they were living with a man he describes as a close friend of his mom. Jason hadn't heard about the raids and no one told him to stay at school. So he hopped on the school bus with his two brothers, one older, one younger, and they headed home. Jason Bertuo, Jason's Mom My mom didn't come home and I was wondering why is my mother late? And then that's when I got really upset about it.

And that's when my mom's friend received a call and he realized that my mother was part of a raid and she was taken away. He was really shocked. I could see him. I could see it in his face. Jason's mother was detained in Louisiana. The man stepped in to help care for the three boys. He fed us. He tried to at least cheer us up because my mother was gone. And he did whatever he could to make us happy. Jason didn't get to see his mom again until she appeared in court, six months later. She was wearing a suit, like a prison suit.

She was chained up. That's the first time when I saw her in court. I just started crying at that moment, because that was like the first time I've seen her in a while. And I felt really happy seeing her. And I was wondering if I could see her again. If I could live with her again. Jason's mother was released not too long after that. She came home and I was really happy.

I gave her a hug and I told her how much I loved her. Because she is my mother. I'm Sarah Trelevin, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now. Of the 680 people picked up that day, Cliff Johnson, the lawyer, estimates 300-400 were deported within months. The workers who were released with ankle bracelets, they ended up in an immigration enforcement system that has a backlog of 3 million cases.

Many, he says, are still working their way through the system five and a half years later. Yason says his mom has been talking again about another raid that might happen. He says he hopes that she's not part of anything like that again. Migrant crime is taking over America. That's how the U.S. President often talks about undocumented people. Hey, how are you? Good. Mike Lee, nice to meet you. Hey, how are you? Good. Mike Lee, nice to meet you.

Come on up. Sheriff Mike Lee is a Trump supporter. But here in Scott County, which includes many of the chicken plants, the president's words don't match what the sheriff sees. We hold 100 people a day here at the Scott County jail. And a very small portion of those would be immigrants from other countries.

Let me tell you, as sheriff, the border states with Mexico, where they have run into very hardened criminals, I am for making sure that the border is safe from people like that. The people that we get here, by the time they get here to Mississippi, they're hard workers, they're neighbors, we go to church together. There's just, it's almost like we have a very blended community. My stance is a country without borders is not a secure country. I don't mind them coming from Guatemala or Mexico or wherever they come from. I just think they should come legally. Randy Rushing is a Trump supporter.

He's a four-term Republican representative in Mississippi's legislature. His district includes some of the counties impacted by the raids. If they want to come here and work here, come on, welcome. Our arms are open. But do it legally. I think that's just the only way you can safely run a country to protect our people. And if we don't know who's here and what they're up to, then you're not protected and the citizens that live here aren't protected. Randy says his views reflect what he hears from his constituents.

He's also worried about the cost. A recent report from Mississippi State Auditor found that undocumented people cost local taxpayers $100 million annually. When it comes to traffic accidents, they're still going to the emergency rooms. When they do get sick, they seek help as anyone would. Education, I do know we spend extra dollars for English teachers trying to teach the younger children. In a utopia society, yes, the state Mississippi taxpayers shouldn't have to pick up the tab,

but the reality is they do, and we will continue to because we will never be 100% rid of illegal immigrants, I don't think. Now we may be fixing to see a decline in the population. The notion that these folks are a drain on our local economy don't ring true to me. Civil rights lawyer Cliff Johnson argues that findings like those in the auditor's report don't take into account what undocumented workers contribute to Mississippi's economy.

What I have seen, what I have learned for myself about immigrants paying taxes, paying into a Medicare system and a social security system from which they're not going to be able to draw benefits. People who for many programs are ineligible and wouldn't even dare to apply. Decked out in a black sweater and pinkish purple jeans, Sofia Hernandez buzzes around Maria's Mercado, her Latino convenience store slash Mexican restaurant slash overseas money

transfer business. I'm not speaking English. Little movie. Mexican soda and spices line the shelves. A television plays Spanish language TV in front of her two restaurant booths. Sofia came to Mississippi from Mexico 20 years ago. She started working in the chicken plants, squirreling away money until she had enough to buy Marias in 2016. After the raids, business slowed.

It impacted me a lot in the shipping. There weren't people around to send money. There wasn't enough money to send. And also in the sales of food, there wasn't as much food that was sold at that time. People were going elsewhere. Sofia says people are scared again. She herself is still undocumented. This attorney told me that I have to wait till one of my children turn 21 and they can petition for me or he told me to marry an American citizen but that is not going to happen. So we're just waiting to see.

Sofia is hopeful President Trump won't be able to follow through on his plans. I highly doubt it. There's just too many of us, too many that are born here and this is practically Mexico now. Wherever you look, if you see they're building a bridge, it's us building it. If you see people cooking and selling food, it's us doing that. We work here, we're a big part of this. She has five children. Her two youngest, six and ten years old, were born in the U.S. My children have never been back to Mexico. This is their country, this is all they know. President Trump is pledging to deport children like them along with her undocumented parents. to deport children like them along with their undocumented parents. There's always fear. I am very scared. A lot of us are very scared. But we also have a

lot of faith in God and we're also thinking there's Congress and he can just do whatever he wants. It's been 20 years and nothing has happened, so I have faith in God. Activist Michaelann Orupeza is helping people make plans in case faith isn't enough. Because what we learned in the last raid is people were not prepared. If we're taken and our children are left here, who's going to care for our children? And that's just not saying, hey, Aunt Maria, can you take care of my kids? You've got to have a power of attorney. Some people own houses.

Some people own cars. Once you're detained, it's always more difficult for you and your family member to make a decision. Can someone access your money? Anything like that needs to be thought about. And that's what we've done in response. As for Dallas Fontanez, she's still in touch with the guy she met in the break room at the chicken plant, her husband. He's calling from Guatemala.

She hasn't seen him in person since he was deported more than five years ago. He works at a coffee plant now and the phone reception is spotty. Their daughter Alida is now 13 years old. He calls us and he says to my mom that he really wanted to be with us, he just gets sad and emotional that he's not with his family. I get very emotional too because without my father, I've been doing sports, like I play basketball and then the only person that comes to my game is my mom and my mom, and I wish he was here to see it too. For Alita, the chances of a family reunion feel even more remote now with the new president. I worry a little bit because what if my dad never comes back? The documentary from the CBC Audio Documentary Unit was produced by John Chipman and Jodie

Martenson with help from Liz Hoef. And in related news, 20 undocumented people were arrested by ICE agents in Mississippi last week and charged with illegal entry.