JACKSON, Miss.—The impact of the largest single-state work site immigration raid continues to reverberate through southern Mississippi as more criminal indictments for immigration-related felony charges were unsealed in early October. These indictments are stretching an already overloaded federal public defender's office, with local civil rights attorneys and volunteers stepping up to assist those who have been charged.

Of the 680 migrants who were arrested in food processing plants at seven sites during a record-setting operation by immigration officials on Aug. 7, nearly 100 of them face nonviolent immigration-related criminal charges, in addition to immigration court proceedings and potential deportation. These indictments are among a recent surge in immigration-related criminal cases being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Mississippi.

In the weeks following the raids, 71 people were indicted on criminal charges. In early October, another 27 indictments were handed down by the U.S. Attorney's Office and those defendants faced their first court appearances during the first two weeks of October.

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This second wave of defendants are among about 300 people arrested in the immigration raids in August and then released shortly afterward and have been monitored through electronic ankle bracelets, says Omodare Jupiter, federal public defender for Mississippi. These defendants are mostly women age 30 and younger from Guatemala, many of whom care for a young child at home while another member of their household, who was also detained in the raids, has remained jailed, Jupiter says.

Those facing criminal charges must navigate both the immigration court system and U.S. District Court proceedings, which can be an intimidating and alarming experience for many of these workers who are often also dealing with language barriers, says Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center, which advocates for human rights and social justice through litigation. The MacArthur Justice Center is among a small coalition of local organizations helping to provide legal support to the migrants who have been arrested. The group has raised more than $100,000 to get some defendants bail bonds and allow them to be released from jail, says Johnson, who is also a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi.

Those who've been indicted face charges including illegally reentering the country, falsely claiming to be U.S. citizens or using false Social Security numbers to gain employment, says Mike Hurst, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. Ten of the undocumented workers have pleaded guilty and about 20 have indicated that they plan to plead guilty, Hurst says. The penalties for those found guilty range from two to 10 years in prison, and those convicted would serve any jail time before being deported.

"These are scary days for these folks," Johnson says. "When you think about the legal resources needed to defend 680 immigration cases, pursue dozens of bond hearings, defend 100 federal court criminal cases and deal with dozens of administration fines, in a state with fewer people than city of Dallas and less than a dozen full-time immigration lawyers, you realize the chance of these people receiving the kind of comprehensive representation they deserve is disappointingly low."

The federal public defender's office in Jackson, which has three attorneys who litigate cases and two investigators, is representing more than half of the nearly 100 defendants who have been charged, Jupiter says. The remaining cases are being represented by panel attorneys, or private attorneys who have agreed to take on criminal cases when the public defender's office cannot. On average, the public defender's office handles approximately eight new cases a week, or about 400 cases a year, Jupiter says. Many of those arrested in the immigration raids are from Guatemala and speak an indigenous language, which makes it difficult to find interpreters who can translate, he says.

"We already had a problem with too many cases before these additional cases," Jupiter says. "We have dealt with it pretty well because we have experienced and dedicated attorneys and investigators. ... But there's not enough time, resources or human resources to have an attorney-client relationship in these cases. With the availability of indigenous interpreters and the distances that people are being held who are in custody, even under the best of all circumstances, there would be a gap in communication."

To contend with this influx of defendants, Jupiter has had to call for additional support from the Federal Public Defender's office in Gulfport, Mississippi, which Jupiter also oversees. His office also sought help from the San Diego Federal Public Defender's Office, which deals with immigration-related cases more frequently. In late August, the San Diego office sent two attorneys and one investigator who also speak Spanish and could help interview defendants and prepare for court hearings, Jupiter says.

"They helped us find friends and family members who could testify as to a client's character, that they have community ties, that they're not dangerous and they have children and family here," Jupiter says.

Jupiter says that his clients fled civil unrest in their home country and are well-established in their Mississippi communities. Many have lived for more than a decade in small towns around Jackson, working in labor-intensive jobs at local food processing plants, including Pesco Foods, PH Foods, Koch Foods, Pearl River Foods and A&B Foods.

These criminal immigration cases are part of a larger trend to prosecute more cases on the whole, says Hurst, who was sworn into office in October 2017. Under Hurst's tenure, the Southern District of Mississippi has more than doubled its litigation in recent years, going from 188 indictments in fiscal year 2016 to 443 indictments for fiscal year 2018. To handle the additional caseload, Hurst's office has hired four additional criminal assistant U.S. attorneys, bringing the total to 27 attorneys in their criminal division and 11 attorneys in the civil division, Hurst says.

There is a history of large-scale workplace immigration raids in this part of Mississippi, Hurst says. In 2008, Hurst was an assistant U.S. attorney involved in a previous record-breaking immigration raid in this area, resulting in nearly 600 workers arrested from a Howard Industries plant in Laurel. It was the largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history at that time.

"That was 600 illegal aliens arrested at one plant, one morning, on one shift," Hurst says. "So, these (newest) prosecutions and arrests don't surprise me."