US authorities have defended a migrant raid that left sobbing children not knowing where they were going to eat.

Immigration officials arrested 680 mostly Latino workers working at seven Mississippi chicken processing plants on Wednesday morning.

Children were left waiting to be picked up from school and without knowing where they would eat or spend the night because the operation was kept secret, including from the White House, according to local reports.

An 11-year-old girl was filmed crying as she pleaded for her father to be released.

Magdalena Gomez Gregorio told reporters: “I’m scared and crying because of my dad and mum. I want my dad.

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“A lot of us children are crying. I’m not going to have nothing for the first day of school for me.

“Now I don’t know where I’m going to eat.”

More than 100 civil rights activists, union organisers and clergy members in Mississippi have denounced the raid.

However Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) director Matthew Albence insisted the “textbook” operation was carried out “in a safe manner”.

The raid, planned months ago, is the largest workplace sting in at least a decade.

About 300 of those arrested were sent home by dawn on Thursday with notices to appear before immigration judges, according to ICE spokesman Bryan Cox.

Among those released were 18 youngsters, including a 14-year-old child.

Workers were assessed before they were released, including for whether they had any young children at home.

Neighbours reportedly rallied round to look after children after they returned home from school to find their parents missing.

Handcuffed female workers are escorted onto a bus following a raid by US immigration officials at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in Morton, Mississippi, 7 August 2019. (Rogelio V Solis/AP)

A Mississippi school superintendent said more than 150 students in his district remained absent from classes on Thursday, with many kept at home out of fear after the immigration raids rocked two towns in his county.

Scott County Superintendent Tony McGee said officials were trying to coax pupils back to school.

The 4,100-student school district scrambled to make plans in case no one came for students on Wednesday in the aftermath of the morning raids.

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Mr McGee said the district learned of the raids when parents began appearing to check students out from school on Wednesday morning.

He claimed ICE officials only reached out hours later about the raids.

However Jere Miles, who is in charge of the New Orleans office of the Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) unit which organised the raids, said those arrested were given access to phones to make arrangements for their children, The Washington Post reports.

The companies involved could be charged with knowingly hiring workers who are in the country illegally and will be scrutinised for tax, document and wage fraud, according to ICE director Mr Albence.