The massive workplace raid that swept up 100 immigrant workers at a meatpacking plant in Tennessee last year left a devastated community in its wake. At least 160 U.S.-citizen kids were affected as hundreds of other children skipped school the next day, fearful their families could be next. "As the tragedy and chaos unfolded on that day,” said Stephanie Teatro of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, “it was a painful reminder of why the government had stopped using this egregious enforcement tactic almost a decade before.”

A number of those workers have now filed a lawsuit against dozens of named and unnamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, alleging officers illegally targeted them. "They forcefully seized and arrested approximately 100 Latino workers. In the process, the officers berated the workers with racial slurs, punched one worker in the face, and shoved firearms in the faces of many others," the lawsuit states. "Meanwhile, the officers did not detain the plant's white workers or subject them to the same intrusive and aggressive treatment and prolonged detention that the Latino workers experienced.”

One teen whose mom was arrested was at school when he heard rumors about an immigration raid at a plant. “I tried to call my mom to let her know, but I couldn't get through. No one picked up the phone. That was how I knew.” He ended up having to move in with an aunt. When his white classmates at his new high school found out his backstory, the 16-year-old said, he was bullied and told that he should be deported along with his mom. “I don’t feel normal,” he said at the time. “I don’t feel the same. I feel lonely, like there’s no one around me anymore.”

An attorney with the National Immigration Law Center said the search warrant agents had that day only pertained the plant owner’s financial documents (he later pleaded guilty to multiple crimes). “But clearly, their purpose that day and intent was far broader than what the warrant itself authorized,” Melissa Keaney said. The vindictive and out-of-control thugs at ICE have repeatedly threatened communities with large-scale raids, most recently last December in New Jersey, when the agency claimed it would “have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at worksites” over pro-immigrant policy.