(CNN) Workers who were detained when ICE raided a Tennessee meatpacking plant last year have filed a class-action lawsuit seeking damages and alleging that agents used racial slurs and excessive force.

The seven plaintiffs in the case claim that authorities illegally targeted Latino workers when they stormed into the Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant in April 2018.

"They detained those workers solely on the basis of their race, using intrusive, militaristic and even violent measures. This is law enforcement overreach, plain and simple," said Meredith Stewart, a senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center and one of the workers' lawyers.

"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 alleges. "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."

Melissa Keaney, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center who's also on the workers' legal team, told reporters Thursday that the lawsuit was the first to challenge a large-scale worksite enforcement operation in the United States.

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