Guantanamo, Iowa… where are the desaparicidos?

Thank you Judge Kane!

Greeley (CO) Tribune:

Judge demands to know whereabouts of Colo. suspects in Swift raid
January 13, 2007

DENVER (AP)– A federal judge demanded Friday that immigration officials disclose the whereabouts of 265 people arrested in a raid at a meatpacking plant in Greeley last month.U.S. District Judge John L. Kane gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement until Jan. 22 to submit a list accounting for all the detainees, including those who have been deported.”There are people in custody — there is an urgency to this,” Kane said.Kane told ICE officials to work on the list with union attorneys who are contesting the Greeley arrests.ICE agents raided Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in six states on Dec. 12, arresting a total of 1,282 people. ICE has said about 220 face identity theft or other criminal charges and the rest face immigration charges, which are considered administrative rather than criminal.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union filed suit in Denver federal court, alleging the arrests of the 265 Greeley workers violated their constitutional rights to due process.

ICE has denied the charge.

ICE also raided Swift plants in Grand Island, Neb.; Cactus, Texas; Hyrum, Utah; Marshalltown, Iowa; and Worthington, Minn. The Denver lawsuit did not include workers arrested at those plants.

NOTE TO ICE:  KCCI-TV (Des Moines, Iowa) didn’t have any problem finding SOME of them …  try Camp Dodge Iowa — the Little Gulag on the Prairie.  Marshalltown, Iowa isn’t that hard to find on a map:

DES MOINES, Iowa — Several detainees who were removed by federal immigration agents from the Swift & Co. plant on Tuesday in Marshalltown remain in Iowa.

Nearly 1,300 workers from the meatpacking company were arrested in six states, including Iowa.

NewsChannel 8 has learned that several of them are being held at Camp Dodge in Johnston and in Iowa City.

It’s unclear how many detainees are being held at each location.

C’mon ICE-men… this little girl is hardly a “terrorist” and might appreciate seeing one of those detainees (unless you really did disappear them).  And, it’s not nice to lie to a nun…

From the Des Moines (IA) Register:

Marshalltown, Ia. — A priest’s and nun’s mission to find the mother of a nursing baby was thwarted today after they said officials from Camp Dodge would not let them inside to tell their story.

Sister Christine Feagan, from the St. Mary’s Hispanic Ministry, and The Rev. Jim Miller, who is a priest from the St. Mary’s Parish, both said they drove to Camp Dodge this afternoon to find out the status of a nursing mother who was deported and nursing a baby. They were also seeking a father with an ashmatic child.

They didn’t come with papers showing legal status. Instead, they wanted “to show them the need to be free,” said Miller.

Miller said he knows detainees were located there, because they were permitted a phone call from Camp Dodge and some had called the church seeking help.

He said an ICE officer at the facility “wouldn’t tell us anything about anybody.”

The duo returned to Marshalltown this afternoon to deal with the scores of families trying arrange care for children whose parents have been detained.

At the church’s Hispanic ministry, the baby whose mother was arrested was passed among staff and a community activist who had agreed to help care for her.

They said they don’t know when the girl, whose father is absent, will be reunited with her mother.

The child, whose name was not provided by ministry staff, cried little, and stared at the different faces visiting the ministry. Women speaking a mixture of Spanish and English coordinated plans with how they would take care of children left behind.

Carmen Montealegre is one of the women who is taking care of two of her friends’ children with family displaced by the arrests. One of the children, a seven-year-old, asks frequently why her mother was detained, she said.

“She asked me three times, ‘Did she kill someone?’ I said, ‘She was working under another name.’”

The baby left behind has her own problems.

She has been difficult to feed since her mother was arrested, Feagan said.

“The mother was breastfeeding the baby,” Feagan said. “The baby doesn’t want to eat. Another tried to breastfeed, but she knew it wasn’t her.”

Feagan said she and advocates for local Hispanic families have tried to pinpoint exactly how many children are in family-limbo to try to organize help.

A total of 408 students were absent in the Marshalltown community school district as of Wednesday morning, district officials reported.

When I called Monday morning, they were a little overwhelmed. There’s no pay pal account, but Sister Feagen and the staff could use some help buying formula and diapers (and toys… and lawyers… and…):

Hispanic Ministry
12 West Linn Street
Marshalltown, Iowa USA 50158