Biden Administration Effectively Ends "Goon Squad" / ICE Raids -- At Workplaces, Overnight...

It was always clear. To anyone with. . . eyes, at least (and to anyone who had ever worked a dangerous shift): the whole point -- for the prior administration -- was cruelty, and terror.

Terrorize the workplace dissenters -- the ones doing dirty and dangerous work, at low wages, primarily in the South. [Middle school kids not knowing if their mom and dad would ever return home, after being yanked off the shop floor.]

Make the remaining workers agree to horrendous working conditions -- in industrial chicken processing plants, fertilizer and dog food factories, mines and farm field workers -- or face more mass deportations. In sum, silence. . . anyone who dared to assert US OSHA (or NLRB) regulations in their workplaces. All while lining the pockets of Tangerine's big donors -- who owned these insidious businesses. [Almost no US born white people wanted to / were willing to work in those awful conditions, in the first place. So the ruse about protecting native US workers' job opportunities was. . . utterly false.]

And so, for four long years, ICE under Trump was acting much as the 1880s Pinkertons did -- in the Ludlow, Colorado mining and rail strikes / workers' uprisings. But no more -- here is NPR on it tonight.

. . ."Under the previous administration, these resource-intensive operations resulted in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers," DHS said about the change. While the raids attracted attention and made headlines, the agency says they "were used as a tool by exploitative employers to suppress and retaliate against workers' assertion of labor laws."

The announcement is part of a shift in strategy under the Biden administration that puts a new emphasis on going after businesses and employers that violate labor laws. In addition to halting mass raids, it supports the idea of exercising prosecutorial discretion to spare workers from charges if they witness or are the victims of abuse or exploitation in the workplace.

 "We will not tolerate unscrupulous employers who exploit unauthorized workers, conduct illegal activities, or impose unsafe working conditions," Mayorkas said in a news release about the shift. . . .

During the Trump administration, ICE carried out several massive workplace raids that the then-president touted as a centerpiece of his crackdown on undocumented immigration. One operation in 2018 resulted in the arrest of 146 employees at a meat processing company in northeast Ohio. That raid was followed by an operation in 2019 in which ICE agents arrested approximately 680 people at food processing plants in Mississippi. . . .

The darkness. . . is indeed coming to an end. And Amazon should take heed (new union referenda / elections ordered) -- especially in Alabama. Out.

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