Month: April 2018

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Trump administration’s third attempt to implement a ban on travelers from some countries. Protesters argued outside the court that it targets Muslims disproportionately. The government says the policy is needed for security reasons. Either way, for one young Washington family, it means a grandmother can’t meet her daughter’s first child. Victoria Macchi has more from outside the court.
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The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Trump administration’s third attempt to implement a ban on travelers from some countries. Protesters argued outside the court that it targets Muslims disproportionately. The government says the policy is needed for security reasons. Either way, for one young Washington family, it means a grandmother can’t meet her daughter’s first child. Victoria Macchi has more from outside the court.
…

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Washington’s efforts to denuclearize North Korea and Iran are expected to face close scrutiny soon. That’s because a deadline that would allow the U.S. to back out of the international Iran nuclear deal is fast approaching. Washington is also working toward finalizing a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which President Trump says could take place as early as June. Nuclear diplomacy was the subject of this week’s “Plugged In With Greta Van Susteren” on VOA.  Robert Raffaele has more.
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Washington’s efforts to denuclearize North Korea and Iran are expected to face close scrutiny soon. That’s because a deadline that would allow the U.S. to back out of the international Iran nuclear deal is fast approaching. Washington is also working toward finalizing a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which President Trump says could take place as early as June. Nuclear diplomacy was the subject of this week’s “Plugged In With Greta Van Susteren” on VOA.  Robert Raffaele has more.
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With President Donald Trump hosting two major European leaders at the White House this week, analysts and body language experts are paying close attention to the contrasts in his warm embrace of French President Emmanuel Macron and his past frosty exchanges with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine takes a closer look at what Trump’s “bromance” with Macron, and his more distant relationship with Merkel might mean for U.S. diplomacy.
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Editor’s note: This story contains images some readers may find disturbing.

This week, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, opens to the public, paying tribute to thousands of African Americans who were lynched by white mobs from the close of the 19th century Civil War through the 1960s. While lynching is most commonly associated with blacks in the southern United States, little attention has been paid to the lynching of other minorities, among them, Native Americans.

In his 2011 book, the Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching, Michael J. Pfeifer, history professor at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) John Jay College of Criminal Justice, describes lynching as “informal group murder.”

“The definition that I and many scholars have used stipulates that there has to be an illegally-obtained death perpetrated by a mob — three or more persons — and that the collected killing must be in service to justice, race or tradition,” he said.

Mapping mob violence

The end of the Civil War in the U.S. triggered an uptick in mob violence as whites sought to assert power over African Americans freed from slavery.

The Chicago Tribune newspaper, Tuskegee Institute (now University) sociologist Monroe Nathan Work and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began tracking lynchings in the late 1800s. Their work is the foundation of Monroe Work Today, an interactive map created by R.J. Ramey, founder of San Francisco-based Auut Studio. The map details racially-motivated mob violence between 1835 and 1964.

​Ramey said he was inspired to create the map after reading a book about lynching. “I realized that there really wasn’t visualization out there that showed how pervasive lynching was.”

“Initially, perhaps naively, we started thinking the Tuskagee Institute archives would make up the vast majority of the work,” he said. “But soon we found a number of works by academic scholars who had also researched archival records and gone back to original accounts and newspaper reports and validated the vast majority of the data.”

In all, Ramey’s team pulled data from about 60 scholarly works.

“We found hundreds more lynchings that had taken place that we didn’t know about,” he said. The project lists 4,800 individual lynchings by race or nationality; 137 are Native American.

At odds over lands, resources

“As white settlers were coming into western territories, they fell into conflict with native communities,” said CUNY historian Pfeifer. “Access to land was an issue, but also alleged criminality with regard to livestock and resources on the land. That’s something we didn’t see with lynchings of African Americans in the South.”

Sometimes settlers moved west faster than police and legal systems could be put in place.

In April, 1890, an angry group of Banning, California, ranchers pulled a Native American man named Tacho from a boxcar at the local railroad depot, dragged him about a mile down the track and hanged him from a telegraph pole.

Described by Sacramento’s Daily Record-Union as “a desperado of the worst type,” Tacho was alleged to have stolen a horse and cattle.

In June 1848, a St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin, group of local businessmen conducted a “thorough, dispassionate and impartial” murder trial, according to the Wisconsin Tribune newspaper, of a 22-year-old Anishinaabe man known as Paunais or Little Saux, accused of murdering a white man. They hanged him in front of as many as 300 spectators, including his mother, brother, wife and several tribal leaders.

“The citizens are without a state or even a territorial government, with no courts or judges to hold them, and so frequent has been the case that Indian murderers of white men have gone unpunished that …citizens were determined to …show to the Chippeways [Anishinaabe] that their barbarous acts can no longer be committed with impunity,” read the paper’s report.

“There were also questions of complex legal jurisdiction between territorial law, federal law and sovereign indigenous law,” explained Pfeifer, that could lead to legal delays which frustrated angry citizens.

In November 1897, for example, masked men stormed a Williamsport, North Dakota, jail, dragged three Native American prisoners from their cells and hanged them from a nearby beef windlass — a device used to hoist cattle carcasses. Paul Holy Track, Alex Cadotte and Phillip Ireland had been implicated in the murder of a white family; after Cadotte was granted a retrial, citizens worried all three would go free.

Tip of the iceberg

Pfeifer suspects that the 137 Native Americans identified in the MonroeWorksToday map project are only the tip of the iceberg. He said he has unearthed dozens more cases of lynched Native Americans and has “only just begun to scratch the surface.”

Some date back to the earliest colonial times: In July 1677, a group of women settlers in Marblehead, Massachusetts, beat to death and decapitated two Wampanoag Indian captives.

Sometimes, said Pfeifer, the line between lynchings and massacres can be fine.

“And some of this anti-Native violence can look like a lynching, but then shades into a massacre where multiple Natives are killed by white communities,” he explained.

“Speaking as a scholar of lynching, if a lynching was done through state authority, it would not fit the definition of lynching,” he added. “But sometimes state actors acted in a way that was unlawful.”

 

 
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Editor’s note: This story contains images some readers may find disturbing.

This week, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, opens to the public, paying tribute to thousands of African Americans who were lynched by white mobs from the close of the 19th century Civil War through the 1960s. While lynching is most commonly associated with blacks in the southern United States, little attention has been paid to the lynching of other minorities, among them, Native Americans.

In his 2011 book, the Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching, Michael J. Pfeifer, history professor at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) John Jay College of Criminal Justice, describes lynching as “informal group murder.”

“The definition that I and many scholars have used stipulates that there has to be an illegally-obtained death perpetrated by a mob — three or more persons — and that the collected killing must be in service to justice, race or tradition,” he said.

Mapping mob violence

The end of the Civil War in the U.S. triggered an uptick in mob violence as whites sought to assert power over African Americans freed from slavery.

The Chicago Tribune newspaper, Tuskegee Institute (now University) sociologist Monroe Nathan Work and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began tracking lynchings in the late 1800s. Their work is the foundation of Monroe Work Today, an interactive map created by R.J. Ramey, founder of San Francisco-based Auut Studio. The map details racially-motivated mob violence between 1835 and 1964.

​Ramey said he was inspired to create the map after reading a book about lynching. “I realized that there really wasn’t visualization out there that showed how pervasive lynching was.”

“Initially, perhaps naively, we started thinking the Tuskagee Institute archives would make up the vast majority of the work,” he said. “But soon we found a number of works by academic scholars who had also researched archival records and gone back to original accounts and newspaper reports and validated the vast majority of the data.”

In all, Ramey’s team pulled data from about 60 scholarly works.

“We found hundreds more lynchings that had taken place that we didn’t know about,” he said. The project lists 4,800 individual lynchings by race or nationality; 137 are Native American.

At odds over lands, resources

“As white settlers were coming into western territories, they fell into conflict with native communities,” said CUNY historian Pfeifer. “Access to land was an issue, but also alleged criminality with regard to livestock and resources on the land. That’s something we didn’t see with lynchings of African Americans in the South.”

Sometimes settlers moved west faster than police and legal systems could be put in place.

In April, 1890, an angry group of Banning, California, ranchers pulled a Native American man named Tacho from a boxcar at the local railroad depot, dragged him about a mile down the track and hanged him from a telegraph pole.

Described by Sacramento’s Daily Record-Union as “a desperado of the worst type,” Tacho was alleged to have stolen a horse and cattle.

In June 1848, a St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin, group of local businessmen conducted a “thorough, dispassionate and impartial” murder trial, according to the Wisconsin Tribune newspaper, of a 22-year-old Anishinaabe man known as Paunais or Little Saux, accused of murdering a white man. They hanged him in front of as many as 300 spectators, including his mother, brother, wife and several tribal leaders.

“The citizens are without a state or even a territorial government, with no courts or judges to hold them, and so frequent has been the case that Indian murderers of white men have gone unpunished that …citizens were determined to …show to the Chippeways [Anishinaabe] that their barbarous acts can no longer be committed with impunity,” read the paper’s report.

“There were also questions of complex legal jurisdiction between territorial law, federal law and sovereign indigenous law,” explained Pfeifer, that could lead to legal delays which frustrated angry citizens.

In November 1897, for example, masked men stormed a Williamsport, North Dakota, jail, dragged three Native American prisoners from their cells and hanged them from a nearby beef windlass — a device used to hoist cattle carcasses. Paul Holy Track, Alex Cadotte and Phillip Ireland had been implicated in the murder of a white family; after Cadotte was granted a retrial, citizens worried all three would go free.

Tip of the iceberg

Pfeifer suspects that the 137 Native Americans identified in the MonroeWorksToday map project are only the tip of the iceberg. He said he has unearthed dozens more cases of lynched Native Americans and has “only just begun to scratch the surface.”

Some date back to the earliest colonial times: In July 1677, a group of women settlers in Marblehead, Massachusetts, beat to death and decapitated two Wampanoag Indian captives.

Sometimes, said Pfeifer, the line between lynchings and massacres can be fine.

“And some of this anti-Native violence can look like a lynching, but then shades into a massacre where multiple Natives are killed by white communities,” he explained.

“Speaking as a scholar of lynching, if a lynching was done through state authority, it would not fit the definition of lynching,” he added. “But sometimes state actors acted in a way that was unlawful.”

 

 
…

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To the Trump administration, the recovered missile fragments were incontrovertible proof that Iran was illicitly arming Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Yet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is brushing it off as little more than cheese puffs.

During a visit to New York, the Iranian diplomat accused U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday of displaying fabricated evidence that missiles lobbed by the Houthis at civilian areas in Saudi Arabia originated in Iran. Though Tehran supports the Shiite rebel group, it firmly denies giving them missiles. But Haley has invited journalists and U.N. Security Council diplomats to inspect missile parts recovered after strikes on Saudi Arabia, bearing what U.S. military officials said were Iranian markings and characteristics.

Zarif, in an Associated Press interview, said that one such logo was from the Standard Institute of Iran, which he said regulates consumer goods — not weapons.

“It’s a sign of quality,” Zarif said. “When people want to buy it, they look at whether it’s been tested by the Standard Institute of Iran that your cheese puffs are good, your cheese puffs will not give you a stomach ache.”

He laughed and added, “I mean, nobody will put the logo of the Standard Institute of Iran on a piece of missile.”

The United States stood by its claims, pointing out that the evidence Haley presented went far beyond a single logo.

“The evidence in the Iranian Materiel Display is not fabricated,” said Defense Department spokeswoman Laura Seal. She said the U.S. had shown the evidence to 65 countries, allowing the world to “assess the evidence for themselves.”

But Zarif also pointed to a truck-size section of a missile that the U.S. said was recovered in Saudi Arabia and was transferred to a military base near Washington, where it was on display behind Haley for a photo-op. Zarif noted that the missile had been supposedly shot down in mid-air.

“I’m not saying Ambassador Haley is fabricating, but somebody is fabricating the evidence she is showing,” Zarif said.

Some of the fragments Haley presented, if authentic, would implicate Iran’s military industry more directly, including some with the logos of Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group and Shaheed Hemat Industries Group, Iranian defense entities under U.S. sanctions. Others had what Haley called “Iranian missile fingerprints,” such as short-range ballistic missiles that lacked large stabilizer fins — a feature she said only Iran’s Qiam missiles have.

Haley’s office responded to Zarif’s comments by calling the evidence of illegal Iranian weapons shipments “overwhelming and beyond dispute.”

“The fact that the Iranian regime insists on lying about that only highlights its lack of trustworthiness on every international agreement it is party to,” the U.S. Mission to the U.N. said.

Tehran’s denials aside, there’s broad agreement among the United Nations, Western countries and the Persian Gulf’s Arab leaders that Iran has armed the Houthis with ballistic missiles, even though U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit it. With U.S. support, a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen’s civil war has been bombing the Houthis, who control the capital Sanaa and much of northern Yemen.

Yet Iran’s opponents have struggled to provide foolproof evidence to back up their claims, creating an opening for Iran to deny.

After Haley’s presentations at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, some national security experts raised questions, even drawing parallels to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 2003 speech to the U.N. making the case for the Iraq War.

The fragments Haley presented were turned over to the U.S. by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — two of Iran’s fiercest critics — and U.S. military officials had trouble tracing the fragments’ chain of custody. Nor could they say when the weapons were transferred to the Houthis or, in some cases, precisely when they were launched.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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To the Trump administration, the recovered missile fragments were incontrovertible proof that Iran was illicitly arming Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Yet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is brushing it off as little more than cheese puffs.

During a visit to New York, the Iranian diplomat accused U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday of displaying fabricated evidence that missiles lobbed by the Houthis at civilian areas in Saudi Arabia originated in Iran. Though Tehran supports the Shiite rebel group, it firmly denies giving them missiles. But Haley has invited journalists and U.N. Security Council diplomats to inspect missile parts recovered after strikes on Saudi Arabia, bearing what U.S. military officials said were Iranian markings and characteristics.

Zarif, in an Associated Press interview, said that one such logo was from the Standard Institute of Iran, which he said regulates consumer goods — not weapons.

“It’s a sign of quality,” Zarif said. “When people want to buy it, they look at whether it’s been tested by the Standard Institute of Iran that your cheese puffs are good, your cheese puffs will not give you a stomach ache.”

He laughed and added, “I mean, nobody will put the logo of the Standard Institute of Iran on a piece of missile.”

The United States stood by its claims, pointing out that the evidence Haley presented went far beyond a single logo.

“The evidence in the Iranian Materiel Display is not fabricated,” said Defense Department spokeswoman Laura Seal. She said the U.S. had shown the evidence to 65 countries, allowing the world to “assess the evidence for themselves.”

But Zarif also pointed to a truck-size section of a missile that the U.S. said was recovered in Saudi Arabia and was transferred to a military base near Washington, where it was on display behind Haley for a photo-op. Zarif noted that the missile had been supposedly shot down in mid-air.

“I’m not saying Ambassador Haley is fabricating, but somebody is fabricating the evidence she is showing,” Zarif said.

Some of the fragments Haley presented, if authentic, would implicate Iran’s military industry more directly, including some with the logos of Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group and Shaheed Hemat Industries Group, Iranian defense entities under U.S. sanctions. Others had what Haley called “Iranian missile fingerprints,” such as short-range ballistic missiles that lacked large stabilizer fins — a feature she said only Iran’s Qiam missiles have.

Haley’s office responded to Zarif’s comments by calling the evidence of illegal Iranian weapons shipments “overwhelming and beyond dispute.”

“The fact that the Iranian regime insists on lying about that only highlights its lack of trustworthiness on every international agreement it is party to,” the U.S. Mission to the U.N. said.

Tehran’s denials aside, there’s broad agreement among the United Nations, Western countries and the Persian Gulf’s Arab leaders that Iran has armed the Houthis with ballistic missiles, even though U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit it. With U.S. support, a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen’s civil war has been bombing the Houthis, who control the capital Sanaa and much of northern Yemen.

Yet Iran’s opponents have struggled to provide foolproof evidence to back up their claims, creating an opening for Iran to deny.

After Haley’s presentations at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, some national security experts raised questions, even drawing parallels to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 2003 speech to the U.N. making the case for the Iraq War.

The fragments Haley presented were turned over to the U.S. by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — two of Iran’s fiercest critics — and U.S. military officials had trouble tracing the fragments’ chain of custody. Nor could they say when the weapons were transferred to the Houthis or, in some cases, precisely when they were launched.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Hamblen County, Tennessee, has entered a new era, the one that began after the immigration raid on Thursday, April 5.

In the early morning of that day, dozens of law enforcement agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, and local police stormed all entrances of the Southeastern Provisions meatpacking plant perched on a hill in the mostly rural town of Bean Station, TN. With roads blocked off and a helicopter hovering overhead, ICE agents removed about 100 people, suspected of being undocumented, and took them to a nearby National Guard armory for questioning.

It was the largest workplace raid since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, vowing to crack down on illegal immigration. Last October, ICE Director Tom Homan announced a new push to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. Homan said the goal was to eliminate the “magnet” drawing undocumented workers to the U.S.

In east Tennessee, word spread quickly through the community, including nearby Morristown, Hamblen’s county seat, where many of the workers and their families live. That day and the next, Morristown residents say, it was as if the Hispanic population was on lockdown.

“The worst part was the rumors,” said John Gullion, editor of the local newspaper, the Citizen Tribune. He said he “got rumors of every factory in town” being raided. In fact, the only raid taking place was at the meat processing plant in Bean Station, just over the line in Grainger County.

A town of 29,000, Morristown was previously a sleepy, insular city in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. But in the past two decades, new industries have brought jobs and growth. Earlier this month, a Belgian bus manufacturing company announced plans to open a plant in the area.

With the new jobs have come new workers. Between the censuses of 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population in the area nearly doubled as workers came to take jobs at a new poultry-processing plant, auto-parts manufacturers, and furniture companies. Hispanics now make up nearly 21 percent of Morristown’s population.

The influx brought new tensions among community members, as the mostly-white population adjusted to a growing Hispanic population in its midst.

But with the raid, came solidarity.

Aftermath

An employee at a local staffing agency said the agency’s office was dead quiet that Thursday afternoon, at a time when it was usually bustling with Hispanic workers coming in and out. Teachers and other school staff members rode buses home with Hispanic students to make sure their students weren’t coming home to empty houses.

Meanwhile, friends and families of the detainees gathered across the road from the armory, filling the parking lot of a local pizza joint for hours, some remaining until 3 a.m. for word of their loved ones.

KC Curberson-Alvarado, head of local Latino interest group HOLA Lakeway, heard about the raid around midmorning, an hour or two after it happened. She contacted a statewide immigration rights group for legal aid and then set up operations at the national guard armory, helping family members get information and provide documentation and, in some cases, medicines for their loved ones in custody.

 

 “We’re still conducting interviews with workers who were released to learn exactly what happened,” said Stephanie Teatro of the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition, talking about sorting out the details of the raid. While more than 100 are believed to have been rounded up and taken to the armory, she said, 97 were formally arrested and charged. Of those, 54 have been placed in ICE detention centers in Louisiana and Alabama. Thirty-two were released, but will still have to fight deportation in court.

“It’s just a matter of whether they can fight here with their family,” Teatro said, “or in a detention center in Louisiana” where the Southern Poverty Law Center is aiding the detainees with bond hearings and legal defense. Teatro said it can cost thousands of dollars for the detainees to obtain release from the ICE facilities.

Meanwhile, some of the families of the detainees are struggling to make ends meet, in many cases having lost their breadwinner.

My heart, ‘shattered’

Beatriz’s uncle is one of 11 detainees held at the ICE immigration facility in Louisiana. On the day of the raid, she said, her father called her while she was in class at the local community college. He told her that some detainees had been taken to the armory.

“It just felt like my heart shattered,” Beatriz said. “I didn’t know what was going on.” Her dad didn’t know much either. “He just heard it from the news, because obviously our family members couldn’t contact us.”

Beatriz, a U.S. citizen, grew up in Morristown as part of an immigrant family originally from Mexico. Because of her family’s situation, the 18-year-old community college student prefers not to use her last name.

Following her dad’s direction, Beatriz drove to the armory, where she was turned away when she tried to see her family members. She waited across the street, along with crowds of others, for news. In the wee hours of Friday morning, Beatriz’s aunt was released – one of the last few to be set free. But her uncle never came out.

Since then, Beatriz’s aunt has been caring for her seven-year-old son with the help of her family. But when he asks when his dad is coming home, nobody has the answer.

‘Relationships change everything’

Seventy-seven percent of Hamblen Count citizens voted for Trump in the last presidential election. Commenters on the local paper’s Facebook page have aired their frustration over illegal immigration. “Great work,” said Carolyn Gilliam of Morristown. “Don’t forget to send their kids with them.”

“I’m sure there are hundreds of others that need to be deported,” said Trista Shaver, also of Morristown. “Hopefully they keep up the good work! And prosecute anyone who is illegally hiring them to work.”

 

“If they’re here illegally then they should be deported. No matter what.” said Matthew Gilbert of Rogersville, Tennessee.

But Gullion, the Citizen Tribune editor, said most of the anti-immigration rhetoric has been confined to social media, where “one person says it, and you get the Hallelujah Chorus,” he jokes wryly.

While the community is conservative, he said, it is also deeply humane. “I have been surprised by how many . . . people have expressed sympathy for the children or expressed that whatever way this was done was wrong.”

Curberson-Alvarado, in the thick of the group grieving for its lost members, is similarly grateful for the community response, and even that of the government agents who conducted the raid. “I will not demonize ICE,” she said. She allows that she doesn’t know what conditions were like during the raid itself, but commended ICE agents on how they allowed her group to act as go-betweens for the detainees and their families at the armory. “If this could be cordial, they were cordial.”

Meanwhile, the same community that voted overwhelmingly for Trump and his promised crackdown on illegal immigration has provided $60,000 to the affected families, many of whom have lost their principal source of income. They donated truckloads of diapers, hygiene items, and food, Curberson-Alvarado said. Teachers showed up at a couple hours’ notice for a workshop on how to help the students affected by the roundup.

Many of the longtime Morristown residents “vote Republican, they’re very conservative, but they understand this thing doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Relationships change everything.”

Even though she has citizenship, she said the shock of April 5 has planted a seed of fear that will not go away. She says she worries all the time that she’ll come home and find that something else catastrophic has happened to her family.

Her uncle remains jailed, along with dozens of other people she has known for years.

“All we do is pray to God for something good,” she said.

 
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Hamblen County, Tennessee, has entered a new era, the one that began after the immigration raid on Thursday, April 5.

In the early morning of that day, dozens of law enforcement agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, and local police stormed all entrances of the Southeastern Provisions meatpacking plant perched on a hill in the mostly rural town of Bean Station, TN. With roads blocked off and a helicopter hovering overhead, ICE agents removed about 100 people, suspected of being undocumented, and took them to a nearby National Guard armory for questioning.

It was the largest workplace raid since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, vowing to crack down on illegal immigration. Last October, ICE Director Tom Homan announced a new push to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. Homan said the goal was to eliminate the “magnet” drawing undocumented workers to the U.S.

In east Tennessee, word spread quickly through the community, including nearby Morristown, Hamblen’s county seat, where many of the workers and their families live. That day and the next, Morristown residents say, it was as if the Hispanic population was on lockdown.

“The worst part was the rumors,” said John Gullion, editor of the local newspaper, the Citizen Tribune. He said he “got rumors of every factory in town” being raided. In fact, the only raid taking place was at the meat processing plant in Bean Station, just over the line in Grainger County.

A town of 29,000, Morristown was previously a sleepy, insular city in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. But in the past two decades, new industries have brought jobs and growth. Earlier this month, a Belgian bus manufacturing company announced plans to open a plant in the area.

With the new jobs have come new workers. Between the censuses of 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population in the area nearly doubled as workers came to take jobs at a new poultry-processing plant, auto-parts manufacturers, and furniture companies. Hispanics now make up nearly 21 percent of Morristown’s population.

The influx brought new tensions among community members, as the mostly-white population adjusted to a growing Hispanic population in its midst.

But with the raid, came solidarity.

Aftermath

An employee at a local staffing agency said the agency’s office was dead quiet that Thursday afternoon, at a time when it was usually bustling with Hispanic workers coming in and out. Teachers and other school staff members rode buses home with Hispanic students to make sure their students weren’t coming home to empty houses.

Meanwhile, friends and families of the detainees gathered across the road from the armory, filling the parking lot of a local pizza joint for hours, some remaining until 3 a.m. for word of their loved ones.

KC Curberson-Alvarado, head of local Latino interest group HOLA Lakeway, heard about the raid around midmorning, an hour or two after it happened. She contacted a statewide immigration rights group for legal aid and then set up operations at the national guard armory, helping family members get information and provide documentation and, in some cases, medicines for their loved ones in custody.

 

 “We’re still conducting interviews with workers who were released to learn exactly what happened,” said Stephanie Teatro of the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition, talking about sorting out the details of the raid. While more than 100 are believed to have been rounded up and taken to the armory, she said, 97 were formally arrested and charged. Of those, 54 have been placed in ICE detention centers in Louisiana and Alabama. Thirty-two were released, but will still have to fight deportation in court.

“It’s just a matter of whether they can fight here with their family,” Teatro said, “or in a detention center in Louisiana” where the Southern Poverty Law Center is aiding the detainees with bond hearings and legal defense. Teatro said it can cost thousands of dollars for the detainees to obtain release from the ICE facilities.

Meanwhile, some of the families of the detainees are struggling to make ends meet, in many cases having lost their breadwinner.

My heart, ‘shattered’

Beatriz’s uncle is one of 11 detainees held at the ICE immigration facility in Louisiana. On the day of the raid, she said, her father called her while she was in class at the local community college. He told her that some detainees had been taken to the armory.

“It just felt like my heart shattered,” Beatriz said. “I didn’t know what was going on.” Her dad didn’t know much either. “He just heard it from the news, because obviously our family members couldn’t contact us.”

Beatriz, a U.S. citizen, grew up in Morristown as part of an immigrant family originally from Mexico. Because of her family’s situation, the 18-year-old community college student prefers not to use her last name.

Following her dad’s direction, Beatriz drove to the armory, where she was turned away when she tried to see her family members. She waited across the street, along with crowds of others, for news. In the wee hours of Friday morning, Beatriz’s aunt was released – one of the last few to be set free. But her uncle never came out.

Since then, Beatriz’s aunt has been caring for her seven-year-old son with the help of her family. But when he asks when his dad is coming home, nobody has the answer.

‘Relationships change everything’

Seventy-seven percent of Hamblen Count citizens voted for Trump in the last presidential election. Commenters on the local paper’s Facebook page have aired their frustration over illegal immigration. “Great work,” said Carolyn Gilliam of Morristown. “Don’t forget to send their kids with them.”

“I’m sure there are hundreds of others that need to be deported,” said Trista Shaver, also of Morristown. “Hopefully they keep up the good work! And prosecute anyone who is illegally hiring them to work.”

 

“If they’re here illegally then they should be deported. No matter what.” said Matthew Gilbert of Rogersville, Tennessee.

But Gullion, the Citizen Tribune editor, said most of the anti-immigration rhetoric has been confined to social media, where “one person says it, and you get the Hallelujah Chorus,” he jokes wryly.

While the community is conservative, he said, it is also deeply humane. “I have been surprised by how many . . . people have expressed sympathy for the children or expressed that whatever way this was done was wrong.”

Curberson-Alvarado, in the thick of the group grieving for its lost members, is similarly grateful for the community response, and even that of the government agents who conducted the raid. “I will not demonize ICE,” she said. She allows that she doesn’t know what conditions were like during the raid itself, but commended ICE agents on how they allowed her group to act as go-betweens for the detainees and their families at the armory. “If this could be cordial, they were cordial.”

Meanwhile, the same community that voted overwhelmingly for Trump and his promised crackdown on illegal immigration has provided $60,000 to the affected families, many of whom have lost their principal source of income. They donated truckloads of diapers, hygiene items, and food, Curberson-Alvarado said. Teachers showed up at a couple hours’ notice for a workshop on how to help the students affected by the roundup.

Many of the longtime Morristown residents “vote Republican, they’re very conservative, but they understand this thing doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Relationships change everything.”

Even though she has citizenship, she said the shock of April 5 has planted a seed of fear that will not go away. She says she worries all the time that she’ll come home and find that something else catastrophic has happened to her family.

Her uncle remains jailed, along with dozens of other people she has known for years.

“All we do is pray to God for something good,” she said.

 
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