WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Donald Trump defended controversial mass raids that led to the arrest of 680 undocumented migrants in the southeastern United States, saying they were an effective way to thwart illegal entry into the country.
The raids, which took place at seven chicken processing plants scattered
across six Mississippi cities, were the largest in a single state in US
history.
“I want people to know if they’re coming into the US illegally, they’re
getting out,” Trump told reporters. “And this serves as a very good
deterrent.”
He added that when “people see what they saw (Wednesday), like they will
see for a long time, they know that they’re not staying here.”
Mississippi Attorney General Mike Hurst, who was in charge of the
operation, has also defended the raids, assuring that officers had been
concerned about the children’s ability to reconnect with their parents.
Meanwhile, area chicken processing plants found themselves with drastically reduced staffs.
Koch Foods, a $3.2 billion business, posted on Facebook that it would hold
a job fair Monday, while another plant belonging to PH Food had closed its
doors on Thursday after 70 to 80 of its 100 workers were arrested, according to local media.
Of those detained, 300 have been released with ankle monitoring devices and instructions to appear before an immigration court judge to determine whether they will be deported, according to officials.
Authorities added that 30 were released on a humanitarian basis so that
their children would not be left without a guardian.
Of the 680 detainees, 122 were from Mexico, a country with which the United States recently reached an agreement to help block Central American migrants from reaching US soil.
The raids follow a weekend in which a gunman killed 22 people in El Paso,
Texas after publishing a racist manifesto online which expressed fears of a
“Hispanic invasion” of the state.
The shooting suspect admitted to police he had been targeting Mexicans,
according to an arrest warrant affidavit. — NNN-AGENCIES
