Union goes to court for workers seized in Greeley raid

The union representing workers at Swift & Co. meat processing plant in Greeley went to Federal District Court in Denver this morning to demand that more than 200 workers be released because they were interrogated and detained illegally.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 attorney John Bowen says, “We are saying that the were seized unlawfully, they do not know what conditions they are being held under or they have not been advised of their rights.”

The complaint will be served on the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus says, "(The government)...violated and continues to violate detained (workers) right to be free of arbitrary, prolonged and indefinite detention." The court filing says the workers are being held “incommunicado,” and have not been able to talk to lawyers or union representatives. The government has three days to respond.

The suit was filed in the name of about a dozen individual Swift workers and “all others similarly situated.”

“Up to 200 workers are being held in ICE processing centers in Aurora and the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, as well as he Park County Jail,” said Local 7 spokesperson Dave Minshall. “Other workers were released and dropped in the middle of nowhere,”" Minshall added.

Local 7 says some of those rounded up by ICE agents are legal residents of the United States.

“I’m offended by the brute force shown by the government in the raids,” said UFCW Local 7 President Ernest Duran, Jr.

In Greeley alone, more than 200 ICE agents and other law enforcement officers took part in the raids, once firing warning shots over the heads of detainees. ICE agents were dressed in combat gear and many carried shotguns. Others took up sniper positions on the roof of the Greeley plant.

“ICE terrorized 13,000 workers at Swift plants nationwide in an attempt to net 109 people,” Duran said, referring to court papers filed earlier in which ICE said was it was looking for only 109 suspects at six Swift plants. The agency arrested more than 1,300 in raids yesterday.

“We did not know this was coming,” said Fernando Rodriquez, the Local 7 director at the Greeley plant.

“When ICE hit the plant, they kept union representatives from telling people of their rights,” Rodriquez said.

The plant is running again, but running slowly. “It’s hard times for the workers. We’ve got to stick together,” Rodriquez said.