Immigrant rights advocates are calling on the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and Representative Bennie Thompson to protect the rights of immigrant workers and release someone who has been detained since August.
At a rally in Jackson, a coalition of advocates are chanting “Free Lladi. Free Lladi. Free Lladi.”
Lladi Ambrosio is one of the many immigrants who were deported following the 2019 ICE raid at a Mississippi chicken plant. But due to harsh living conditions in her birth-nation of Guatemala, she attempted to return to her family in Morton, says Lorena Quiroz, Founder and Director of the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity.
Quiroz says “She is barely over 20 years old, she’s a young woman, and she felt that she was safer here in this country, even after she was detained, even after she served that time. And so she attempted to turn back.”
Lladi was detained as an undocumented immigrant in Arizona, where she remains in custody.
In October of last year, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas ordered ICE to stop workplace raids, and in a statement noted that these raids have been used by corporations to silence those who have reported labor law violations. Vidhi Bamzai, Staff Attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, says Lladi was involved in a sexual assault lawsuit against Koch Foods that paid out more than three million dollars. She claims the raids were a retaliation.
“Although many people who work in these factories are undocumented, they are still entitled to labor law protections,” says Bamzai. “It doesn’t matter whether you are a citizen, whether you are documented, whether you are undocumented. If you work in these kinds of conditions, you are entitled to labor law protections. So for somebody like Lladi, I want to make sure that they are protected under the full force of the law.”
Advocates say Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement, or DALE, could help protect immigrant workers from retaliation by their employers.
