Religious leaders rally in support of workers held on immigration charges.

Minnesota’s 5th District Rep. Keith Ellison and state religious leaders are fasting for 24 hours on behalf of workers from India who were arrested on immigration charges and are being held in Fargo.

Apparently the workers came to the United States after Hurricane Katrina, paying $20,000 each for the chance to work as welders and pipefitters. They said they were told they'd get U.S. citizenship.

After being held in what they called prison-like forced labor camps in the South -- and discovering that their visas were only good for 10 months -- some of the workers walked out and filed a complaint asking the Department of Justice to look into the situation as a human-trafficking case.

While waiting for action on their complaint, they began working on construction of a North Dakota ethanol plant. Twenty-three were arrested there in October by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The workers are supported by many religious and political leaders.

"I join my friends in the faith community in solidarity with the survivors of trafficking detained by ICE. We do so to bring attention to their plight and ask for their immediate release," said Ellison in an announcement of the fast.

Also joining in the fast are Lutheran Bishop Craig Johnson, 36 pastors and AFL-CIO President Ray Waldren.

Ellison, a Minneapolis Democrat, told Minnesota Public Radio: "You know, we should go after the main movers who are the traffickers."

The fasting group will speak in front of the Federal Building in Minneapolis at 2:30 p.m. today, repeating their request that the workers be released.

Farmer on the loop of civil rights violation.

Farmworkers who have Seen for themselves that there is NO JUSTICE in this World of Woes: because the People who do the Most Work seem to get Paid the Least Money for it, while those People who do the Least Work seem to get Paid the Most Money for it. Therefore, there Needs to be a more Equitable System of Good Government, which makes Farming Profitable for whomever is Willing and Able to Learn and Work.

The FBI confirmed Yesterday it was investigating allegations that a farmer fired shotgun blasts over Mexican guest workers' heads, exposed them to pesticides and paid them less than minimum wage.

The abuse allegations were outlined in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by immigrant rights organizations.

A delegation of African Americans attempted to conduct a citizen's arrest of their boss, Charles "Bimbo" Relan, because he is violating the federal laws that define slavery, peonage, human trafficking, and servitude.

The lawsuit accuses Charles "Bimbo" Relan, owner of Bimbo's Best Produce, of forcing the workers to toil in strawberry fields in Amite, La., about 75 miles northwest of New Orleans. Relan also confiscated the workers passports so they would not flee, the lawsuit claims.

"We worked hunched over for hours, doing backbreaking work. He treated us like animals. We were not human beings," said former worker J. Jesus Martinez-Hernandez, one of 13 plaintiffs.

Hours before the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court, FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne said authorities were investigating possible civil-rights violations in the case. She declined further comment.

Relan didn't immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

According to the lawsuit, Relan oversaw field work carrying a shotgun and fired it over workers' heads "on occasion." He also shot a stray dog to death that workers had befriended, according to the lawsuit.

Relan did not spray the pesticides on workers, but in a proximity that "vapors from these pesticides came into contact with plaintiffs' skin and mouths," according to the lawsuit.

The workers were in the country legally under the H2A visa program, which enlist foreigners to do seasonal farm work for at least minimum wage.

Again ICE preventing Terror from Abroad but creating TERROR from Within

The largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history has caused panic among Hispanic families in this small southern Mississippi town, where federal agents rounded up nearly 600 plant workers suspected of being in the country Undocumented.

One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the Howard Industries transformer plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.

Fabiola Pena, 21, cradled her 2-year-old daughter as she described a chaotic scene at the plant as the raid began, followed by clapping.

"I was crying the whole time. I didn't know what to do," Pena said. "We didn't know what was happening because everyone started running. Some people thought it was a bomb but then we figured out it was immigration."

About 100 of those detained were released for humanitarian reasons, many of them mothers who were fitted with electronic monitoring bracelets and allowed to go home to their children, officials said.

Another 475 workers were transferred to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, La. Nine who were under 18 were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

John Foxworth, an attorney representing some of the immigrants, said eight appeared in federal court in Hattiesburg on Tuesday because they face criminal charges for allegedly using false Social Security and residency identification.

He said the raid was traumatic for families.

"There was no communication, an immediate loss of any kind of news and a lack of understanding of what's happening to their loved ones," he said. "A complete and utter feeling of helplessness."

The superintendent of the county school district said about half of the district's approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday.

Roberto Velez, pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Peniel, where an estimated 30 to 40 percent the 200 parishioners were caught up in the raid, said that's because parents were afraid immigration officials would take them.

"They didn't send their kids to school today," he said. "How scared is that?"
Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.

Elizabeth Alegria, 26, a Mexican immigrant, was working at the plant Monday when ICE agents stormed in. When they found out she has two sons, ages 4 and 9, she was fitted with a bracelet and told to appear in federal court next month. Her husband, Andres, was not so lucky.

"I'm very traumatized because I don't know if they are going to let my husband go and when I will see him," Elizabeth Alegria said through a translator Tuesday as she returned to the Howard Industries parking lot to retrieve her sport utility vehicle.

"We have kids without dads and pregnant mothers who got their husbands taken away," said Velez's son, Robert, youth pastor at the church. "It was like a horror story. They got handled like they were criminals."

Howard Industries is in Mississippi's Pine Belt region, known for commercial timber growth and chicken processing plants. The tech company produces dozens of products ranging from electrical transformers to medical supplies, according to its Web site.

Gonzalez said agents had executed search warrants at both the plant and the company headquarters in nearby Ellisville. She said no company executives had been detained, but this is an "ongoing investigation and yesterday's action was just the first part."

A woman at the Ellisville headquarters told The Associated Press on Tuesday that no one was available to answer questions.

In a statement to the Laurel Leader-Call newspaper, Howard Industries said the company "runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for its jobs."

"It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants," the statement said.

The Mississippi raid is one of several nationwide in recent years.

On May 12, federal immigration officials swept into Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were detained and dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards were seized from the plant's human resources department, according to court records. In December 2006, 1,297 were arrested at Swift meatpacking plants in Nebraska and five other states.

The US is toughening its immmigration laws. New fees come into effect which include a price hike for citizenship applications. For Undocumented immigrants already in the country the situation is already dire-with many living in fear. Jose - an Undocumented immigrant from Honduras about what it means to live and work in America.

One hundred Indian guest workers marched hundreds of miles from New Orleans, LA, to Washington, DC, to protest their treatment by their employer, Signal International. Brought here under the auspices of the H2B visa program, the workers were promised much and given little in return. As concerns about immigration continue to hold the national spotlight, theirs is a cautionary tale.