Blacks, Latinos Mount Union Drive in North Carolina

““We want a moratorium on arrests of Latino workers. They didn’t make the system, but they bear the costs,” exclaimed Rev. Nelson Johnson, co-founder of the Southern Faith, Labor and Community Alliance. Johnson was expressing his outrage following the arrests in January of nearly two dozen immigrants at Smithfield Packing Inc., the world’s largest meat processing facility located in Tar Heel, North Carolina.

With Latino workers comprising 60 percent of the more than 5,500 workers at Smithfield’s Bladen County facility, the Latino community is tremendously important for the local economy. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE agency’s January raid left a community in disarray. Following the arrests, hundreds of frightened workers did not report to work and many left town. “

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