Latinx Workers Reach Groundbreaking Class Action Settlement in Immigration Raid Case

Michelle Lapointe, Senior Attorney, National Immigration Law Center (NILC) | Twitter: @michlapointe

Case Alleged Civil Rights Violations Against Federal Agents and Tort Claims Against the U.S. Government.

In April 2018, an immigration raid at the Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant in the small town of Bean Station, Tennessee upended a community. Federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) descended on the plant alongside Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers and local police officers. Armed with long guns and raid gear, agents detained around 100 Latinx workers, transported them to a National Guard armory, and placed most in deportation proceedings.

Among those detained included individuals with permission to remain in the United States and at least one U.S. citizen.  The purported target of the operation was the plant’s owner, against whom the federal agents were executing a search warrant for documents. But agents racially profiled and detained only Latinx workers, while the white workers—including the plant owner and his associates—were free to leave (he and other managers later pleaded guilty to tax and immigration violations). During the raid, an ICE agent placed his boot on the neck of a prone and handcuffed worker and punched another worker in the face.

Unity march through Morristown, Tennessee in support of impacted families (April 2018)

The raid split up families and terrorized the community – over 50 of those arrested were sent to ICE detention centers in Louisiana and even those released the day of the raid faced deportation proceedings. The day after the raid, over 500 children did not show up for school in nearby Morristown. At the time, the raid was the largest in a decade; several larger ICE raids followed as part of the Trump administration’s hardline approach to immigration enforcement.

After nearly four years of litigation, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee has preliminarily approved a class settlement in Zelaya v. Hammer that will provide monetary and other relief to the workers who alleged civil rights violations.

In February 2019, the National Immigration Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, alongside pro bono counsel Sherrard Roe filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, alleging Fourth and Fifth Amendment claims under Bivens and claims under 42 U.S.C. sections 1985(3) and 1986 (conspiracy to interfere with civil rights and failure to prevent that conspiracy) on behalf of individual plaintiffs and a putative class, against 92 federal agents. The individual plaintiffs also raised Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) claims against the United States.

Gathering of community members to honor the organizing and ongoing fight for justice on the one year anniversary of the raid (Morristown, Tennessee).

In January 2021, U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motions to dismiss. The court permitted the putative class conspiracy claims to proceed, along with an individual excessive force Bivens claim and the FTCA claims. In dismissing other Bivens claims, the court noted that they “are barred not because Plaintiffs failed to allege illegal conduct, but because the law provides them no pecuniary remedy for violation of their constitutional protections.”

Following extensive discovery, the court in August 2022 certified the class under sections 1985(3) and 1986. The parties then reached a settlement, which the court preliminarily approved in October 2022, requiring payment of $550,000 to the class of approximately 100 individuals, $475,000 to the individual plaintiffs for their FTCA claims, and $150,000 in attorneys’ fees and expenses. In addition, class members will have access to a letter signed by ICE and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia, which can be used in support of immigration applications and requests for prosecutorial discretion with the Department of Homeland Security. A final fairness hearing is set for February 27, 2023.

Impacted workers and family members with Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) staff on the steps of the Supreme Court (June 2018). TIRRC worked alongside community members to organize and develop political awareness of immigration issues in the aftermath of the raid.

The Biden administration had previously repudiated the use of worksite raids, underscoring in a memo from U.S. Department Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that “[t]hese highly visible operations misallocated enforcement resources while chilling, and even serving as a tool of retaliation for, worker cooperation in workplace standards investigations.” At Southeastern Provision, workplace safety and wage and hour violations were rampant. The plant owner previously agreed to pay $610,000 in back wages and damages to the workers following a U.S. Department of Labor suit.

The Zelaya case is the only known settlement of class claims arising out of a worksite immigration raid. The Supreme Court’s tightening of the Bivens remedy in recent years will make it even more difficult to hold federal agents accountable for civil rights violations. While the wounds in the Morristown community have not fully healed, the class settlement is a step toward justice for the workers and their families.

UPDATE 02.27.23:

Today, the judge in the case approved the final settlement of the class-action claims against federal agents from the IRS and DHS – including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection. Under the $1.175 million settlement, class members will receive a total of $550,000 and, upon request, a letter from ICE confirming their membership in the class that can be included in any applications for immigration relief. The settlement also requires the United States to pay $475,000 to the six individual plaintiffs to resolve their Federal Tort Claims Act claims, including excessive force and unlawful arrest, and $150,000 in attorneys’ fees and expenses to the SPLC and NILC. Over 95% of class members have submitted claims forms to access the settlement’s benefits.