I’ve been focusing my reporting and writing activities in recent months on the legal difficulties facing immigrants in my home community of Waltham, MA, which seems a long way from food rights and raw milk. But as I research the specifics of immigrant legal situations, my mind goes back to the days of 2006-2020, when farmers producing raw milk and farm-slaughtered meat, along with their distributors and retailers, were being secretly investigated by federal and state regulators, and in some cases criminally charged, put on trial, and even jailed.
Remember Michael Hartmann, James Stuart, Victoria Bloch, Vernon Hershberger….among others, who were put on trial and even jailed?
Even if you have the facts and circumstances on your side, you face the intimidation and costs factor of being up against a government with seemingly endless resources. There’s the threat of going to prison and losing your freedom, and your business. All for farming and producing food very close to its natural state? It all seemed so unfair.
Yet in all the years of writing about food rights, I always felt like those accused could count on one thing: the legal protections of our legal system. There would be formal charges. The opportunity for bail. The guarantee of a trial by jury if you were charged with a felony. Access to legal assistance.
Over the last nearly two years, all such protections have been thrown out the window for immigrants legally in the U.S. I just wrote about a Ugandan man who has been held by ICE in a New Hampshire county jail for the last 19 months, without any formal charges, or opportunity for bail, or access to legal assistance. And within days, he could be deported….to a country he’s never heard of or had any connections to, and imprisoned there….once again without any charges having been filed. And this case is just the tip of the iceberg.
The dragnet for immigrants legally in the U.S. has become so out-of-control that large American farming organizations are begging for the authorities to back off. “These ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, decomented skilled workers that put beef on the table,” said a recent joint statement from the Kansas Livestock Association, Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association and Texas Cattle Feeders Association; in other words, immigrants are terrified to come to work for fear they’ll be picked up, thrown in jail, and forgotten. The constitution’s protections are much more than fancy legal (above: Ugandan immigrant Gedion Masunsu, wearing medals he was awarded by the U.S. military; see linked article)
concepts, they are what underlie the rule of law and we’re getting an unwelcome introduction to what life looks like without them.
Recent Comments