Twenty immigrants were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Mississippi last week and charged with illegal entry. It is unknown where in the state these arrests took place, but all were being held in the Madison County Detention Center as of Friday.
This increase in immigration enforcement activity is already visible across the state, according to Cliff Johnson, Director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
“We're hearing stories right here in Mississippi of ICE agents popping up in different places,” Johnson said. “We heard a story yesterday about ICE agents at the Wal-Mart in Oxford asking people to show identifying papers. It's deeply troubling.”
Some of the largest workplace immigration raids of Trump's first term took place in Mississippi in 2019, when sweeps of chicken-processing plants resulted in the arrests of 680 people. Johnson says the uncertainty around how their communities will be affected by this latest crackdown has immigrants across the state living in fear.
“Whether we'll see, in addition to ICE picking up isolated people here, additional mass raids, we just don't know.” Johnson said. "That's what makes it so difficult for people to go on with their lives, and I can assure you, our immigrant friends are very concerned and obviously quite scared.”
According to an August 2024 report from the State Auditor's office, there are around 22,000 undocumented immigrants in Mississippi.
