Title: Interpreting After the Largest ICE Raid in U.S. History
Abstract: On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some nine hundred agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of Agriprocessors, Inc., the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat- packing plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa. The raid—officiais boasted— was "the largest single-site operation of its kind in American history." At that same hour, twenty-six federally certified interpreters from all over the country were en route to the small neighboring city of Waterloo, Iowa, having no idea what their mission was about. The investigation had started more than a year earlier. Raid preparations had begun in December. The clerk's office of the U.S. District Court had contracted the interpreters a month ahead but was not at liberty to tell us the whole truth, lest the impending raid be compromised. The operation was led by ICE, which belongs to the executive branch, whereas the U.S. District Court, belonging to the judicial branch, had to formulate its own official reason for par- ticipating. Accordingly, the court had to move for two weeks to a remote location as part of a "Continuity of Operation Exercise" in case they were ever disrupted by an emergency, which, in Iowa, is likely to be a tornado or flood. That is what we were told, but, frankly, I was not prepared for a disaster of such a different kind— one which was entirely man-made.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
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