Two undocumented Guatemalan men who were longtime employees at New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based seafood-processing firm Oceans Fleet, have been taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite having no criminal records, according to the men's families.
The New Bedford Light reported that the families of Marvin Yobani Chitic Us and Justo Rufino Chitic Us, who are unrelated, allege that they were taken into custody by federal agents while on their way to work on 12 May.
The families told the newspaper that at first, they only found a car belonging to one of the men abandoned and spent the morning unsure of their whereabouts.
A cousin of Marvin, who received a call from him midday, told the newspaper that “it was a very quick call."
"He just said that he was in Burlington and detained by immigration agents who presented him with papers that had his name on them," the cousin said. "He said he asked the agents to get his medication before being arrested, but the agents didn’t let him.”
Marvin’s family said that he is on the waiting list for a kidney transplant and requires weekly dialysis and daily medication.
The paper reported that the family of the other man, Justo, has not heard from him.
The alleged detentions are two among a number that have recently taken place in the Massachusetts town – a hub of U.S. seafood processing. Lisa Maya Knauer, a representative for immigrant community organization Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, told local news station NBC 10 WJAR that she believed New Bedford had become a target of ICE attention.
WJAR said that though this is not the first incident of ICE detaining a New Bedford resident, it does appear to be the first involving those employed in the seafood sector.
New Bedford was rated one of the nation’s most profitable ports by NOAA as recently as 2022, when it brought in USD 443.2 million (EUR 396.3 million) worth of seafood. Much of the value of the industry in the area is due to scallop landings and processing, the business in which both Marvin and Justo worked.
Immigrant workers hold many jobs acorss the U.S. seafood industry, and U.S. senators have tried repeatedly in recent months to protect seasonal seafood workers from counting toward a national cap on H2-B visas.
A research project conducted by the New American Economy in 2017 estimated that undocumented workers made up more than 60 percent of the American seafood industry’s workforce.
