Zelaya v. Hammer

Case Overview

In April 2018, DHS and IRS raided the Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant in Bean Station, Tennessee in what was the largest workplace raid in nearly a decade.

The armed agents detained every worker who looked Latinx in the plant without regard to citizenship or documentation, a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Many workers weren’t even asked about documentation until hours into the raid. By then, many had already been traumatized, handcuffed, and denied communication with attorneys or family members — or access to sanitary facilities or critical medication — and taken to a holding facility.

In 2019, The National Immigration Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the law firm of Sherrard, Roe, Voigt & Harbison filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven workers who had been racially profiled and subjected to excessive force during the raid.

In August of 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee granted the plaintiffs’ motion to certify the class of approximately 100 workers. This was a precedent-setting decision which paved the way for class wide relief for the unlawful policing and racial profiling claims brought in the lawsuit.

In October 2022, a federal judge preliminarily approved, and in February 2023, the court formally approved a historic settlement agreement which provided over $1.175 million to the workers and required the United States to pay $475,000 to the six named plaintiffs to settle their claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, including excessive force and unlawful arrest. The settlement is the largest and only known class settlement relating to an immigration raid and the first of its kind to provide avenues for immigration relief for plaintiffs in settlement.