Over 30,000 Mississippians get stories like this delivered to their inboxes for free.

Sign up for The Today, our daily newsletter, and continue to read this story.

Haga clic aquí para leer este artículo en español.

A judge denied bail Wednesday to a Carthage mother of three — a member of a local Baptist church and former employee of the Pearl River Foods processing plant — who was arrested during immigration enforcement raids in early August.

Her pretrial paperwork presented in court erroneously said she did not have any children, though her teenage son, a U.S. citizen, sat in the courtroom during her hearing. Defense attorney Tom Rich did not call witnesses.

Due to the discrepancy, U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson said she had insufficient evidence of the defendant’s ties to the community, a key factor in determining bail.

Anderson acknowledged that defense attorneys were unprepared for the hearing due to limited access to their clients, and offered to reconsider her decision once she receives additional information.

While a marshal ushered the mom, dressed in an orange Madison County Jail jumpsuit, out of the courtroom, she turned back to look at her son, her face red and wet with tears. The teenager sat in the front row, sniffling, as he wrote out a letter on notebook paper to give to the judge.

Pretrial paperwork for another detainee in court Wednesday listed her residency as the Louisiana correctional facility where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement houses detainees.

Anderson conducted some of the very first detention hearings for people detained in the central Mississippi chicken plant raids. She denied bail for each of them.

Those three defendants — charged with illegal reentry, carrying a maximum penalty of two years in prison — will remain in custody of the U.S. Marshal Service until their October trials. Anderson determined they pose a flight risk.

“It seems like he keeps coming back to Mississippi,” Rich said to argue that one of his clients, who has reentered the U.S. after being deported three times in the past, is not a flight risk. “He wants to be here.”

The Marshals Service contracts with Madison County Correctional Facility and privately owned Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility to house federal pretrial detainees. Had the criminal defendants been granted bail, they would likely not return home but back into the custody of ICE under an ICE detainer.

U.S. attorneys argued that based on their history disobeying federal orders, each of the three defendants could not be trusted to return to court for their criminal trials.

Agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security testified about the screening process that determined which of the total 680 arrested workers would be initially released. Agent David Boyd said officers released single parents and those with medical conditions — around 300, according to past reports.

Not all those released were given ankle monitors, Boyd said, because “we ran out.”

During an arraignment hearing before Anderson earlier Wednesday morning, officials discovered they had transported the wrong person — an ICE detainee who has not been indicted on criminal charges — to the court. Anderson even appointed defense attorney Carlos Tanner to represent the man before they discovered he was not the person on the docket.

Anderson also had to reschedule a bail hearing for another defendant who came to court Wednesday because the Spanish translator assigned to him did not speak Mam, a language spoken in Guatemala.


We want to hear from you!

By listening more intently and understanding the people who make up Mississippi’s communities, our reporters put a human face on how policy affects everyday Mississippians. We’re listening closely to our readers to help us continue to align our work with the needs and priorities of people from all across Mississippi. Please take a few minutes to tell us what’s on your mind by clicking the button below.


Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Anna Wolfe, a native of Tacoma, Wa., is an investigative reporter writing about poverty and economic justice. Before joining the staff at Mississippi Today in September of 2018, Anna worked for three years at Clarion Ledger, Mississippi’s statewide daily newspaper. She also worked as an investigative reporter for the Center for Public Integrity and Jackson Free Press, the capital city’s alternative newsweekly. Anna has received national recognition for her work, including the 2021 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the 2021 Collier Prize for State Government Accountability, the 2021 John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award, the 2020 Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award and the February 2020 Sidney Award for reporting on Mississippi’s debtors prisons. She received the National Press Foundation’s 2020 Poverty and Inequality Award. She also received first place in the regional Green Eyeshade Awards in 2021 for Public Service in Online Journalism and 2020 for Business Reporting, and the local Bill Minor Prize for Investigative Journalism in 2019 and 2018 for reporting on unfair medical billing practices and hunger in the Mississippi Delta.