On the morning of April 5, 2018, a meatpacking plant in rural Bean Station, Tennessee was the site of what was then the largest ICE raid in more than a decade in the U.S.

That morning, 97 immigrant workers, mostly from Mexico and elsewhere in Central America were detained for being undocumented. The raid was the largest up to that point in an uptick of immigration actions authorized by the Trump administration that targeted undocumented workers in factories across the country. A little more than a year later, 680 people were arrested in a sweeping operation at food plants in Mississippi.

Almost immediately following the raid in Bean Station, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) joined forces with the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and other smaller Tennessee organizations to fight for the release of those detained.

As their work commenced, they learned very quickly of the brutal nature of the ICE agents that raided the meatpacking plant. In addition to mocking the workers they were detaining, there were reports of one agent punching a worker in the face and stepping on the neck of another that was being restrained on the ground by another agent.

That agent would later be identified as John Witsell, and both incidents were also reportedly caught on the plant’s security cameras. 

Video of the latter incident, allegedly showing Witsell stepping on the neck of a Honduran worker, was released on Aug. 19, 2022. It was found as part of the ongoing discovery in a case brought against federal agents in 2019 by the SPLC, NILC and others on behalf of seven workers who were at the Bean Station plant on the day of the raid. An investigation by nonprofit outlet Tennessee Lookout discovered the footage and made an attempt to get it released to the public.  

In the end, MSNBC was the first to publish the footage.

The workers accuse the agents of targeting and brutalizing Latino workers at the plant, violating their civil rights.

Per reporting from Tennessee Lookout, attorneys for the accused federal agents had attempted to block the public release of the security camera footage from the poultry plant, citing it would endanger the agents.

“These (agents) have offered the court zero evidence to support their position that allowing the public to view the video and hear the parties describe its contents will ‘prejudice potential jurors, provoke retaliation and place the agents at personal risk,’” NILC Attorney Joanne Elise Cuevas Ingram was quoted as writing in response to the claim by Tennessee Lookout.

On Witsell’s end, his actions have been called “excessive” by fellow agents and the Department of Justice is not representing him in the case brought by the workers and a separate one involving the other incident alleged to show him punching a worker in the face.

MSNBC reported that the Honduran migrant that got his neck stepped on for at least 24 seconds in the security camera footage has since been deported.

Southern Provision, the company behind the meatpacking plant in Bean Station closed eight months after the raid in 2018. Its owner, James Brantley, was arrested in September 2018 for inhumane and unsafe working conditions that were found at at the plant by an undercover IRS agent. He was released on bond.