By Bill Parry
Four supporters of terminated immigrant workers at the Tom Cat Bakery in Long Island City were arrested and led away in handcuffs after they chained themselves to the underside of delivery trucks early Friday morning.
The two men and two women were cheered by the immigrant workers who rallied outside the bakery instead of working their final shifts following their firing for not producing proper employment documentation.
The four were arrested around 4 a.m. and charged with disorderly conduct, according to the NYPD.
Tom Cat Bakery management had been subjected to an audit by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and told 31 workers to produce adequate working documents by Friday or face termination and possible deportation. Eleven workers were able to “satisfy the government requirements” for immigration papers, while 20 were dismissed with severance pay, according to Tom Cat Bakery attorney William Wachtel.
“The Trump administration may want us to quietly disappear, but we’re not going away silently,” Tom Cat worker Henry Rivera said. “We’re on strike today to send a message that we help make America great and we cannot just be thrown away like day-old bread.”
Tom Cat employees describe their efforts as just the beginning of a sustained fight against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrant workers, culminating in a general strike May 1. The workers also rallied outside Trump Tower earlier this month, but Wachtel said their anger is misplaced.
“This audit began under the Obama administration, before Trump was president,” Wachtel said.
An organizer from non-proft Brandworkers, which has been working with the Tom Cat Bakery employees since 2011, did not know if any deportation proceedings have begun.
“We are not sure which administration initiated the original audit here at Tom Cat, but we know that DHS has been emboldened by Trump’s racist rhetoric,” Brandworkers’ Gabriel Morales said Friday. “These are the first of many workers across the nation that will face action from ICE and DHS and have their families torn apart. This company was built on the backs of these workers and the way they’ve treated their employees is like they’re throwing out the trash.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
