At a Colorado meatpacking plant, a vulnerable workforce braces for Trump 2.0

President Donald Trump returns to the White House and has vowed to deport millions of immigrants and refugees as one of his first tasks. If he does, it will have a major impact on the meatpacking industry’s workforce—and on the price of our food.

Ted Genoways, a FERN senior editor and Harvest Public Media contributor, reports from Greeley, Colorado, with producer Mary Anne Andrei, where workers at the JBS plant there are bracing for whatever comes next.

Full Script

TG: President-elect Trump has promised to crack down on illegal immigration, closing the border on his first day back in the Oval Office.

SOT

Trump: And on that same day, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history. [Applause]

TG: Trump vows to remove up to 20 million immigrants, claiming that it will open up jobs for Americans. But experts say: it won’t be that easy.

The meatpacking industry historically relied on immigrant labor, especially undocumented labor.

But in the last twenty years, after a series of immigration raids, the industry turned to a new group—refugees.

TG: JBS, the largest meat producer in the world, pioneered the practice of hiring refugees for a simple reason—they couldn’t be deported. At its three largest beef plants in Texas, Nebraska, and Colorado, the company employs more than 10,000 workers.

Kim Cordova (38:28)

This workforce is an immigrant workforce, but they are here legally. 

That’s Kim Cordova, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, which represents workers at the JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado. 

She estimates that perhaps 90 percent of employees there are foreign-born.

(5:28)

All the workers, at least at this facility, are documented, are here on proper work visas, or asylum visas, refugees.

TG: But Trump has vowed that his deportation program will include rescinding legal status for people who arrived here under “humanitarian parole.” In the last four years, President Biden used this executive power to welcome about a million people… refugees from Afghanistan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti. And many of them find work in hard manufacturing jobs …. like meatpacking.

Kim Cordova (23:01)

There’s not a long line of people waiting for these jobs. They’re some of the most dangerous jobs in the world to work at, and just really dangerous working conditions.

TG: Cordova says the JBS plant in Greeley has a night shift made up of about 1,200 Haitian immigrants. They arrived in a wave about a year ago, fleeing gang violence in Haiti and drawn by the promise of a steady job with good pay at JBS. Now their future is in doubt.

Tchelly Moise is one of those Haitians. He fled to the U-S through Nicaragua and traveled up through Central America to Mexico—where he was approved for humanitarian parole. 

He’s not sure his fellow Haitians understand what Trump could do.

Tchelly Moise (10:56)

I don’t think they really see the threats that is coming. They feel secure, I don’t think they know the power that Trump is actually going to have as soon as,he becomes the president.

TG: Moise says that if the Trump administration rescinds humanitarian parole and flies Haitian asylum-seekers back to Port-au-Prince, the gangs that forced them to flee will be waiting.

Tchelly Moise (6:47)

Most of us, we left the country, obviously, because it was very bad… and we know for sure going back to Haiti is a death sentence.

TG: Mass deportations will not only endanger the immigrants who are directly affected, they could also have wider impacts on the American food system.

Don Stull is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, who studied the meatpacking industry for more than three decades.

He warns mass deportations will come with hidden costs for Americans, too.          

Don Stull:

If president-elect Trump in fact implements the kind of draconian policies that he has talked about, what we’re going to see is a devastating impact on the meat and poultry industry….

TG: Back in Colorado, Cordova predicts that Trump won’t deport legal workers on humanitarian parole. He will simply convert them to temporary work visas.

Kim Cordova (50:36)

They don’t really want to do away with immigrants. They just don’t want immigrants to have any rights. I mean, they know this country would collapse without them.

TG: What actually happens when Trump takes office remains to be seen.

I’m Ted Genoways, Harvest Public Media.