In December 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out the largest workplace raid in history. They arrested over 1,300 workers in six states, including 300 from Cactus, Texas, a small town with just over 3,000 residents. The Cactus workers were picked up from a meatpacking plant, owned by Swift & Co. before it was acquired by JBS in 2007.
In the aftermath of “Operation Wagon Train,” meatpackers have struggled to fill jobs, The Washington Post reports. As white Americans fail to fill the gaps, meatpackers have continued to employ refugee workers and other vulnerable immigrant communities. The absence of white Americans from applicant pools suggests a fallacy in anti-immigrant rhetoric that says immigration threatens American jobs.
Meatpacking jobs are extremely dangerous, but can also provide some of the highest wages for non-English speaking workers. Workers at JBS’s plant in Cactus can make $17 an hour, with benefits and a union. In Cactus, JBS has employed Burmese, Sudanese, Somali, Guatemalan, and other immigrant populations.
The rise of immigrant populations in historically white, rural towns has sparked tension in many regions. Last year, in a story for FERN, journalist Ted Genoways wrote about a white supremacist group’s plot to bomb a Somali community in Kansas. The community was primarily employed by the local Tyson meatpacking plant.