Vol. 71/No. 12      March 26, 2007

Hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, clad in riot gear and armed with assault rifles, descended on this plant that day, as part of a coordinated raid on six Swift plants nationwide. The offensive, code-named “Operation Wagon Train,” was the government’s largest single worksite raid ever; 1,282 immigrant workers across the country were arrested. The one here, in this small Texas town, was the largest of the six.

These 295 workers were given no opportunity to contact anyone, or make arrangements for the care of their children, before being put on buses and taken 45 miles south to Amarillo, Texas, where some were deported and others jailed.

Many coworkers and neighbors of those seized are angry at the government and immigration agents for the arrests and treatment of these workers, who hail mostly from Guatemala and Mexico. They also say that the already brutal conditions in the plant have worsened since the raids.

Norma Ruiz, who lives across the highway from Swift, was driving children in her care to school December 12 when she heard the helicopters overhead and saw the cops speeding on the highway. Later she found out that these were immigration cops and that all the side streets of Dumas, located 12 miles down the road, were cordoned off.

Ruiz said that her friend is still in jail. She is among the 53 workers that a federal grand jury in Amarillo indicted January 9 on felony charges of “identity theft” and, in some cases, “illegally re-entering the country after being deported.”

An earlier request for an injunction to halt the proceedings to allow the workers to have access to legal and union representation, filed by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 540, which represents the 3,000 Swift workers here, was denied by federal judge Mary Lou Robinson.

“We didn’t know anything about what was happening that morning,” a kill-floor worker, who asked that her name not be published, told the Militant, “All of a sudden the line stopped. Our supervisors told us to go to the lunchroom.

“There we saw cops surrounding us. They started grabbing people and handcuffing them. We found out then that they were immigration. They grabbed people whether they had papers or not. After a while they ran out of handcuffs and just tied some people with ropes. I heard one woman ask to stay with her husband. The cop said, ‘I don’t care if you are married or not or anything else about you,’ as he separated them in different buses.”

Carol Valdez, an office worker at the St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Dumas, had previously worked for 12 years trimming beef at the Cactus plant. The church became the drop-off center for donations that poured in immediately after the raid. Valdez described the many donations, including a semitrailer full of food and clothing that came in from Kansas.

Not long before the December 12 raid Valdez’s son was hired by Swift, where he was being trained for packaging. “He told me the immigration agents locked all the exits and doors as if they had detailed knowledge of the plant’s layout. You couldn’t get in or out,” she said. “And they blocked all outgoing cell phone calls.

“Since the raid, we’ve been working longer hours, sometimes 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week,” Karl Jacobs, 23, said outside the plant.

Dolly Villarreal, a scaler at Swift, reported a similar experience. “The company has been hiring lots of people, but not enough to replace those who were arrested or who left because of the raid,” Villarreal said. “And they are in a hurry to get production back up to the level it was at before, so people aren’t getting the training they need.” She said that she had heard from a union shop steward that some workers on the fabrication side walked off the line last week, because the company was continuing to operate it without enough people.

Far from being intimidated or divided by the raid, most Swift workers and other Cactus residents that these reporters interviewed expressed solidarity with those arrested and outrage at la migra.

Villarreal rejected the campaign of hysteria over so-called identity theft. “I understand not wanting to have someone use your identity,” she said. “But I know people need to work and they need some papers to do that.”

Cactus resident and retired meat packer Dolores Galván used the term “the people-killing place” to describe the Swift plant. “The Mexicans and the Guatemalans Swift hires are the ones doing the hardest work,” she said. “For that they get jailed?” Galván said the laws should be changed “so that there can be legal rights for workers, from wherever.”

That sentiment drew thousands of workers from the panhandle area to the streets of Amarillo April 10 and May 1 of last year to demand legalization of undocumented immigrants.

Kevin Dwire from Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
New Bedford factory raid sparks outrage, protests
Immigration cops grab 360 at leather plant;
March 17 rally to back arrested workers
First worker of those arrested at Swift convicted of ‘identity theft’
‘Guest’ workers at U.S. farms superexploited
Chicago protest: No to raids and deportations!
‘Militant’ well received by Texas meat packers
Drop charges against Swift workers  
 
 
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