18 years ago, federal agents raided this Minnesota meatpacking town; residents fear Round 2

WORTHINGTON, MINN. – What Sandra Pineda remembers most is the fear.

On Dec. 12, 2006, Pineda woke up from a night shift at the Swift meatpacking facility along Interstate 90. About 8 a.m., a friend called her with a warning: Immigration officers were raiding the plant.

That morning, in a raid called Operation Wagon Train, Worthington was one of six towns across the nation targeted by federal raids of Swift meatpacking plants. It remains the largest one-day mass raid in U.S. history, with nearly 1,300 people arrested ― twice the number of those arrested in the largest raid under President Donald Trump.

Pineda, like dozens of other workers, was an undocumented immigrant in Worthington, a packing town on the southwestern edge of Minnesota, a landscape rich in hogs and slaughterhouses.

Born in El Salvador, Pineda crossed the Mexican border into Texas in 2005 to reunite with her husband in Worthington. Today, 18 years later, Pineda is a pastoral assistant at St. Mary’s, the Catholic church in town, where on a recent Thursday — the 18th anniversary of the raid — the pews overflowed with parishioners honoring the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

For many in the parish, and broader community, what took place in 2006 stirs painful memories.

“There will be a shadow,” said Pineda, now 40. “Always.”

As Americans look to the incoming administration’s promises to deport millions of people without legal status, past chapters of mass arrests create a chilling prelude for what may come. Unauthorized immigrants work on kitchen lines, in day cares, in hospitals and on farms, holding jobs most Americans choose not to do.

Some say packing towns feel like they have a target on their back, with many immigrants concentrated at a single factory.

Worthington, population 14,000, anchors the southwest Minnesota farmland that helps feed America. The packing towns of Sioux Falls, S.D., and Sioux City, Iowa, are not far down the road.

Today, Worthington is an immigrant-fueled economic engine, boasting a Rockwellian downtown that’s the envy of many rural Minnesota towns. According to the latest census data, 50% of Worthington’s population is nonwhite. Nearly 40 languages are spoken at home by students, according to school district data. Many in town have ties to San Marcos, Guatemala.

St. Paul immigration attorney Gloria Contreras Edin thinks the incoming administration will look to the past for lessons. Edin, who represented clients swept up in Wagon Train even though they had legal work permits, said she remembers a “gym filled with children.”

“I’m guessing they’re going to use some of the same strategies,” Edin said. “They’re smarter now.”

Locals on the immigration front lines are bracing themselves. Colleen Bents, who volunteers at a free health clinic in Worthington, spoke frankly about the incoming administration’s rhetoric on massive deportations.

”I think we have to believe what [the incoming administration] is saying,” Bents said. “We have to prepare for it.”

On a cold morning this month, with an aroma of bacon from the JBS factory hanging over the air, pedestrians hustled between the Asian and Central American grocery stores. At a Mexican restaurant, soccer played on TV. Customers hurried into a coffee shop that doubles as a church on Sundays.

For many in Worthington, stories of the raids are handed down and carried by today’s generation of young people, a binding, traumatic web.

Eugenio Lopez was 3 years old that day when his parents sat him down. They’d emigrated from Guatemala to work at area plants, including Swift.

“My parents told me: ‘We’re not legal in the U.S. We don’t have status,’” Lopez said. He learned young that “anything could change, at any moment.”

The raids began months earlier. In February 2006, ICE agents interviewing a man in an Iowa jailhouse unearthed a fake ID ring that helped people circumvent E-Verify to gain work at meatpacking plants.

That December, on Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day, approximately 100 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in blue jackets descended upon the pork plant, then owned by Swift (later purchased by Brazil-based JBS).

Workers were told to put down their tools and gather in the cafeteria. Some without documents would be deported without a chance to say goodbye to loved ones. Others were detained even though they had documents. They would not be released until days later.

Frightened workers were doing everything they could to not be taken. One of Pineda’s friends hid in a meat locker, after asking someone to lock her in from the outside. Frantic mothers kept their children home.

Pineda, who worked the night shift, did not go into work that day. She went into hiding for the next week, in fear of another raid. Star Tribune accounts at the time reported that some workers — yelling for their children — were allowed to return home. Others were not so fortunate.

“I remember bawling my eyes out,” said Andrea Duarte-Alonso.

Today, Duarte-Alonso, 28, teaches at the Worthington school district. In 2006, she was in fourth grade. She remembers her mother called her at a holiday party with other children, telling her to come home. Agents picked up her uncle, leaving his pregnant wife behind.

“You feel helpless,” said Duarte-Alonso.

The raids hit a country, like today, divided on how to solve a broken immigration system. In Washington, D.C., Michael Chertoff, who led the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, told reporters, “This problem has been with us for decades.” In St. Paul, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, fresh off re-election, said the raids represented the “type of proactive enforcement needed to combat illegal immigration and related crimes.”

The meatpacker, Swift, condemned the raids, saying the broad actions possibly violated workers’ civil rights.

In Worthington, the raids triggered deep uncertainty. Jerry Fiola, 75, the director of adult community education in 2006, said there was an “eerie quiet” in his classrooms, which once were filled with immigrants learning English after work.

Some of the families separated because of the raids never got back together, the divides in distance and legal status causing divorces.

Still, others stayed in town. Over time, Pineda returned to work, then started a pupusa food truck. In 2016, she gained citizenship.

It’s unknown exactly what the Trump administration might do. Trump on the campaign trail promised the “largest deportation,” though top Republicans, including House Leader Mike Johnson, have reiterated enforcement will first focus on individuals with criminal records. Trump’s selection for Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, maintains close ties to the farm industry that relies on immigrants to process meat.

Worthington has changed in the 18 years since the raid, say many in the community. Children of the workers at that time have grown up, gotten married, integrated into the town’s fabric. They’re more aware of their rights, more likely to know how to contact a lawyer. There are more legal resources now.

There’s also a new sheriff, Ryan Kruger, who locals say has built bridges to the immigrant community. A free health care clinic aids many uninsured immigrants. Last fall, Lopez ran for an open seat on the City Council. He did not win, but he amassed nearly 20% of the vote with little name recognition.

“Worthington is a lot more welcoming, a lot more open,” said Lopez, who attends the local community college. “Especially with our law enforcement. They’ve been building that trust.”

The next administration may well test those bonds. While Trump won 67% of the voters in surrounding Nobles County, in town, voters were more closely split. Still, around Worthington, many feel the incoming administration has a mandate to put a stopper on the record-breaking influx of migrants under President Joe Biden.

At a shop selling the traje, or traditional Guatemalan dresses, Salia Lopez sits behind a sewing machine with her dark hair pulled back. She said some immigrants appreciated that Trump promised a tougher stance on the cartels responsible for violence and instability south of the U.S. border.

“If [Trump’s] going to deport us, we have to accept that that’s what God wants,” Lopez said, through an interpreter.

This year, on Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day, the Rev. Jim Callahan, a retired Catholic priest, waited for a staffer to pick up roses from Hy-Vee so Mass could begin in the basement of a health care clinic in a nondescript office building.

Callahan came to Worthington in 2010 and started the clinic at the urging of local officials, noting immigrants were seeking health care in the hospital emergency room.

“One of the things we found out was that many of the people were shell-shocked still from [the 2006 raid],” Callahan said. “Even today, there’s a lot of after-effects, you know, PTSD.”

Yellow flowers from Hy-Vee arrived about noon. Callahan began the Mass, reading from Luke the passage about the angel Gabriel visiting the Virgin Mary.

“Do not be afraid,” Callahan said, repeating from the Gospel.

Around the table, a dozen people lowered their heads in prayer, the mood heavy with the unknown.