So the couple, like many Somali immigrants who follow work around the country, headed 600 miles southwest to
They settled in
a blue-collar railroad town on the flat Midwestern prairie. They got
married, and brightened their worn apartment with plastic flowers and
colorful rugs. Hussein, 33, began working the early shift on what is
known as the “kill” side of the local meatpacking plant. Farah, 24,
soon took a job on the “fabrication” side of the operation, trimming
fat from brisket.
The promise of better pay was true enough.
But the good life would prove elusive. The young
couple didn’t know what had happened at the plant before and what that
would mean for them.
It was still dawn when dozens of federal agents, guns drawn, swept into the gray, windowless buildings at
They were from Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
taking part in a six-state sting, and they had warrants to search for
undocumented workers.
Like most of the nation’s slaughterhouses, the
plant had always been a revolving door for immigrants. Meat packing is
hard, dangerous work; the Department of Labor says it results in more
injuries than any other trade. But it doesn’t require workers to speak
English, and in
Ads placed in immigrant newspapers across the country had drawn war refugees from
Most made some money, and moved on.
But many Latino immigrants, who started arriving in
large numbers in the 1980s, stayed. They launched Spanish-language
radio programs, founded churches, set up taco trucks. And unlike
earlier immigrants, who were legal refugees designated by the U.S.
government, many of the Latinos had crossed the border illegally.
When ICE came to town in 2006, Latinos made up to 11 percent of
On the day of the raid, agents detained more than
200 of the plant’s 2,500 workers. Another 200 Latinos from the evening
shift, apparently fearful of deportation, promptly quit.
In town the raid triggered an eruption of resentment.
When Latinos marched in protest afterward, some
townspeople lined the streets with a counter-demonstration, holding
signs that read, “Go back to
“A lot of people don’t like the Latinos; they just don’t,” said
a town native who has worked at the plant for 25 years. Latinos faced
more discrimination than the previous immigrants because they had put
down roots, he said. One only had to drive down 4th street, past La
Solomera Guatemalan import store and El Tazumal Mexican restaurant, to
see their influence.
“There has been more bigotry,” Fulton said, “because there has just been more and more and more of them.”
The emotions unleashed by the raid would soon find a
new target — Sudanese and Somalis who had been attracted by the promise
of work at the meat packing plant.
The new immigrants, who had been granted refugee
status because of strife in their homelands, posed new challenges to
the status quo in
They were black, and the Somalis were Muslims.
Once a shift, at sundown, Farah asks her supervisor
if she can put down her knives and go to the bathroom. Sometimes, if
enough there are trimmers working to cover for her, the boss says yes.
Farah stands at the sink in the company locker room,
away from the drone of the factory floor. She washes her hands, her
face, her arms and her feet, turns northeast to face
Since the Somalis arrived in 2007, the supervisors
at the plant knew that some of the more devout workers prayed five
times a day, and that the sundown prayer fell before the plant’s
regularly scheduled 15-minute break. For the most part, they looked the
other way.
That changed in 2008, during
when virtually all the Muslim workers began leaving the assembly line
en masse to pray. Even those Muslims who are not particularly religious
often make an effort to pray during the holy month.
Co-workers complained that they had to pick up the
slack. Swift management told the Somalis they couldn’t pray because the
plant, one of the largest in the country, couldn’t afford to stop the
machines. Five hundred Muslim workers, infuriated, walked off the job.
Most of the Somali workers came back after Swift agreed to accommodate them by changing break times.
But the other workers protested that the Muslims had
gotten preferential treatment, an idea fueled by a story published in a
local Spanish-language newspaper that falsely claimed the Somalis had
gotten a pay raise. Fights broke out in the lunch room. Now hundreds of
Latinos — joined by the Sudanese, who are mostly Christian — walked off
the job.
Major conflict at the plant let up when
At the Autumn Woods apartments on the southeast side
of town, police were called to respond to stabbings and shootings and
other disputes five times a day. A war was building between Somalis,
who lived on one side of the complex, and the Sudanese, who lived on
the other side.
“It’s chaotic anarchy,” Police Chief
In late August of 2009, a Sudanese man at the
apartment was shot in the head. Police arrested three Somalis in
connection with the killing. Officer
Violent crimes in
They moved here in 1997, bought a house on a quiet street lined with sycamore and maple trees, and paid it off 10 years later.
“When I first came I thought this is a nice, quiet
town, this may be a nice place to retire,” Fidencio said. “But the way
it’s going now, I’m not sure.”
Mayor
“People say, ‘Mayor, close down Swift, kick ’em out of town. All of our problems would be gone,’ ” she said.
Hornady said she has been “unsettled” by the
presence of the Somali women wearing head scarves. “It is startling,”
she said. “It’s not what we’re used to.”
Just weeks after what she now terms “the
fiasco” of the fall of 2008, Hornady made some comments in the local
and national media that the town’s Somali leaders found offensive. As a
peace offering, she issued an open invitation to all Somali women to
attend a luncheon at her
She bought roses, ordered cucumber sandwiches and
brought in her mother’s silver tea service. Twelve men and six women
showed up. Hornady was offended.
The event proved to her that the Somalis think life in
She said it would take time for
There have been some attempts to foster unity in town.
The Episcopal church offers free English classes and
the city-funded Multicultural Coalition — headed by a Latino woman who
once worked at the plant — helps connect new immigrants with social
services.
The school district, where 15 years ago one in 10
students was non-white and today one in two is, has reached out to
immigrants to get their kids enrolled.
But some Somalis decided
Last year,
major conflict at the plant, in large part because it fell after the
daylight saving time change, and the prayer didn’t disrupt the work
schedule. Still, Farah and Hussein say they are frustrated by how
co-workers treat them.
“They humiliate us like we are children,” Farah
said. Farah said she and her husband must keep working in order to
support their families in
Meanwhile, the plant has been grasping for employees once again.
Early last year, a man in
The friend told him that recruiters from a meatpacking plant in
So he and his girlfriend got on a boat, fled
Seven hundred of them arrived in town last spring.
—
(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
