Trump says American workers are hurt by immigration. But after ICE raided this Texas town, they never showed up.
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The DJs at the Spanish-language radio stations gave warnings whenever Immigration and Customs Enforcement came around. “Be careful out there,” they’d say. “The relatives are in town.”
Not on the day of the Big Raid. Nothing leaked out. State police sealed off the highways in and out of town. ICE agents came with a fleet of empty buses and left with them full.
Their target that day was the huge, steam-billowing beef plant here on the high plains of the Texas Panhandle, owned then by meatpacking giant Swift & Co. “Everyone on the production floor was shouting, ‘La Migra! La Migra!’ ” Monica Loya, a former plant worker, recalled. “There were people hiding behind machinery, in boxes, even in the carcasses.”
Operation Wagon Train hit Swift & Co. plants in six states on Dec. 12, 2006, arresting nearly 1,300 workers. In tiny Cactus, 300 were taken into custody — about 10 percent of the town’s population. It was the largest workplace raid in U.S. history.
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