Reported today on The New York Times For the full article visit:
After ICE Raids, a Reckoning in Mississippi's Chicken CountryA series of federal immigration raids swept up nearly 700 undocumented workers, creating opportunities - and some ethical concerns - for American-born residents.The Koch Foods chicken processing plant in Morton, Miss., was targeted by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Some Hispanic employees who were rounded up, a colleague said, wanted to work so badly that they tried to return the next day.Credit...Annie Flanagan for The New York Times[Race affects our lives in countless ways. To read more provocative stories on race from The Times, sign up for our Race/Related newsletter here.]MORTON, Miss. - Juan Grant strode into the Koch Foods chicken processing plant for his new job on a Wednesday morning, joining many other African-Americans in a procession of rubber boots, hairnets and last cigarettes before the grind.At 20, Mr. Grant was too young to remember the days of a nearly all-white work force in Mississippi's poultry industry, or the civil rights boycotts and protests that followed. He was too young to have seen how white workers largely moved on after that, leaving the business of killing, cutting and packing to African-Americans.He did not know the time before Hispanic workers began arriving in the heart of chicken country by the thousands, recruited by plant managers looking to fill low-paying jobs in an expanding industry.But Mr. Grant clearly remembered Aug. 7, the day the Trump administration performed sweeping immigration raids on seven chicken plants in central Mississippi. He remembered the news flashing on his phone: 680 Hispanic workers arrested. He remembers seeing an opportunity. "I figured there should be some jobs," he said.He figured right. The raids were believed to be the largest stat
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