Immigration Pt. 1: Criminalized Work and the Chicken We Eat

in person for their jobs, Americans can't stay healthy. They're not going to be fed. So in this episode, we're gonna take a look at a group of workers we Americans required to keep our country going that that are not only overlooked, underpaid, and undervalued, but we've been actively attacking them for years. This is Tom Coliko and this

is Citizen Chef. We have immigrant workers who are growing and picking and processing the vast majority of our food, but according to the Department of Agriculture, half of them, over million men and women, are undocumented labor contractors and growers estimated that NUMB would be much higher around and so right now, in the summer of we're in the middle of a global pandemic and its growing season here in the United States, and we've experienced several years of

a government that has systematically trying to do its very best to prevent the so called illegal workers from making a living in this country. These are people who pick and process our food and they are absolutely essential. We don't eat if they don't show up to work. By this logic, they should have so much power, but instead, immigrant workers are some of the most vulnerable people in this country. In this episode, we'll take a look at

the paradox of the immigrant essential worker in America. They work for low pay, they are subject to the whims of a political party in power, can't benefit from our unemployment system, are social security system that they pay into if they're working on the books, and most of them are and much of time to live in fear being rounded up and detained, deported and separated from their families for the crime of showing up to work and doing

a job that all Americans need them to do. I'm really pleased that y'all are shining a light on on this subject. So today I am talking to Dr Angela Stsi. I'm Associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and we're going to look into the conditions in which some of these workers do their jobs. This is uh something that I really kind of has been bugging me since I read of the raids in Mississippi.

But I guess to tea it off, and I guess right now, American contumes about nine billion chickens a year, so it's about twenty four million chickens per day. So let's just start there where we always this chicken crazy in this country. We are a bit chicken crazed in this country. You're right, So Americans eat almost I think we're at about ninety three pounds of chicken per year per capita, so per person, which is virtually an all time high, up considerably from when I was a kid

or when our grandparents were were consuming chicken. Um and experts sort of point to two trends that have led to to our appetite for chicken. That's really we're we're ramping up in the nineteen eighties, and one is our increased interest in our health and our recognition that cholesterol

contributes to to poor heart health. The poultry industry did a really good job in the eighties and nineties of of sort of capitalizing on that concern and marketing right as as white meat that was that was better for our heart health. And simultaneously there was a big rise during those decades of our consumption of fast food and that extended um or built on on the more traditional meal fast food meal of hamburger, into chicken nuggets and

chicken sandwiches. And together these two sort of trends in in the US diet led to a dramatic increase in the amount of chicken we eat, right and the majority of the chicken. Again, this the new story of the raids in Mississippi is what really sort of prompts me to look at this. I mean, obviously I'm a chef, um, I I sell a lot of chicken. Uh, we eat a good amount of chicken at home as well. But when I read about the raids in in Mississippi, I started thinking of is this going to happen, um in

not only Mississippi. Is this gonna happen in Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania. And if this, if this happens and we're losing um, you know a large part of the workforce who's doing this, What is this gonna do the cost of chicken is it gonna is it gonna increase? And so I guess, let's talk about chicken processing down south? Why the industry um moved down south? How it started down south? And

starting I guess in World War two? Who was working in these plants and and how did that labor force change over over over the the poultry industry really grew

up in the South. So unlike meat processing, which was, you know, an urban manufacturing job, poultry really grew up, like you say, um around World War two in the South because land was cheap, much of it was not terribly fertile, and there was importantly a large supply of of poor folks who needed jobs and who saw work and chicken plants as a step up from other types of jobs that they could have, principally farm work right

outdoor labor on farms. In in and around World War two, the industry relied heavily on poor white women, many of whom were who were alone with their with their partners away at war. And and it really, you know, began, as you're probably aware, tom sort of as a initially a backyard industry that that supplemented people's dinner plates and maybe a little brought in a little extra income with the eggs that you could sell or the chickens that

you could sell. But starting around the nineteen thirties and forties, it it became an industrial food source, and and women worked largely on those lines, on the processing lines in the early years. So let's let's focus on the raids. This is what really sort of piqued my interest again. Um, like most people, I woke up to the news back in August of these raids, and and obviously because I am I'm a chef and and always look at things through food lens, two things came to mind right away.

Number one, Um, is this something that is you know it is going to extend outside of Mississippi? And how does something like this happen? Well, it was a coordinated effort, so it was actually across UH, seven different plants simultaneously in six different towns. It was an enforcement action that took months, if not years to organize UH and the government flew in hundreds of agents in order to carry

it out. I was taken by surprise by the raids, as I think many were, because our entire industrial food system relies on undocumented labor, and there are undocumented workers in our communities across our entire country, from Maine to Florida to Washington State and Arizona right and everywhere in between. So I'm not sure what stood out about Mississippi because

I don't think it's unique. You know, a town or a series of towns, a region that have been transformed by Latin American immigration due to the demands of industrial food production. The investigation that led to these raids started about eighteen months before August seven. This was the largest single state immigration enforcement operation in our country's history. My name is Alisa Zool and I'm an investigative reporter with the Clarion Ledger. It's the newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. How

are you doing. I'm doing great. Thanks for agreeing to do this. Yes, let's just jump right in. Okay. It was actually really interesting to look at the search warrants that were unsealed after the raids. Uh. They included details basically making the case for why federal officials believed that undocumented workers were employed at these chicken processing plants. What we found in these search warrants is that federal investigators used ankle monitors and informants to build a case for

writing these chicken plants. Some workers had been caught, maybe at the border or during a traffic stop in other parts of the country years ago. At that time, authorities knew they didn't have permission to be in the country and put them on electronic monitoring while their immigration cases made their way through courts. So GPS coordinates actually showed that for hours every day, several days a week, these

known undocumented immigrants were reporting to chicken processing plants. And sometimes whenever undocumented immigrants were picked up by ICE agents, they directly told them we have jobs. We work for a chicken processing plant in Mississippi. Sometimes they even gave them their work I d S. What was the coordination like to actually execute the arrests, UM, This was a

massive operation. Like you mentioned earlier, hundreds of federal officials, either Homeland Security or Immigrations and Customs Enforcement came into Mississippi. A total of six and eighty people were arrested that day. UM. They were all suspective, suspected of coming into the country illegally in working without permission. UM. A lot of people were busst away and taking uh in for processing. About three people were least on the spot or within twenty

seven hours of the raids UH. The remaining a few hundred people UH were sent into ice detention. UM and that day, August seven, happened to be the first or second day of school for a lot of kids in the area. UM and UM. I think maybe that's part of the reason why this drew so much national attention and a lot of people it was just a normal day at work for them at first. What alerted to them to the fact that something strange was happening is that they heard helicopters. And one woman told me that

she showed up for work, federal agents walked in. They pointed their guns at her and ordered all the workers to put their hands on the walls. They were searched and and they were taken away that day and used of the raids spread really quickly, because you got to remember, these are really small towns. Everyone knows everyone else. And what ended up happening is a lot of people showed up outside the plant's gates as the raid was going on.

Some of them brought children, hoping to convince these agents to love let their loved ones go. Children were crying, some people were chanting let them go as people were herded onto these buses and taken away. And it's hard to overstate the humanitarian impact that these raids have had. Last my check, there were about a hundred and twenty people who were charged criminally. These offenses were mostly related to fraudulent use of Social Security cards. So in November,

an ICE representative testified at a congressional hearing. He said that investigators have found that not one of the hundreds of people arrested were engaged in any major criminal activity besides immigration and identity fraud violations. And you know, even if you didn't have criminal charges against you, a lot of people are fighting deportation and immigration courts move really slowly, so for some folks, their court dates aren't until later

this year. And this has created a humanitarian crisis because even if you weren't arrested, if you were an undocumented worker, most likely you were fired after these raids. And so as a result, a lot of families are in tough positions. They're kind of stuck in this holding pattern. They want to work, but they can't. They still have to feed their kids and pay their rent and utilities, but they can't move away to find job opportunities because they have

court dates coming up. So you know, there were always people looking for jobs in these smaller communities, but the employment pool isn't huge. UM, And have to think about two. The conditions inside a chicken processing plant aren't ideal. It can be a really messy, dirty, hard job to do. And anecdotally, UM, just talking to some people who have worked in these chicken plants, turnover is pretty high. It's

definitely not a job for everyone. I've stayed in touch with a source who works at a chicken plant in Morton, Mississippi, and she says she's just been incredibly busy since August because they still haven't been able to replace all the workers who are fired. So she's working double shifts and and and over time. I guess, yeah, longer hours, double shifts. One of the things that is that probably draws employers

to undocumented workers is precisely their undocumented status dr angels. Certainly, their undocumented status makes them exploitable and often UM less likely to stand up for better pay or against dangerous working conditions or us likely to organize a union, less likely to report or to demand UM workers compensation when

they're when they're injured. But in Mississippi, actually Latin American workers have been organizing since the early two thousand's when I was there, there was a massive firing of immigrant workers, precisely at the time that they that they're organizing was really gaining traction. I don't I don't know that organizing was on the up swing in this particular moment um.

But people have pointed to the fact that you know that that at least in the case of cook Foods, that workers you know, had brought this class action lawsuit against the company. It's hard to say whether that's you know, whether that figures into into the raids, right, So let's let's focus on the conditions. You know, we hear about injuries in plants. In your book Scrouching Out a Living, you talk about how workers would show up wearing diapers and knew sort of just give me a sense and feel.

I did not work personally in the plants, but I did have access to the plants while I was doing my research as an interpreter with the unions and as an organizer with the Mississippi Poultry Workers Center. Just kind of take us through a shift I know you did this really really well in the book. You kind of walked just you know, sort of entering the plant and walking right through the line, and I found it fascinating. Boy, I'll try. You know, the pay is low and poultry,

but this is really just the beginning. The plants. First of all, they're fortified by walls with um barbed wire at the top. They very much have a feeling of you know, what's in is supposed to be kept in, and what's out as supposed to be out. One of the times that I had the opportunity to tour a plant, a worker was standing by the door that I walked in, and he announced to me as I walked in, welcome

to the penitentiary. And that was just, you know, hit me that that that sort of comparison between being inside the walls of a chicken plant and being inside the walls of a you know, state prison. But they are you know, they're they're concrete wall rooms. It's very very cold. The plant cannot go above forty degrees in the in the areas where the the de boning is happening, where the chicken is being cut. When I was working in

with the Mississippi Poultry Workers Center. It was very normal to hear workers saying they weren't permitted to wear jackets to stay warm. Some said that they had to. So they're standing on a line with a conveyor belt of chickens whizzing by them. Currently, the limit, the federal limit for line speed is a hundred forty birds per minute.

They're at the steel table. It's very noisy. You have to sort of shout if you want to communicate with someone, even who's next to you, and the chickens are whirling past you at this tremendous rate. Workers are standing in one place and they're making the same motion up to sixty times per shift. So your your job might be to cut off one wing or to lower a shoulder, or your job might be to put the whole chicken on the cone that's going to take the chicken down

the conveyor belt. Workers also regularly complain that their equipment is dull, that their knives and scissors are dull. This creates conditions ripe for repetitive strain injuries as all as well as acute lacerations. We saw lots of amputations come through the Workers Center carpal tunnel in tendonitis or some of the major repetitive motion injuries. All Right, when when there's a laceration, I mean, do they stop the line or they just keep working through it. I have other

accounts that I've read of workplace injuries. Workers have been surprised that, you know, maybe someone has a heart attack and is lying on the ground next to them and the line just keeps running. Um. So when it comes to lacerations, I would suspect that the answer to that question has less to do with the condition of the worker as it does to do with the possible contamination

of the food source. Because food safety laws, I think are are taken very seriously and are UM police heavily, and the chicken plants um labor protections not so much. UM Again, diapers and here read reports of workers who actually wear diapers because there's there's there's just no bathroom breaks. Right, So one of the biggest complaints that poultry workers have is the um that they're not given breaks, particularly when

they need to use the bathroom. They're supposed to be a rotation system of floater system where if you need a break, you know someone can come replace you. On the line while you go to the bathroom. But that clearly isn't happening in a lot of plants and a lot of cases. And again it was the it was probably the most common complaints that we heard at the

workers center from from workers. You know, yes, the line speed is is you know, inhumane, and yes there are lots of injuries and it's cold, and we're being mistreated, and the supervie there's yelled at us, but they won't even let us use the bathroom. Right. We heard that over and over to the point where we actually took

the complaint to the director of OSHA. Mississippi doesn't have a state Occupational Safety and Health office, but there was a federal OSHA representative to the state, and along with some poultry workers and their unions, we took this complaint um too to the OSHA office and they basically said, like, we hear you, but this is a question of resources

and we just don't have enough. They said, we've got twelve I think it was twelve workers at the time these the data is a little bit dated, but at the time it was twelve workers to investigate OSHA issues across the entire state, and they said, you know, first we're going to go somewhere where UM, there's a death

on the job. Second, we're going to investigate UM cases where there were multiple injuries, and sort of going down the line, he said, you know, we're just never going to get to the point where we can and force a worker's right to use the bathroom. So on top of the sort of physicality of the difficult um nature and the cold nature and the fast nature of of

poultry work. UM, the other thing that that I heard so much from workers was the sense that they were treated like they weren't humans, UM, that they were treated like they were machines, that they were sort of see, they felt as if they were disposable. UM. Many people reported degradation by supervisors UM, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, extortion, and exchange for favorable treatment. And actually this was UM in the in one case in Mississippi at cook Foods,

one of the plants that that was rated this past year. UM. This became a class action lawsuit that was eventually, after many many years settled. But that that I think is worth mentioning, right, the sort of in humanity of working in chicken plants. And there was one worker leader who who had been there many, many years, who said, you know, the chicken plants just use you up and reach back for your kids, and that it's sort of a generational wasting of bodies. Yeah. You refer to to this is

plantation capitalism. Yeah. Yeah. And and there's a criminalization of actual work, this idea of plantation capitalism, um in in chicken processing. Yeah. I think I use the term plantation capitalism to think about, um, sort of the continuities over time in the Deep South, where you know, our food has always been produced by exploitable labors right by by people who were disenfranchised, who didn't have full rights. And this takes us, you know, takes us back to the

time of plantation, um slavery. Really when we when we look at how how food has been produced in our country, um. And you know, I think some people here plantation capitalism. I think, oh, this is sort of some figurative way of talking about racial exploitation and the plants, And in some ways it is, but I think it's a much

more direct line. I worked with poultry worker leaders who had grown up as sharecroppers on the land that their grandparents have been enslaved on and for them being able to move off that land into a wage earning job was significant, while at the same time sort of the continuities of exploitation and inability to get ahead, and sort of the generational expectations that that you know, your kids were going to be in the same position that you were in. UM, I think very real after the break,

what should the immigrant bill of rights look like? In America? We're back and you're listening to Citizen Chef. America's immigrant population is under attack. Who's gonna plant, pick, and process our food if we don't allow guest workers into our country to do it? I want to look at the role that immigrant workers have long played in our food system and ask the question, what should the immigrant bill of rights look like? In America? I'm talking to investigative journalists,

at least as you of the Mississippi Claring Ledger. What struck me is is reading the reports of the raids is the response from the chicken processors. It was almost as if well, this is all okay, we'll just move on and and and um. You know, most business as if they lost two thirds of their workforce would be freaking out, And their reaction was just like well, okay, we'll find out the workers. UM. Did this have any

additional economic ripple effect through the community. Obviously the workers were impacted, their families were impacted, but did have any additional effects. I stopped by some small Hispanic businesses in Morton, UM and they were just totally empty. One used to be a combination sort of restaurant and grocery store, but the restaurant had been closed basically since the raids. They

didn't have their customers anymore. UM. There was one employee who didn't want to talk on the record, but it was clear that they've been really struggling since the raids and UH. As far as the cost of the raids, the salaries paid to the about six hundred federal agents on the day of the raids amounted to nearly five thousand dollars overall, including the cost the investigation that extended

to eighteen months prior. UH it's cost tax payers about one point three million dollars so far, and that was according to an ICE official UM back in November. Right, and I guess you're factory again. The economic effect that I had, a ripple effect that I had through the community, UM, plus the fact that I'm assuming that these people were were working, they were paying taxes as well. They're paying

into Social Security taxes. They weren't getting paid under their table, and so UM there's a tax base that was eroded as well. There, you know. Again, Plus if you're if you're spending money UM shopping for groceries and things like that, there's also additional tax that's being paid. And I guess I'm getting at this myth that that these workers are getting Most people think that UM workers that are working without proper documentation, that they're not paying into the taxes.

They're not. They're they're they're kind of getting cash under the table, and it's it's not the case. The people I talked to were absolutely adamant about the fact that they paid taxes. They may have not been citizens, and they may have been using someone else's Social Security cards, but they were still paying income tax, They were paying sales tax, even property taxes. A lot of the folks I spoke to UM owned homes and cars, and they're paying it to Social Security that they'll never see, right

because the Social Security is under someone else's name. I still eat chicken, but every time I'm in the meat aisle at the grocery store. I can't help but to think about the raids. I'm reminded of sort of the pungent animal smell that surrounds these chicken plants. I think about the people who left their homes and families and traveled thousands of miles to make a living butchering chickens, and who now perhaps don't know where their next meal is coming from. And I look at this chicken that

will become sort of my cheap meal prep for the week. Um, But it has been so costly for so many others right there. Was are you know, the external costs that we don't actually see when we go to the store and spend you know, for regular commercial chickens about to forty nine pound or two thirty something a pound, and we don't understand the real, real, the real cost of it. I don't think we actually bear the real cost of it. And it's just a system that is propagated, you know,

through cheap labor um expendable labor. I mean this story, in this rate, it's just a microcosm of how we look at at food and how food is produced in this country. And it's just on the backs of expendable labor. Um again the cavalier idea of these plants that well, I just lost, you know again two thirds of my workforce and it's no big deal. Somebody else is there to take the job and someone else that will just kind of burn through until the next wave of immigrants

come through. Um are are um until this kind of dies down, and then I'll go back to doing these I think what they're doing now, Um, it's just it's amazing to me that the owners of these plants bear were no responsibility at all. I mean, what they were doing was breaking the law. Um. You know, we've we've managed to take uh work and criminalize work. But yet the people who are who are really reaping the benefit of the cheap labor, the owners of these plants were

no responsibility at all. And I find I just find that to to just be just you know, it's snapshot of just how our system works. And so when you say, you go into the store and you're still buying chicken, but that that memory is there, it's it's seared into your brain and you're always thinking of these people. And I think probably for you, it's it's even more visceral because you know, the people you've met, the people that that have been affected by this. It's not, um, some

abstract thing out there. And so to hear you say that every time you you buy chicken, or each chicken you think, you think of this, I think that is really the takeaway. There are people behind what you're eating, There are stories behind what you're eating, and uh, there's so many lives that are affected. And and our immigration story in this country is one of of you know, providing for a food system, whether they're working in processing plants,

whether immigrants are working in the fields. Without that labor, we're not eating. And then so the question is if you're a responsible eater, how are you responsible to that person that is doing the work? Is it okay if I bring up a couple of oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, keep keep going. You know, the people I reached out to where either individuals who are directly impacted by the raids or trying to help those people out. Um, And I think that, uh, Mississippi is a very red state.

There is also a lot of compassion for neighbors that I think is a very um important value here, especially in small towns. The non immigrant individuals of the community I spoke to. They felt very strongly for the people who ended up getting caught up in the raids. They felt like this raid helped illustrate a need for reform

within our immigration system. One woman who said, you know, she doesn't really like to talk about politics, but she just really feels that people who come over here who don't have a criminal background, who are doing their best to work hard and make a life for their families, they should be given some sort of avenue for a

citizenship or or for work authorization. UM And one pastor I talked to UM He is a priest at a local Catholic church, UM and he acknowledged that a large part of his congregation is pretty conservative, and so when the raids happened, uh, he decided, I'm not gonna put this sort of in a political framework. I'm just gonna say this is a humanitarian crisis. The people who are suffering, they are parishioners, they are our neighbors, and we need to help them. This is our Katrina. We need to

step up. I'll leave it at that and just want to say thank you for the work that you're doing and this is this has been eye opening. Thank you I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Our government is making it impossible for workers to actually work here, immigrant workers and and and doing their best to separate them from their families and locking them up in cages, and so there's a real shortage pre COVID of workers who are forming an essential duty of making sure that

we're fed. And so now with COVID, what we're seeing is that conditions in a lot of these processing plants are not safe and at all in the quest for providing cheap, cheap food, but that cheap food is you know, produced on the backs of people who are marginalized and really have no power, and in fact we have a government that is often including against them to keep them marginalized. But this is nothing new. I want to thank our guests Angela Stsi and Alisa's you and Christian Castri and

Laurie Silverbush at a place at the table. This is Citizen Chef with me Tom Colikio. Our executive producer is Christopher hastiotis, our researcher is j Lynn Shields, and our producer and editor is Garrielle Collins. Thanks for listening.