Mackenson Remy didn’t plan to bypass security when he drove into the parking lot of a factory in Greeley, Colorado. He’d never been there before. All he knew was this place had jobs…lots of jobs. 

Remy is originally from Haiti, and in 2023, he’d been making TikTok videos about job openings in the area for his few followers, mostly other Haitians.

What Remy didn’t know was that he had stumbled onto a meatpacking plant owned by the largest meat producer in the world, JBS. The video he made outside the facility went viral, and hundreds of Haitians moved for jobs at the plant. 

But less than a year later, Remy—and JBS—were accused of human trafficking and exploitation by the union representing workers at the plant. 

“This is America. I was hoping America to be better than back home,” says Tchelly Moise, a Haitian immigrant and union rep. “Someone needs to be held accountable for this, because this is not okay anywhere.” 

This week on Reveal, reporter Ted Genoways with the Food & Environment Reporting Network looks into JBS’ long reliance on immigrant labor for this work—and its track record of not treating those workers well. The difference this time is those same workers are now targets of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Dig Deeper

Read: They fled Haiti and work America’s most dangerous jobs. Trump plans to deport them. (Mother Jones)  

Read: How Trump’s “Mass Deportation” Plan Would Ruin America (Mother Jones)

Read: Fear Is the Goal (Mother Jones)

Credits

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Reporter: Ted Genoways | Producers: Nadia Hamdan, Steven Rascón, and Mary Anne Andrei | Editors: Jenny Casas and Maddie Oatman | Fact checkers: Eamon Whalen and Ruth Murai | Production managers: Steven Rascón and Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Legal review: James Chadwick | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs, Fernando Arruda, and Claire Mullen | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson | Special thanks to Florence Rouzier and Theodore Ross

Support for Reveal is provided by listeners like you, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.

Transcript

Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.

Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.  
 It started with a wrong turn. Mackenson Remy didn’t plan to bypass security when he drove into the parking lot of a factory in Greeley, Colorado. He’d never been there before. All he knew was this place had jobs, lots of jobs.  
 Mackenson is originally from Haiti, he’s in his thirties with braided hair and a thin beard. He’s been living in the US for almost a decade now, and recently moved to Colorado Springs. At that time in December, 2023, he’d been making TikTok videos about job openings in the area for his few followers, mostly other Haitians. A huge influx of people from Haiti have been moving to the US over the last few years, fleeing widespread violence in the country. And for those with temporary visas, having work can help their case to stay. And that’s why by the time that Mackenson took that wrong turn into that factory, his phone was already out and recording.  
Mackenson Remy:I said, good news for good news because I got assurance when you’re coming, you’re going to have a job.  
Al Letson:The video opens with Mackenson driving through the parking lot speaking in his native Creole. There are industrial truck beds, people wearing hard hats and reflective vests, and a giant red and white logo on the side of the building reads JBS.  
Mackenson Remy:That job, they pay good. They pay like $22 and $23 an hour.  
Al Letson:Mackenson didn’t know it then, but he had stumbled onto one of the biggest meatpacking plants in the country, owned by the largest meat producer in the world. If you’ve eaten a burger at McDonald’s recently or really anywhere recently, there’s a good chance the meat came from JBS.  
 Meatpacking work is hard. And Mackenson makes it clear in the video, he tells his followers, this isn’t a job for lazy people or people who don’t like the cold. He adds speaking English is not a job requirement, and if his followers come, Mackenson says he even knows a place for them to stay.  
 So if you’re interested …  
Mackenson Remy:I say you can text me, tell me when you want to come because I already know if you came, you can have a job.  
Al Letson:Mackenson posted the video that night. And when he woke up the next morning …  
Mackenson Remy:The video has been viral.  
Al Letson:It had gone viral.  
 Less than a year after Mackenson posted that video, he and JBS would be accused of human trafficking. These accusations are found in reports to multiple government agencies. Accusations that reporter Ted Genoways has been investigating for the Food and Environment Reporting Network. He’s found that to keep its shareholder profits high, JBS has a track record of recruiting people with fragile roots in the United States. The company has been sued and investigated repeatedly for not treating those workers well.  
 Ted picks up the story from here.  
Ted Genoways:Mackenson Remy didn’t know very much about JBS when he made the TikTok video. Everything he shared with his followers he says he learned from Edmond Ebah.  
Edmond Ebah:My name is Edmond Ebah, I’m from Benin, west Africa. I work at JBS plant in Greeley in Colorado.  
Ted Genoways:This is a promo video of Edmond posted to the JBS Facebook page.  
Edmond Ebah:There is nothing I can say make my work hard because I’m happy to do what I’m doing.  
Ted Genoways:Lots of soft focus and slow motion, it cuts from scene to scene, Edmond driving a van, Edmond walking through the plant, Edmond making coffee. Then it ends with Edmond sitting in an office.  
Edmond Ebah:I applied to HR cause I speak seven language and I can help people come to work for JBS.  
Ted Genoways:The video fades to white, text appears saying “Edmond has helped more than 30 people find a new life path with JBS USA.”  
 Now speaking seven languages is never not an asset for any job, but it’s especially useful at JBS because nearly all the people Edmond has hired are immigrants. There are over 3000 employees working at the plant in Greeley, and the union representing those employees says between 80% and 90% are immigrants. JBS is hardly unique. Nationally the meatpacking industry is overwhelmingly dependent on immigrant labor. But Mackenson didn’t know this. He says he was even a little surprised when he first met Edmond.  
Mackenson Remy:So when I met him, it’s like I think he’s a white guy, he’s like, “Oh, you look like my people.” He say, “Yeah, so I’m from Benin.” I say, “Oh, nice, I’m from Haiti.”  
Ted Genoways:Mackenson met Edmond the same day he made the video. And Edmond told him they had 60 jobs on the line available, jobs slaughtering, butchering and packaging the meat. He’s also the one who told Mackenson about the pay, the benefits and the fact that workers didn’t need to speak English.  
 Mackenson’s other videos on TikTok got maybe a few dozen views at most. The one he posted about the JBS job had 35,000 views the next day. And the messages started pouring in. This was way more people than expected. And there are only 60 positions available. So he texts Edmond.  
Mackenson Remy:I sent the screenshot for him, show him how many people watched the video.  
Ted Genoways:But he says Edmond didn’t seem at all fazed, he just gave Mackenson a new number of available positions.  
Mackenson Remy:He said even like a 100 or 200 people, he can help them out.  
Ted Genoways:This surprised Mackenson, but it doesn’t surprise me. Turnover in the meatpacking industry is incredibly high, an estimated 40% each year. That’s because the work is grueling and extremely dangerous. That’s been the case since the earliest days of industrial meatpacking at the turn of the 20th century. People burn out and are injured all the time.  
 But the Haitians who responded to Mackenson needed work and were enticed by the high pay. Plus Mackenson had said he could help them find a place to stay, but he had never expected this kind of response.  
Mackenson Remy:I just scared because when I see a lot of people text me and I didn’t know where they’re going to live.  
Ted Genoways:Soon he gets a text from Edmond promising that the new hires will be staying at a motel near the plant for two weeks, free of charge.  
Mackenson Remy:So then after I remember he called me, he say, “Hey, listen, we got a place for them. Don’t worry. Let them come. Let them come.”  
Ted Genoways:And so they came.  
Mackenson Remy:Hey, my boss, I’m with the guy, I’m waiting for the other one, I’m at the airport right now.  
Ted Genoways:This is a voice memo Mackenson sent to Edmond from the Denver airport. It was December, 2023, and he was picking up some of the first Haitians to arrive  
Mackenson Remy:Boss, you see the last guy I sent it to, this is him ticket, he’s already bought the ticket.  
Ted Genoways:Edmond directed him to bring everyone to a place called the Rainbow Motel. It sits right off a highway about a mile from the JBS plant. Much like other budget motels, there’s not much to it, tiny rooms, mismatched furniture, some plastic chairs out front, no pool, but there is a fenced off square of AstroTurf. And yes, there is a neon rainbow on the roof.  
 There were dozens of Haitians who came to Greeley that first month. And Mackenson quickly became their point person for almost everything. Mackenson says he would sometimes stick around Greeley for a few days to drive people to get anything they needed, food from Walmart, coats from Goodwill. It was becoming a lot.  
Mackenson Remy:Boss, this work is hard for me, boss, it’s harder. I have to explain everything with them.  
Ted Genoways:Here’s another one of those voice memos to Edmond.  
Mackenson Remy:A lot of people want to come in this job, man, I got people, but I told you I’m an influencer, bro, that’s why they trust me, bro, they really trust me, bro.  
Ted Genoways:Mackenson says he would charge each person he picked up at the Denver airport $120 to make the two and a half hour trip from Greeley and back. He also charged for the rides to Walmart and Goodwill. But Mackenson said what he really wanted was to be hired by JBS. And he asked Edmond to connect him with his boss.  
Mackenson Remy:He said, “Okay, no problem, be patient.” When the second group came, I talked to him about the same thing. He told me the same thing, you have to be patient.  
Ted Genoways:And were you being paid by JBS?  
Mackenson Remy:Nothing. JBS never paid me for anything.  
Ted Genoways:And still people kept coming, a hundred, 200, more. Even though Mackenson was frustrated with Edmond and JBS, he kept telling himself that at the end of the day he was doing something good, helping his fellow Haitians find a better life.  
 People like Auguste. That’s not his real name. We’ve given him an alias because he’s worried about retaliation from JBS.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:10:04].  
Ted Genoways:Auguste came to the US from Haiti in 2023. The country has been unraveling for years. And analysts estimate that 90% of the country is now ruled by violent gangs. Auguste feared for his family’s safety, for his own safety, he had to leave.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:10:26].  
Ted Genoways:He calls it an epic experience. And by all accounts, it was.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:10:33].  
Ted Genoways:He first flew to Brazil in March, 2023, and set off north, traveling across 10 different countries.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:10:43].  
Ted Genoways:The journey included crossing the Darien gap, a 60-mile expanse of thick rainforest at the Columbia-Panama border. Auguste walked thousands of miles.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:10:56].  
Ted Genoways:He says he slept on the jungle floor, woken up by the sounds of wild animals in the night.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:11:07].  
Ted Genoways:Auguste tells me he was always on guard because people warned him of armed thieves along the way who would rob people or worse.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:11:22].  
Ted Genoways:And then of course there were the dead. Auguste says he saw bodies along the way of people who would never finish the journey. It took a month, but he finally made it to Mexico, where Auguste immediately applied to enter the US legally via temporary protected status. TPS for short. TPS is granted to those who can demonstrate that it’s too dangerous to return to their home country. This could be because of natural disasters or armed conflicts. TPS would allow him to legally live and work in the US without a path to citizenship, but also without the threat of deportation.  
 It’s a rigorous application process. He was fingerprinted as part of a background check. He’s cheek was swabbed for medical screening. Finally, his application was approved. Auguste entered the US in the spring of 2023.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:12:23].  
Ted Genoways:Under the Biden administration, the number of immigrants eligible for TPS was expanded. There are now nearly 20 countries on the list and Haiti is one of them. Today there are more than 200,000 Haitians in the US under TPS, making them one of the largest groups with that status.  
 Auguste spent six months waiting for work authorization, often going hungry.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:12:52].  
Ted Genoways:But Auguste tells me it’s easier to live without food than it is without hope. Then he heard about Mackenson’s video.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:13:02].  
Ted Genoways:He was living in Baltimore and struggling to find work. A friend of his already moved to Greeley and got hired by JBS. He told Auguste the job was legit, so Auguste decided to go too.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:13:17]  
Ted Genoways:When he arrived in Colorado, he was taken straight to the Rainbow Motel. The room was pretty small, just big enough to walk around a full-size bed, one bathroom, no closet, a mini fridge. And to his surprise, Auguste learned he would be sharing this room.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:13:39].  
Ted Genoways:He tells me there were five, six, seven, sometimes eight people in one room. Auguste was sleeping on the floor.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:13:51].  
Ted Genoways:He tells me it was hard to live this way.  
 And when was that?  
Tchelly Moise:[foreign language 00:13:58].  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:14:00]  
Tchelly Moise:December 2023.  
Ted Genoways:I interviewed Auguste at the offices of the UFCW7, the union that represents the Greeley plant. Translating for us was a union rep named Tchelly Moise.  
Tchelly Moise:Me, I wasn’t a, I would say not a victim of the process, but I was a direct witness to the process.  
Ted Genoways:Tchelly is also from Haiti, also has temporary protected status and also worked at JBS for about six months. Part of the reason he left that job and joined the union was that he saw firsthand how these people were being treated.  
Tchelly Moise:This is extremely bad. When you go to the Rainbow Motel and you have eight people inside of one little motel room with one bed, one bathroom, women and men at the same time, so no privacy and when people have to use the bathroom, it was a very bad situation.  
Ted Genoways:There was also nowhere to make food. The motel was off a busy highway with no grocery stores, no restaurants, nothing around for miles.  
Tchelly Moise:We’ve had people saying, “I was starving for two to three days because I don’t know where to go get food.”  
Ted Genoways:The people brought to live in the Rainbow Motel were in a strange place. With little to no money, many didn’t speak English, plus it was December and freezing outside. Tchelly says people felt stranded. The motel has 17 rooms, and at the peak, Mackenson counted over a hundred Haitians staying there at once. It got so packed at one point that the union says Edmond was forced to rent a five-bedroom house nearby. But conditions there weren’t any better.  
Tchelly Moise:And there were around 40 people living inside of the house. I’m saying people sleeping on the floor, on a blanket, people everywhere. And at some point they didn’t have electricity in the house and it was winter.  
Ted Genoways:Auguste was one of the people living there. After a week and a half in the motel, he spent five months in this unfurnished house. The union says people living there were charged over a hundred dollars a week.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:16:17]  
Ted Genoways:But he says at least in the house they had a kitchen. There may be a line of people waiting to use it, but at least it was there.  
 Meanwhile, Auguste and his housemates were still expected to go to work. These jobs are essentially like working on a disassembly line, like a standard factory run in reverse. The whole cow walks off the back of a cattle trailer and is slaughtered, then broken down into steaks and roasts and ribs and hamburger meat. This work is done with things like power knives and bone saws, tools meant to cut flesh and bone. It’s no surprise that this can lead to injuries.  
 I’ve talked to dozens of people over my career who have lost fingers or had hands crushed by grinders. I remember one man who was a gut snatcher, which is exactly what it sounds like. The gut snatcher pulls all the guts out of the animal while the spine splitter cuts through the vertebrae with a bone saw. But this time they got out of sync. The spine splitter went too soon and the gut snatcher lost four of his fingers.  
 Stories like these are common across the industry. According to data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, jobs at meat packing and poultry companies are consistently among the most dangerous. Workers at JBS and their union say the speed of the line make serious injuries like amputation more commonplace. But the profits that companies like JBS make depend on how much meat they remove and how fast.  
 Around the same time this new crop of Haitian workers was hired, JBS had introduced its aptly named White Bone Program.  
Kim Cordova:This is a program where the company is trying to do is get as much of the meat and product off of a bone, it’s literally like a white bone.  
Ted Genoways:This is Kim Cordova, president of UFCW7, the Greeley plant union. She says the White Bone Program meant more cutting, more repetition, more exertion, and all at a dizzying speed.  
Kim Cordova:The line speeds were really increasing to line speeds we had never seen before.  
Ted Genoways:Almost all of the Haitian workers were put on the same evening shift, from about 2:00 to 11:00 PM, B shift. And Tchelly says B shift had faster speeds than the day shift.  
Tchelly Moise:Way faster. I mean, we have people that have been working at the plant for 10, 15 years, and they can tell us they have never seen any chain speed going over 390.  
Ted Genoways:That’s 390 head of cattle per hour. Typically workers on the day shift rarely saw speeds above 300 per hour.  
Tchelly Moise:But right now you having 420, at some point we had 430.  
Ted Genoways:That’s roughly 35,000 cows a week.  
Kim Cordova:And workers are really put at risk for their safety because it is so fast.  
Ted Genoways:Kim says people were getting injured. Union members were going to JBS management almost every day telling them to slow things down because this wasn’t safe.  
Tchelly Moise:And sometime they would bring it from 420 to 410, which is still unacceptable.  
Ted Genoways:And it wasn’t just the chain speed.  
Kim Cordova:This new group of workers were being forced to sign documents in languages that they don’t speak, in English actually, that waived their rights or abandoned their injury claims.  
Ted Genoways:Workers medical cards were being kept from them.  
Kim Cordova:Medical bills not being paid.  
Ted Genoways:Workers mail was being withheld.  
Kim Cordova:The supervisor had total control of their US mail.  
Ted Genoways:Haitians were being treated differently than other workers.  
Tchelly Moise:If I asked for a break to go to the bathroom, I will not get it.  
Ted Genoways:Meanwhile, Auguste and his fellow Haitians would go back to a so-called home with little to no food, a line for the bathroom and only the floor to sleep on.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:20:25].  
Ted Genoways:Auguste tells me every day at work he couldn’t help but notice …  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:20:34].  
Ted Genoways:That each cow had its own little cage.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:20:39].  
Ted Genoways:But he was expected to share a tiny space with five, six, seven, eight of his co-workers. It was darkly ironic, but he found himself thinking, the cows had it better.  
 What does that make you think as you see that the cows are treated better than the workers?  
Tchelly Moise:[foreign language 00:20:58].  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:21:01]  
Tchelly Moise:He say, I mean, it even make me think about the past, I feel like I was being treated as a slave. If we need to take a break, we can’t.  
Al Letson:Coming up, JBS is forced to respond.  
Ted Genoways:I mean, they told the union that they had never heard the name Mackenson, that they didn’t believe that there was such a person.  
Mackenson Remy:So they lie. They lie.  
Al Letson:Plus how President Donald Trump’s harsh deportation plans could impact Haitian workers at the JBS plant. That’s up next on Reveal.  
Al Letson:From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. In September, JBS made national news. The Wall Street Journal published a story about a new wave of Haitian workers at JBS and the terrible living conditions they found in Greeley, Colorado. The headline read, Life for Haitian Immigrants: Jobs Nobody Wants and Sleeping on the Floor. Mackenson Remy was featured heavily throughout, alongside allegations of exploitation from the very Haitians he thought he was helping.  
Mackenson Remy:Those Haitians, most of them, they hate me. They think I made money from them.  
Al Letson:Some workers allege that Mackenson was working for JBS and getting paid for how many people he brought to Greeley.  
Mackenson Remy:Some of them they said JBS gave me $3,000 for each of them. Each of them.  
Al Letson:Mackenson denies all of this.  
Mackenson Remy:I charge people to take them at the airport, and I charge people if they need services. I didn’t charge anyone for job. No, I’m not a criminal.  
Al Letson:Mackenson says he was following directions from Edmond Ebah, the HR supervisor with JBS. Edmond was the one who told him to bring people to the Rainbow Motel. Mackenson doesn’t deny knowing how many people were packed in each room, but he says he never heard anyone complain, at least not to him. But dozens of complaints were made to the UFCW 7, the union representing the JBS plant in Greeley. And now, Mackenson’s name was in the news alongside all those allegations.  
Mackenson Remy:I just like doing that for my people. I didn’t get money from anyone. When they see me, they talk very bad about me. It’s very stressful for me.  
Al Letson:Ted Genoways, a reporter with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, has been covering the meatpacking industry for over a decade. In that time, he’s watched JBS get sued again and again for allegations of workplace discrimination, wage suppression, and unfair hiring practices. All the while, JBS continues to grow dramatically. Last fiscal year alone, the company’s net revenue was over $76 billion. And while the Haitians in Greeley wait to find out whether or not their working conditions will improve, they’re also waiting to find out if they’ll be here to witness it because President Donald Trump is back in office, and his promise to deport millions of immigrants, even those here legally, directly affects them. Here’s Ted again.  
Ted Genoways:The union had raised concerns to JBS about the squalid living conditions long before The Wall Street Journal article came out. JBS had told the UFCW 7 that it was investigating, but the union didn’t hear anything for months. But now with these allegations made public, JBS was forced to respond. So I’m sure you know JBS claims that they had no knowledge of this system.  
Tchelly Moise:Well, I’ve seen that-  
Ted Genoways:This is Tchelly Moise again, the union rep with UFCW 7.  
Tchelly Moise:Spokesperson from JBS that said, “Any allegations are completely unacceptable,” this is the exact word that I think I’ve seen online.  
Ted Genoways:Here are the exact words that a spokeswoman for JBS sent in an email to The Wall Street Journal. She said, “The company found reports about living conditions, unacceptable and alarming.”  
Tchelly Moise:What exactly is unacceptable? Is it the allegations or the actual situation that was going on?  
Ted Genoways:In that same email to The Wall Street Journal, JBS says It wants all of its employees to have access to safe housing. The company fired the two HR managers above Edmond, presumably the people who had given him to go-ahead to book the Rainbow Motel, and Edmond was moved to a different facility. The company says it also put in new training programs that teach employees about proper recruitment. JBS maintains that their leadership didn’t know what was happening at the Rainbow Motel, something Tchelly finds really hard to believe.  
Tchelly Moise:It is really hard for anyone from JBS to deny what was happening when they had someone from that plan, supervising those people every day, assigning them room and filling an application for them. It’s really hard for you to deny when you’re directly involved like that.  
Ted Genoways:I’ve seen the texts to Mackenson that prove at least Edmond knew.  
Mackenson Remy:If JBS said they didn’t know anything about the motel, they lie. I got the text message from Edmond.  
Ted Genoways:Edmond asked Mackenson who was being checked into the Rainbow Motel. Mackenson replied with five, six names to a room. At one point in January, 2024, Mackenson sent a list of nearly 50 people staying in 9 rooms. Mackenson made many trips to the JBS plant. He says he even had an entry badge. He’s in group photos at company work events, but after The Wall Street Journal article came out, Edmond abruptly cut ties with Mackenson. I tried to reach Edmond many times, even dropping by his house.  
Mary Anne Andre…:Edmond.  
Ted Genoways:I’m Ted Genovese. This is my wife, Mary Anne. We were just hoping to talk to you for a few minutes, if you’ve got time.  
Edmond Ebah:I get your text message, I was going to respond to you. Trust me, we will have a conversation.  
Ted Genoways:He never got back to me and instead directed me to a company spokesperson. JBS did eventually send me a short email in response to the many questions I sent them from my reporting. Their statement repeats much of what they sent the journal. They want all employees to have access to safe housing. They’ve hired new HR leaders and put in place new recruitment training programs. The company says they’ve taken the situation very seriously, but ultimately deny any involvement. JBS says it conducted two separate investigations and, “No substantiated evidence was provided that tied Edmond Ebah, or company leadership to the claims outlined by the union.” They did not respond to the fact that I’ve seen the text messages and phone calls between Edmond and Mackenson.  
 JBS just underscored that Mackenson never worked for the company and after the “alarming allegations,” came out, they say they banned him from the plant. In response to the reports of dangerously fast line speeds, JBS simply said, “It follows the law.” The email ends with, “At JBS, we have best in class workforce eligibility, safety and compliance standards.” But the union is still demanding answers. Here’s Kim Cordova again, president of the UFCW 7.  
Kim Cordova:We have been dealing with what we believe is human trafficking and exploitation of these workers.  
Ted Genoways:In 2024, the union filed complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, and the National Labor Relations Board alleging exactly that. Kim says, “These Haitian migrants at JBS were brought here under false pretenses. They were promised a job and a place to stay, but the job wasn’t just hard, it was unsafe, and this wasn’t proper housing. They were sleeping on the floor of a tiny motel room with a bunch of strangers sharing one bathroom and little to no food.” The complaint calls this abuse of workers and it says that JBS’s investigations into this treatment were “a whitewash,” and Kim believes she knows how we got here.  
Kim Cordova:I mean, the one thing COVID did was shed the light on what I call the dark secret of the packing industry. It exposed everything.  
Ted Genoways:Back during the pandemic, US meatworkers were considered essential after meatpacking plants across the country were forced to close, then President Trump ordered them to reopen, and so even though the JBS plant in Greeley didn’t have COVID safety protocols in place, it brought workers back to the line. OSHA fined JBS for, “Failing to protect employees from exposure to the coronavirus.” If you watched last week tonight, you probably heard John Oliver talk about it back then.  
John Oliver:After 6 workers from a JBS planting Colorado died from COVID, the company’s total fine was just $15,000.  
Ted Genoways:But $15,000 was just 0.00003% of the company’s revenue at the time.  
John Oliver:And if you find a company, a fraction of a percent of their profits, don’t be surprised when they carry on only giving a fraction of a fuck about the welfare of their workers.  
Ted Genoways:Kim says this started a huge fight between the company and its workers.  
Kim Cordova:We started to see workers mobilize, stand up, fight back. There were walk-offs, not just here, but around the country. Workers were not going to die for their job.  
Ted Genoways:This not only led to more personal protective equipment. It also led to a new contract. The union had pressed the CEO for higher wages and better benefits and won.  
Kim Cordova:And workers got stronger in my opinion, and I think that that’s what has sparked some of the change.  
Ted Genoways:Kim says shortly after they renegotiated that contract with the CEO, he retired and was replaced. Then came a wave of firings among union workers. Then came the White Bone program and hundreds of brand new Haitian workers. The UFCW 7 complaint to the Department of Labor says, “The plant increased chain speeds to dangerously unsafe levels when these workers occupied the line.”  
Kim Cordova:In our opinion, they needed a new group of workers to come in so that they had more control over them, especially to work at this high speed.  
Ted Genoways:Tchelly says he thinks the company just saw an opportunity and took it.  
Tchelly Moise:Big companies like that, one of the first goal is to make money, and unfortunately, most of the time, it doesn’t matter how this money is made, it doesn’t matter what cost.  
Ted Genoways:Auguste still works at JBS. About six months, he was able to save enough money to move into his own place with his own bed and bathroom, but it all comes with a cost. As far as we know, the white bone program is still going on.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:11:04].  
Ted Genoways:And Auguste told me he can no longer fully close his left hand, an injury he believes is a result of his work being too fast and too repetitive. Despite everything though, Auguste says he still glad to be here.  
Auguste:Yeah. [foreign language 00:11:24].  
Ted Genoways:Because his life is stable now, and he just hopes things continue to get better. Then came the second Trump administration.  
Trump:We will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.  
Ted Genoways:Trump promises to deport an unprecedented 15 to 20 million people. He has said he will direct federal agencies to go after undocumented immigrants, but he’s also promised to go after immigrants here legally by ending programs like temporary protected status.  
Speaker 10:So you would revoke the temporary protected status?  
Trump:Absolutely. I’d revoke it and I’d bring them back to their country.  
Speaker 10:What if they won’t receive them, like they’re not-  
Trump:Well, they’re going to receive them. They’ll receive them. If I bring them back, they’re going to receive him.  
Tchelly Moise:Going back to Haiti is a death sentence, really.  
Ted Genoways:Tchelly Moise again.  
Tchelly Moise:The biggest issue is not the deportation itself. The biggest issue is what is going to happen after the deportation because most of us, not to say all of us, we left the country obviously because it was very bad, and you’re talking to some members at the plant and they’re telling you, “Man, my cousin just got killed today and my family members, they just burned some house.” So it’s getting worse every day. You really don’t know where it’s going to get. It’s really bad.  
Ted Genoways:The man in charge of Trump’s deportation policy is immigration hardliner Stephen Miller. Miller has said that his goal is to arrest and deport as many immigrants as he can at one time. So instead of going after individuals, he vows to deputize National Guard troops and local police officers to do major sweeps of public spaces and raid workplaces. And while 20 million is an unprecedented number, we have seen something like this before, back in 2006.  
Speaker 11:Federal officials said today that yesterday’s immigration raids at six meatpacking plants were the largest workplace crackdown ever.  
Ted Genoways:In May of that year, then President George W. Bush addressed the nation with promises of a new immigration policy. Part of that policy was to find and deport undocumented workers, and on December 12th, 2006, he made good on that promise. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did a coordinated raid of meatpacking plants. They were all run by Swifton company, the country’s second-largest beef producer at the time. Armed ice officers arrested and deported nearly 1,300 undocumented workers at these plants. Here’s Mark Lauritsen, then vice president of the UFCW speaking with PBS at the time.  
Mark Lauritsen:That one small community, the school district still held 25 children, some of as young as 6 years old because their parents were not around to pick them up. They were in a bus some place to points unknown.  
Ted Genoways:Just to give you an idea of the sheer scale of what Trump is calling for, he would essentially have to carry out 10 raids of this size every day for the next 4 years. The Swift plants were located all across the country, places like Cactus, Texas, Grand Island, Nebraska, Marshalltown, Iowa, and Greeley, Colorado. In the Greeley plant alone, 220 undocumented workers were detained. After the raid, production came to a screeching halt, and though they were able to get things moving again, it was never back at the level it was before the raids. Within a year, Swift was forced to shut down and sell the plant, the buyer, JBS, and now you have to wonder, will JBS and the thousands of immigrants it employs meet a similar fate?  
Kim Cordova:This workforce is an immigrant workforce.  
Ted Genoways:Union President Kim Cordova, again. She says at one point there were 57 languages spoken at the Greeley plant alone.  
Kim Cordova:JBS is the largest food producer in the world. The industry would collapse without these type of workers.  
Ted Genoways:The Trump campaign promised it would lower grocery prices, but deporting the workforce that meatpackers depend on, would halt processing at every stage of the supply chain from feed lots to the packing house floor. This would drive up prices for big macs and outback steaks, but also for chicken breasts and pork chops at grocery stores. Tchelly says that’s why deporting all these people doesn’t make any sense.  
Tchelly Moise:I feel like us, the immigrants, we are a good part of the economy. Like I said, most of the jobs that we are doing, people who are born in this country are not in line to do those jobs. I mean, they’re not actively looking to do those jobs.  
Ted Genoways:This is why Tchelly says he’s confused. If mass deportations hurt, not only JBS, but the economy as a whole, why do it? He says he’s left with only one answer.  
Tchelly Moise:I think he is just hatred against people with different skin color because that’s the only logical thing that I can actually see. Deporting everyone, I don’t see how he can benefits. Honestly, I don’t see.  
Ted Genoways:Tchelly’s temporary protected status was extended under the Biden administration until February, 2026, but he doesn’t know what he’ll do after that, neither does Auguste.  
Auguste:[foreign language 00:16:46].  
Ted Genoways:All he knows is that going back to Haiti is an impossible situation for him.  
Trump:[foreign language 00:16:56].  
Ted Genoways:He’s trying to stay optimistic.  
Trump:[foreign language 00:17:01].  
Ted Genoways:After all he says, “The US is the mother of democracy. So he doesn’t believe Americans will really let him be sent back to Haiti, but it’s hard to share Auguste’s hopeful outlook. Yes, it’s possible that federal courts might intervene or some governors will step in, but this broad sweeping government crackdown, that’s what the majority of Americans voted for. It’s what they expect Trump to do, and he’s already doing it.  
Al Letson:This story was reported by Ted Genoways and field producer, Mary Anne Andrei of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. It was produced by Nadia Hamda. A print version of Ted’s investigation will appear in the next issue of Mother Jones Magazine. Up next, we zoom out to the many consequences of the Trump administration’s, mass deportation plans.  
Tchelly Moise:We would be devastated, and I do not think that we in this country could grow enough too.  
Speaker 13:That’s coming up on Reveal.  
Al Letson:From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.  
Speaker 2:President Trump signing a stack of executive orders yesterday, making good on a major campaign promise, tackling illegal immigration.  
Al Letson:Donald Trump is in the White House again. Since his first day in office, he signed at least 10 executive orders doubling down on restricting immigration.  
Speaker 3:Vice President Vance defended the Trump administration policies allowing ICE agents to raid houses of worship and schools.  
Al Letson:The threat of widespread raids from immigration and customs enforcement has created an environment of fear and uncertainty for people who weren’t born in this country.  
 Isabela Dias is a reporter covering immigration from Mother Jones. She’s been writing about the incoming Trump administration’s agenda to upend the US immigration system.  
 Hey, Isabela.  
Isabela Dias:Hi y’all. Thanks for having me.  
Al Letson:So I want to start off asking you what you made of the story from the JBS plant, especially in context of your reporting.  
Isabela Dias:These stories of immigrants being exploited for work, they don’t get any easier to hear. I’ve talked to a lot of immigrants who have come here to work, and ultimately what they want is just to have a better life for themselves and their families. And I think you really get that through Auguste and Tchelly. They are both just trying to make the best out of a very difficult situation.  
Al Letson:Not to mention that Haitian immigrants were really singled out during the presidential campaign. Both President Trump and Vice President Vance promoted the racist lie that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, just all that exhausting stuff.  
Isabela Dias:Absolutely. We also know that Trump at one point specifically said he would begin his deportation plans in Springfield. Like we’ve been saying the past hour, many Haitians in the US either have TPS or some other form of legal status, but Trump keeps insisting that he sees them as illegal immigrants. And even though that’s not true, he made it clear that they are on his mind as targets for deportation. So you can see why people like Tchelly would feel like a mass deportation plan comes down to the hatred of immigrants.  
 This past year I attended the National Conservatism Conference in Washington D.C. It’s this annual gathering where right-wing politicians, advocates, and scholars come together to share their ideas for the direction of the country. And I noticed a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment on display.  
Speaker 5:No one’s off the table in the next administration. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.  
Speaker 6:But to the Democrat Party I say, I have nothing to discuss with you when you are letting criminal migrants rape and murder American citizens.  
Isabela Dias:Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, these are Trump’s aides who he has entrusted with carrying out his campaign promise, and they’ve sold this argument that mass deportations are good for Americans and good for the American worker. Part of that is saying these policies are about protecting Americans from so-called migrant crime, which I should say is an issue that mine and others’ reporting hasn’t shown any real evidence to support.  
Al Letson:So we learned many of the Haitian workers in the previous story have Temporary Protected Status, but the new administration wants to eliminate that program. What happens if TPS ends?  
Isabela Dias:It would impact a lot of people. As of September 2024, there were more than one million immigrants from several countries living with TPS in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of them are from Haiti. And if you remember, Haiti was first designated for TPS back in 2010. This was after a devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people.  
Speaker 7:Buildings toppled to the ground. A hospital was flattened. Even the presidential palace couldn’t withstand the force.  
Isabela Dias:Then more recently, the Biden administration extended TPS protection to Haitians fleeing political unrest and violence.  
Speaker 8:Tonight, the future of democracy in Haiti at its tipping point as the country now overrun by gang leaders teeters on the edge of political chaos.  
Isabela Dias:Now, Trump has made it clear he has no plans to renew or extend TPS. So those TPS holders, they’ll join the millions of people without legal status already living in this country. The very same people Trump is saying he wants to deport.  
Al Letson:And really that’s where your latest reporting is focused, on Trump’s planned mass deportations targeting people without legal status in the US. You found that those plans would be brutal and expensive. Tell me more about why.  
Isabela Dias:So when I first started looking into the potential impact of mass deportations, it was clear I would have to focus on the workforce. Based on estimates from 2022, 1 in every 20 workers in the United States is undocumented. That’s about 8 million people. This workforce is in all sectors, very often in manual labor jobs. For example, undocumented workers make up about half of all farm workers. They also make up about a fourth of factory workers who process fish, meat, and poultry. And then in construction, which mind you is already facing a labor shortage crisis, in Texas alone, undocumented workers represent half of all construction workers. If those workers were all deported, it would be a huge disruption.  
 I talked to a potato farmer in Idaho who told me that it’s been getting harder and harder each year for him to find full-time and even seasonal workers, even with the incentive of higher wages. And he’s described immigrants as this invaluable part of the farming economy in the state. He said these workers, if they were to just disappear overnight, farms like his would really struggle.  
Speaker 9:We would be devastated, and I do not think that we in this country could grow enough food. There would not be the people there to help us. They would have to find more programs to let people in legally.  
Isabela Dias:Mass deportations at the scale that Trump is promising would not only disrupt the food supply chain, but also raise prices and skyrocket inflation. Some studies have also found that mass deportations would actually have a negative effect on overall employment, resulting in fewer jobs.  
Al Letson:So a pretty obvious conclusion from your reporting is that mass deportations will hurt the economy.  
Isabela Dias:But of course the impact can’t just be reduced to data points. I think as the JBS story reminds us so well, the people who have migrated to this country are much more than what they contribute to the economy. They’re important parts of their communities. Almost 80% of all immigrants without legal status in the US have been here for at least 10 years, and millions of Americans live in mixed status homes where at least one family member is undocumented.  
 We tend to talk about mass deportation as this kind of amorphous thing, but it is a huge life event. I recently spoke to someone who went through this during the first Trump administration. His name is Samuel Anthony. He came to the US when he was only six years old. He was deported in 2019 to Sierra Leone in West Africa. Before that, he had lived in Washington D.C. for four decades.  
Samuel Anthony:Family I love, everything I have is over there. I’m in a world that if you ask me to even speak the language to you, I couldn’t even tell you.  
Isabela Dias:In Sierra Leone, Samuel has struggled with depression and severe weight loss and has been sick from malaria. It’s been impossible for him to find steady work because he doesn’t speak the local dialect. He’s also been targeted for extortion as someone who used to live in the US. Samuel has an immigration lawyer and he hopes to come back to the United States some day. But with Trump in office, he knows the odds are against him.  
Al Letson:Isabela, thank you so much for your time and sharing your reporting.  
Isabela Dias:Thank you, Al. Thanks for having me.  
Al Letson:Reveal’s Steven Rascón produced my conversation with Isabela. You can read her reporting on everything we talked about and more at motherjones.com. Our lead producer for this week’s show was Nadia Hamdan. Field production in Greeley, Colorado was done by Marianne Andre. Jenny Casas edited the show with help from Maddie Oatman.  
 This story was produced in collaboration with the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Special thanks to Florence Roussier for help with translation. Eamon Whalen and Ruth Murai did the fact check. Legal Review by James Chadwick. Our production managers are the wonder twins, Steven Rascón and Zulema Cobb. Score in sound, designed by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs and Fernando, my man, yo, Arruda. They had help from Claire C. Note-Mullen. Our interim executive producers are Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Camerado, Lightning.  
 Support for Reveal is provided by listeners like you, and The Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.  
 Reveal is a co-production of The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson, and remember, there is always more to the story.  

Jenny Casas is a senior radio editor for Reveal. She was previously a narrative audio producer at the New York Times. Before that, she reported on the ways that cities systematically fail their people, for WNYC Studios, USA Today, City Bureau, and St. Louis Public Radio. Casas is based in Chicago.

Nadia Hamdan (she/her) is a reporter and producer for Reveal. She’s worked on a wide range of investigative stories covering elections, immigration, health care, gun violence, and more. Most notably, she co-reported and produced the historical investigation “40 Acres and a Lie,” exploring a reparation that wasn’t—and the wealth gap that remains. The project was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize and the winner of an Edward R. Murrow Award, a duPont-Columbia Award and a National Magazine Award. Nadia also once conducted an entire interview while riding a mule. Reach her at nhamdan@cir.org or on Signal at nadiaCIR.42.

Steven Rascón is the production manager for Reveal. He has also produced the KQED podcast On Our Watch: New Folsom, a serial investigation into the death of two whistleblowers inside California’s most dangerous prison. Their reporting has aired on NPR stations such as Capital Public Radio, WHYY, and KCRW. He also helped produce the Peabody-nominated Reveal podcast series Mississippi Goddam. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Nikki Frick is a copy editor for Reveal. She previously worked as a copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and held internships at the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and WashingtonPost.com. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an American Copy Editors Society Aubespin scholar. Frick is based in Milwaukee.

Zulema Cobb is an operations and audio production associate for the Center for Investigative Reporting. She is originally from Los Angeles County, where she was raised until moving to Oregon. Her interest in the wellbeing of families and children inspired her to pursue family services at the University of Oregon. Her diverse background includes banking, affordable housing, health care, and education, where she helped develop a mentoring program for students. Cobb is passionate about animals and has fostered and rescued numerous dogs and cats. She frequently volunteers at animal shelters and overseas rescue missions. In her spare time, she channels her creative energy into photography, capturing memories for friends and family. Cobb is based in Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, three kids, three dogs, and cat.

Jim Briggs III is a senior sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. He joined the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2014. Jim and his team shape the sound of the weekly public radio show and podcast through original music, mixing, and editing. In a career devoted to elevating high-impact journalism, Jim’s work in radio, podcasting, and television has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, IRE, Gerald Loeb, and Third Coast awards, as well as a News and Documentary Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Sound. He has lent his ears to a range of podcasts and radio programs including Marketplace, Selected Shorts, Death, Sex & Money, The Longest Shortest Time, NPR’s Ask Me Another, Radiolab, Freakonomics Radio, WNYC’s live music performance show Soundcheck, and The 7 and Field Trip from the Washington Post. His film credits include PBS’s American Experience: Walt Whitman, the 2012 Tea Party documentary Town Hall, and The Supreme Court miniseries. Before that, he worked on albums with artists such as R.E.M., Paul Simon, and Kelly Clarkson at NYC’s legendary Hit Factory Recording Studios. Jim is based in western Massachusetts with his family, cats, and just enough musical instruments to do some damage.

Fernando Arruda is a sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. As a multi-instrumentalist, he contributes to the music, editing, and mixing of the weekly public radio show and podcast. He has held four O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary abilities. His work has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, Edward R. Murrow, Gerald Loeb, Third Coast, and Association of Music Producers awards, as well as Emmy and Pulitzer nominations. Prior to joining Reveal, Arruda toured internationally as a DJ and taught music technology at Dubspot and ESRA International Film School. He also worked at Antfood, a creative audio studio for media and TV ads, as well as for clients such as Marvel, MasterClass, and Samsung. His credits also include NPR’s 51 Percent; WNYC’s Bad Feminist Happy Hour and its live broadcast of Orson Welles’ The Hitchhiker; Wondery’s Detective Trapp; and MSNBC’s Why Is This Happening?. Arruda releases experimental music under the alias FJAZZ and has performed with jazz, classical, and pop ensembles such as SFJazz Monday Night Band, Art&Sax quartet, Krychek, Dark Inc., and the New York Arabic Orchestra. He holds a master’s degree in film scoring and composition from NYU Steinhardt. Learn more about his work at FernandoArruda.info.

Claire Mullen worked at The Center for Investigative Reporting until September 2017. is an associate sound designer and audio engineer for Reveal. Before joining Reveal, she was an assistant producer at Radio Ambulante and worked with KALW, KQED, the Association of Independents in Radio and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She studied humanities and media studies at Scripps College.

Al Letson is the Peabody Award-winning host of Reveal. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, at age 11 and as a teenager began rapping and producing hip-hop records. By the early 1990s, he had fallen in love with the theater, becoming a local actor and playwright, and soon discovered slam poetry. His day job as a flight attendant allowed him to travel to cities around the country, where he competed in slam poetry contests while sleeping on friends’ couches. In 2000, Letson placed third in the National Poetry Slam and performed on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam, which led him to write and perform one-man shows and even introduce the 2006 NCAA Final Four on CBS.

In Letson’s travels around the country, he realized that the America he was seeing on the news was far different from the one he was experiencing up close. In 2007, he competed in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where he pitched a show called State of the Re:Union that reflected the conversations he was having throughout the US. The show ran for five seasons and won a Peabody Award in 2014. In 2015, Letson helped create and launch Reveal, the nation’s first weekly investigative radio show, which has won two duPont Awards and three Peabody Awards and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. He has also hosted the podcast Errthang; written and developed several TV shows with major networks, including AMC+’s Moonhaven and Apple TV+’s Monarch; and is currently writing a comic for DC Comics. (He loves comics.) When he’s not working, Letson’s often looking for an impossibly difficult meal to prepare or challenging anyone to name a better album than Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides.