All is quiet in Omaha

Will they actually raid the food processing plants?

If you really wanted to clear out undocumented immigrants fast and send a ringing message, you would start around Omaha and Sioux City. They have thousands upon thousands of paperless Latinos waiting for a raid of food plants in ardently conservative states. Omaha has an FBI office and an ICE operation. Lots of jail cells and abandoned buildings are available to lock them up.

The top story in the Omaha World-Herald was about a junior golfer named Gutchewski from the city’s west side. The Sioux City Journal led with the Hawkeye women’s big win at Washington.

Nothing about raids.

Just rumors, the Polk County Sheriff said about mass deportation in Des Moines — one defendant was hauled out of the courthouse by ICE agents. Rumors spread that agents were in Iowa City and West Liberty. No arrests.

Nada, nothing in Storm Lake, Denison, Sioux Falls or Worthington. Waterloo, too. Not by Friday, anyhow. Qué sera.

The Trump Administration moved to revoke the legal status of refugees from certain places like Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba. It seeks to deny birthright citizenship — a federal judge appointed by President Reagan quickly ruled that Trump’s order was “blatantly unconstitutional.” The military has been dispatched to the Mexican border. The governor ordered the state patrol to stand guard and help out ICE.

Sen. Joni Ernst told us several weeks ago that Storm Lake didn’t have anything to worry about. Trump was going after criminals first. He told her so, she said. That’s not what he was telling the public. The administration wants to revoke protections for Dreamers, for crying out loud.

Ernst can wink and let you in on a secret: Nobody can afford raiding the packing plants. Tyson insists it only hires legal workers. Trump’s brain, Stephen Miller, formally complained last May that Tyson was effectively discriminating against other workers by hiring immigrants. Yeah, okay, that was then, but now we’re talking for real. Trump actually could command the troops to sweep up Storm Lake. It has been done before, in 1996. Since then, we have come to rely a lot more on Latino workers.

Trump ordered immigrant workers onto the kill floor during the height of the Covid pandemic. He was joined by governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska (now a U.S. senator), Kristi Noem of South Dakota (Homeland Security nominee), and the meat industry in that effort.

Raids could come. Only the malign spirit wishes it on Storm Lake. Vulnerable people are bracing for it. Local organizations are trying to offer support to immigrants. It is an instinct: flight. When the cops walk in the front door of the bar, that guy who was just shooting pool with you slips out the back door before you can turn around. The kid is not in school the next day. Nobody knows.

If you want to make noise, you target Chicago. It’s a media center. Sioux City, not so much.

Trump said he would deport all undocumented immigrants. Day One. His czar, Thomas Homan, threatens to arrest anybody who gets in his way in Chicago. That would get some prime TV, which would drive social media.

Eggs are high — $8 a dozen on the coasts. Better not raid the henhouse. Pork is pretty cheap, but if you back up hogs things can get out of control quickly. Food prices shooting up 50% in two weeks is why Trump ordered sick workers back to chopping Iowa chops in his first go-around.

We might not abide Mexicans but we would prefer cheaper bacon with our cheaper eggs.

Agribusiness will have a tough enough time with tariffs. The new ag secretary says easing the pain of tariffs and bird flu are her top concerns. She did not talk at all last week about what would happen if you shut down slaughterhouses for lack of labor. The cows must be milked. No reports of raids in Sioux County dairy barns. Those are facts.

If you deport the undocumented permanently, it would reorganize agri-industry. Mass deportation would bust the meat trust. Not even the Shanghai Reds could hold Smithfield together in that event. The dairy conglomerates would burst an udder. If you deport the undocumented male, remember that his legal wife who works at Tyson goes with him.

It’s hard to believe that Tyson, Smithfield, JBS and Cargill will allow that to happen. It hasn’t, yet. Fear is the whole point, not inflation.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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