Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents executed a raid at a meatpacking plant, locking exits and capturing workers on the kill floor. Concepción Sánchez, an immigrant from Chihuahua, had just prepared to sweep blood and waste when coworkers ran, hid in bathrooms, jumped into cattle pens, or leaped into a floor drain, but none escaped. Captured workers were taken to the cafeteria and separated into groups based on claimed citizenship and questioned by agents. A UFCW representative was denied access while ICE described the operation as a federal criminal investigation. The government later said employees could phone family to bring immigration documents to the gate, and a daughter waited outside with residency papers.
Around her, workers ran for the exits but found them barred, she remembered recently. Others sprinted for the bathrooms and locked themselves inside or jumped into cattle pens or threw themselves into dumpsters. Sánchez says a few even lifted the grate over the floor drain and leaped into the bloody pit, hoping to find a way out. None escaped. All of the captured workers were taken into the cafeteria and separated into two groups - those who claimed to be citizens
ICE agents refused, insisting they were "conducting a federal criminal investigation." The union later claimed that workers were denied the right to make phone calls. "If certain employees needed immigration documents outside the facility to confirm their lawful status," the government later responded in court filings, "these employees were allowed to contact family and friends by telephone to bring those documents to the Swift plant, and present them to the ICE agents at the gate."
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