WORTHINGTON, MINN. – What Sandra Pineda remembers most is the fear.
On Dec. 12, 2006, Pineda woke up from a night shift at the Swift meatpacking facility along Interstate 90. About 8 a.m., a friend called her with a warning: Immigration officers were raiding the plant.
That morning, in a raid called Operation Wagon Train, Worthington was one of six towns across the nation targeted by federal raids of Swift meatpacking plants. It remains the largest one-day mass raid in U.S. history, with nearly 1,300 people arrested ― twice the number of those arrested in the largest raid under President Donald Trump.
Pineda, like dozens of other workers, was an undocumented immigrant in Worthington, a packing town on the southwestern edge of Minnesota, a landscape rich in hogs and slaughterhouses.
Born in El Salvador, Pineda crossed the Mexican border into Texas in 2005 to reunite with her husband in Worthington. Today, 18 years later, Pineda is a pastoral assistant at St. Mary’s, the Catholic church in town, where on a recent Thursday — the 18th anniversary of the raid — the pews overflowed with parishioners honoring the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
For many in the parish, and broader community, what took place in 2006 stirs painful memories.
“There will be a shadow,” said Pineda, now 40. “Always.”
As Americans look to the incoming administration’s promises to deport millions of people without legal status, past chapters of mass arrests create a chilling prelude for what may come. Unauthorized immigrants work on kitchen lines, in day cares, in hospitals and on farms, holding jobs most Americans choose not to do.