1954 OPERATION WETBACK
One morning in April, federal immigration agents
swept into a meatpacking plant in this northeastern Tennessee
manufacturing town, launching one of the biggest workplace raids since
President Trump took office with a pledge to crack down on illegal
immigration.
Dozens of panicked workers fled in every
direction, some wedging themselves between beef carcasses or crouching
under bloody butcher tables. About 100 workers, including at least one
American citizen, were rounded up — every Latino employee at the plant,
it turned out, save a man who had hidden in a freezer.
The raid occurred in a state that is on the raw
front lines of the immigration debate. Mr. Trump won 61 percent of the
vote in Tennessee, and continues to enjoy wide popularity. The state’s
rapidly growing immigrant population, now estimated to total more than
320,000, has become a favorite target of the Republican-controlled State
Legislature. In 2017, Tennessee lawmakers passed the nation’s first law
requiring stiffer sentences for defendants who are in the country
illegally. In April, they passed a law requiring the police to help
enforce immigration laws and making it illegal for local governments to
adopt so-called sanctuary policies.
But Morristown, a town of 30,000 northeast of Knoxville that was
the boyhood home
of Davy Crockett, has drawn migrant workers from Latin America since
the early 1990s, when they first came to work on the region’s abundant
tomato farms. As stepped-up security has made going back and forth
across the border more difficult, many of these families have settled
into the community, enrolled their kids in school, and joined churches
where they have baptized their American-born children.
