Hired on day one: In a Colorado meatpacking town, immigrant labor sustains the economy as Trump pushes deportations

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series looking at Haitians in Greeley, Colorado — a company town with a burgeoning immigrant population — as shifting immigration, economic and geopolitical forces meet.  It is supported by URL Collective. This is the first installment.

GREELEY, Colo. — When Dracula Pierre, a Port-au-Prince native, first arrived in this fast-growing city about an hour north of Denver, he landed right on time for work. After years of toiling in the Dominican Republic, he promptly followed friends and relatives working at the local JBS USA meatpacking plant — the $38 billion company that is the world’s largest beef producer— and has worked there as a meat processor ever since. 

Standing in front of his apartment complex in Greeley’s westside, Pierre, 28, explained how desperate employers were back then, in 2023. Former President Joe Biden was in office, focused on helping the economy recover from the pandemic and thousands of Haitians migrating directly from Haiti and Latin America made it to the United States — ready to work. 

“They were begging my brother to convince people he knows to come,” said Pierre, who became authorized to live and work legally through the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti program. 

“They had hundreds of open positions,” he said. “I was hired the same day.”

Now, President Donald J. Trump is loudly calling for immigrants like Pierre to be deported en masse. But, the young worker has quietly continued with his daily activities. Like the rest of the town, he is watching what federal policies may portend, but without the chaos and fear seen and felt in Minneapolis and other cities.

During the weeks leading up to Feb. 3, when the Department of Homeland Security sought to end TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians, immigrant workers like Pierre, their employers and other Greeley residents closely followed the developments. They watched not through the lens of ideology, but of survival — recalling how a previous deportation effort nearly decimated Greeley.

After all, between 80% to 90% of meatpacking workers in Greeley are foreign-born, a local union leader told High Country News in September 2025. Today, new hires at JBS are largely Haitian and Beninese, union representatives say, and about 1,000 Haitians work at the plant.

_{(L-R) Dracula Pierre, a Haitian immigrant living and working in Greeley, CO. Greeley City Hall. A view of cattle in Greeley, CO. Photos by Fred Cayemitte / The Haitian Times}

“Donald Trump’s policies of chasing away immigrants don’t match the needs of business and for jobs in this region, especially not in Greeley,” he explained. “People know these places can’t survive without immigrants.”

“The hardline stance from Washington is mostly political theater,” Pierre added.

A sociologist and instructor at Aims Community College, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, concurred. The researcher said as federal policy tightens migration, cities like Greeley are left managing a familiar contradiction: an economy dependent on immigrant labor, and a national agenda increasingly determined to push those workers out.

“The contrast between Washington’s enforcement posture and local needs is stark,” said the sociologist. 

“While Trump vilified immigrants during his 2024 presidential campaign,” the sociologist explained, “cities across the Midwest relied on them to keep their economies running.”

Economy (re)built on immigrant labor

Immigrant labor has become indispensable across the northern Colorado plains, east of the Rocky Mountains. Meatpacking plants operated by industry giants— the 134,000-square-foot JBS corporate facility in Greeley and Cargill in nearby Fort Morgan— anchor the regional economy. Together, they have lured thousands of workers from Haiti, Central America and Africa to fill physically-demanding jobs that few longtime residents are willing to take. In 2021, as the country struggled to recover from the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Labor says it issued more than 20,000 temporary work visas to meat industry employees.

Haitians make up roughly 1,000 of the current workforce at the JBS plant, according to a Farm Progress report in March 2025. The company disputed that number, however, saying it does not track workers’ nationalities.

City officials did not return messages from The Haitian Times seeking data and other information about its Haitian population for this article. But they also routinely refer to economic goals that require immigrant hands.

In a March 2025 State of the City address, for example, officials celebrated the town’s growth, highlighting infrastructure projects aimed at expanding businesses and services. Later that year, in November, Mayor Dale Hall hinted at that reliance on “all people” during his November victory speech.

“I believe that Greeley is ripe for strong, positive economic and business-friendly conditions that will support all people in their ability to live, work and play in the community,” he said.

What city leaders did not explicitly say is that none of the projects — from construction to service expansion — would be possible without a steady workforce, largely composed of immigrants.

But aware of it, they are, after experiencing this collision between immigration enforcement and economic dependence before.

Past raids only led to more immigrants 

Greeley’s economy is built around cattle, according to a High Country News report, supplying more than 2.5 million head that end up on supermarket shelves and dinner tables around the country. JBS’ Greeley plant alone butchers at least 10,000 cows daily, said Emmanuel Jean, a U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety inspector. Statewide, beef is the most valuable agricultural commodity, and meatpacking touches nearly every corner of the city’s economic life. 

In December 2006, during the George W. Bush administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided six meatpacking plants nationwide, arresting nearly 1,300 undocumented workers from plants owned by Swift & Co back then.  In Greeley, ICE detained 273 of its roughly 2,200 employees.

The raids sent shockwaves through the community. Local leaders warned that removing hundreds of workers overnight threatened not only the plant’s operations, but also the broader economy. 

Indeed, the human toll was immediate. More than 200 children around Greeley were left at schools and day care centers because one or both parents were detained. Community groups, including United Way, scrambled to arrange child care.

The raids also reduced household income, local spending and trust in institutions as families struggled to cover bond costs and sudden job losses, the Greeley Tribune reported. Fear lingered for years, discouraging undocumented residents from seeking services or reporting crimes.

Economically, a Center for Immigration Studies report shows, the meatpacking plants operated at reduced capacity for nearly five months and Swift reported an $80 million loss in the weeks following the raids. To stabilize operations, Swift raised wages by about 8% to attract locals and offered $1,500 signing bonuses for jobs at its Greeley plant. 

Facing collapse, Swift, then the nation’s third-largest beef and pork processor, turned to Brazil-based JBS S.A. The multinational company acquired Swift in May 2007 for about $1.5 billion. 

JBS immediately stepped up Swift’s immigrant hiring to boost production, which entailed recruiting Somali and Burmese refugees, to offset chronic shortages, according to the report. Workers from Benin also arrived in recent years, followed by the Haitians. 

At the state level, Colorado passed House Bill 24-1280 to create a $2.5 million immigrant integration program. The grant supported immigrants during their first year in the U.S., including in rural areas like Greeley. Several Haitians told The Haitian Times they received about $600 a month for six months while waiting for work permits.

Once in town, JBS welcomed its immigrant workers. The company also sponsored the burgeoning Haitian community’s soccer team, allowing its white logo to appear on the players’ uniforms.

‘Immigrants are my friends, neighbors and family’

Although its immigrant recruiting efforts helped maintain production, questions remain about conditions at the plant —  one reason so few U.S.-born residents take those jobs.

In recent years, JBS has faced multiple lawsuits over worker safety, discrimination, price-fixing and environmental violations — including a $5.5 million settlement in 2021 for discrimination against Muslim workers. In December 2025, Haitian workers also filed a suit alleging that JBS subjected them to discriminatory and unsafe working and living conditions after recruiting them under false promises. That case involves a Haitian local named Mackenson Remy, who allegedly lured Haitians to Greeley under false pretenses through social media.

Still, at the JBS plant in January, workers appeared untouched by the ongoing suits and ICE operations, even as those in other states made headlines. 

“We are calm here in Greeley, but we are not an exception,” said the sociology instructor at Aims College. “Immigrants are my friends, neighbors and family.”

Wearing a button on his shirt marked “Justice for Alex Jeffrey Pretti” — the 37-year-old ICU registered nurse who was shot dead by an ICE agent in Minneapolis — the instructor explained that Greeley residents are very much aware of what’s at stake.

“What’s happening with ICE doesn’t just affect immigrants,” the instructor added. “In Greeley, everyone feels how quickly life can be upended when fear and uncertainty ripple through the whole community.”

‘Hunt for immigrants’ to come work constantly 

Local officials may be watching the federal government’s heavy-handed tactics, but they have not said anything publicly about how — or if — they will alter their plans. 

Months before  masked ICE agents conducted raids, Greeley’s leaders openly acknowledged that the city’s growth depends on a stable workforce and tax base. During his campaign, Hall championed the $1.1 billion West Greeley Development Project dubbed “Catalyst,” expected to generate about $44 million annually through tourism and entertainment.

“Strategic projects help expand our tax base and support local businesses,” Hall said during the campaign. “That’s how we pay for growth.”

Such plans — many of which rely on workers to build, staff and sustain them — now face a wave of immigration executive orders from the Trump administration. His February 2025 Executive Order redefining who deserves to be considered a refugee, for one, prompted the city manager to acknowledge the concern and uncertainty the order caused. That year, the administration also rescinded about $24 million in FEMA reimbursements for Denver’s migrant sheltering costs, prompting a lawsuit and causing the larger city to slash migrant service funding from about $90 million in 2024 to $12.5 million in 2025.

New federal directives also paused asylum decisions and some parole programs, such as the Biden-era humanitarian parole process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. The administration also moved to end TPS, which any Haitian could apply for regardless of how they arrived in the U.S. 

For Pierre, a TPS holder with a pending asylum application, the contradiction between federal policy and daily realities feels personal. 

Pierre said as February arrived, JBS warned many Haitian workers they could be terminated if they failed to provide updated work authorization by Feb. 5. Days later, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes blocked the administration’s attempt to end TPS for Haitians.

“The judge’s order helped the community breathe a bit,” Pierre said. “But the uncertainty doesn’t go away.”

Until a final decision comes down, those who can are continuing to work as much as possible to save. The work is fast-paced, physically taxing and often dangerous — fueling constant turnover. But with hourly wages at meatpacking plants ranging from about $24 to $34, well above Colorado’s minimum wage of $15.16 per hour, those who can withstand it do so.

That churn keeps companies perpetually recruiting. 

Emmanuel Charles, a former JBS employee now supervising at Walmart, said the cycle is predictable.

“They pay relatively well,” Charles explains. “But after a year or two, many leave. Then dozens of jobs open at once — and the hunt for immigrant workers starts again.”

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