This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
LOGAN - While working her shift at a Mexican market, Reyna Perry recently asked a customer why he wasn't buying as much sweet bread as usual. He broke down: His wife was deported, and he sent some of their children to live with her.
''People still talk about it. They still cry about it,'' Perry says of the immigration raid in December of a Swift & Co. meat-processing plant. ''People are scared.''
It's been three months since the immigration roundup, yet it's like a bad dream that won't go away for Latino families caught in its tentacles.
Children were left behind to be cared for by relatives, many of whom still struggle to pay rent. Some relatives are attempting to get U.S. passports for children so they can be reunited with their parents in foreign lands but still have the option of returning. At least one girl will celebrate her second birthday this week without her parents - both were deported to Mexico about a month ago.
Immigration agents on Dec. 12 rounded up about 150 undocumented workers at the Hyrum plant as part of Operation Wagon Train.
Immigrant advocates say raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) left the community in disarray, and community leaders are left to coordinate aid and housing for families. Immigration reform is long overdue, they say, and arresting people at work and deporting them will not fix the problem.
People against illegal immigration say they support the raids because it shows that the federal government is finally enforcing immigration law, but they also want to see more employers arrested for hiring undocumented workers.
In Cache County, home to small towns, dairy farms and factories, Latinos are about 8 percent of the population. They were up to 70 percent of the Swift workers in Hyrum.
Latino families want to know when their relatives will be released from jail or deported. Parents who are detained or deported must decide whether to send for their children. Latino students are upset some of their peers are calling them "wetbacks." And some workers who were deported and returned are trying to adjust to life back in Utah.
Leo Bravo, who runs a one-man office called the Multicultural Center of Cache County, spends most days answering people's questions about navigating the immigration, jail or education systems.
The agency has helped 82 families affected by the raid with money for rent from donations, and with food and supplies from a church storehouse. He said the biggest problems are helping families pay the $100 fee to apply for a U.S. passport for the kids whose parents were arrested and obtaining the parents' signatures for the applications, especially if they were deported.
Some families are determined to stay in Utah regardless of their immigration status, Bravo says.
"They don't know how they're going to do it, but they are going to stay," he says.
Estrella Alvarado, 23, hasn't seen her husband since Dec. 12, when he left home about 6 a.m. to slaughter cows at Swift. ICE arrested and deported her husband, mother, sister, aunt, cousin and several friends. Alvarado is caring for her own two young kids and her two nephews.
She's adamant about staying here because the children would have no future in El Salvador.
Veronica Flores, honorary El Salvador consul, says the Latino community needs to educate undocumented families about their rights and what to do if a raid happens.
"I just know that raids are going to keep happening," Flores says. "It makes me nervous because we need to be ready."
Of the 158 undocumented immigrants arrested in Utah, 124 of them are facing criminal charges and most of the others are up for deportation, says ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda, who is based in San Antonio. Pruneda says she cannot say how many have been deported from Utah or how many are still in jail.
Pruneda says ICE releases some detainees to care for children, but it is up to parents who are deported to decide whether their children stay here.
"As far as I'm concerned, our only responsibility is to enforce the law," Pruneda says. "We've already done our part by removing the parents to their home country."
Ira Mehlman, a Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) spokesman based in Los Angeles, agrees.
He says it's about time the federal government is enforcing immigration laws but he would like to see more "guys in suits marched out in handcuffs."
The Swift investigation has not resulted in the arrest of any managers so far. Swift, with more than $9 billion in annual sales, is the world's second-largest processor of fresh beef and pork.
Undocumented workers are not committing the same types of crime as murderers and drug dealers, but they need to recognize the consequences of breaking the law, such as breaking up the family, Mehlman says.
"There's no question that is going to harm your children, and it's your fault," he says. "It's unfortunate."
About the raid
On Dec. 12, federal agents raided six Swift & Co. plants and arrested 1,297 undocumented workers.
Of them:
* 158 were arrested in Utah.
* 120 were released for humanitarian reasons.
* 499 have been deported.
* 274 were facing criminal charges; 124 of them are in Utah.
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Raids conducted elsewhere in U.S.
In a roundup last week similar to the Swift raids, at least 361 people were detained for possible deportation in a Tuesday raid at Michael Bianco Inc., a leather factory 47 miles south of Boston that makes equipment for the U.S. military. Owner Francesco Insolia and three top managers were arrested.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick urged federal authorities not to move the detainees out of state until their children were found and arrangements were made for their care.
Authorities allege Insolia oversaw sweatshop conditions so he could meet the demands of $91 million in military contracts to make products including safety vests and lightweight backpacks.
On Friday, federal authorities raided a construction company in southern Arizona. The company's president and four employees were taken into custody on federal counts of conspiring to knowingly hire undocumented workers. Eight workers from Mexico were detained.
- The Associated Press