The New Jungle

0:00This is 99 % Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

0:07Greeley, Colorado is a mid-sized city out in the eastern plains of the state. The landscape is simple and flat. Cow pastures stretch as far as the eye can see. And most days, the breeze smells of manure. Greeley is a meatpacking town. The world's largest meat processor, JBS, has its U.S. headquarters there. And many people in the town work for the company. When most Americans imagine a place like Greeley, they think of cowboys, farmers, political conservatives, and mostly white people. That's reporter Esther Honig. That was my assumption about Greeley, at least until I worked there as an agricultural reporter.

0:47That's when I realized the city is actually incredibly diverse. Test, test. There we go. A few years ago, I went to interview a man we'll call Mohammed. Hello. He lived in a small, single-story house in a quiet neighborhood on the northeast side of town. How old are you? Daddy, cheers. Okay. Mohamed spoke Rohingya in only a little English, so we used a translator to communicate. At an old Formica dinner table, Mohamed served me coffee. He wore a lonji, a long skirt that's customary in his home country of Burma, and he told me what life was like there.

1:30So he's talking about the peri, the rice. So he plow the land and then he pull in the seedlings, then he transplant. Mohamed was a rice farmer, but then he faced persecution by the government and had to flee his country. He was registered as a refugee by the UN. And eventually, after undergoing a rigorous background check, he was one of the lucky ones selected for resettlement. I was always thinking how America would be and what I will do there. And I was excited, especially... In 2015, Mohamed left the refugee camp where he'd been living and flew across the world, ending up here, in Greeley. This would be his new home.

2:18So when I get in America, then my caseworker, within one month I got the job in JBS. JBS, the massive meatpacking plant in Greeley that we mentioned earlier. To get his job, Mohamed didn't have to speak English. He didn't need any prior experience. The caseworker didn't even really explain what JBS was. He only said, JBS, there's many different kind of job. Then you will do one of them. He said just like this. So he didn't tell him that it was a slaughterhouse or that he would be working with meat. He didn't know that? He didn't know that. After his first week at JBS, Mohamed realized just what kind of work he'd be doing.

3:02He used a large electric knife to remove the skin from cow legs. It was bloody, exhausting labor. In most plants, workers assemble things, like cars. But in a meatpacking plant, the workers disassemble animals. They stand along conveyor belts, where line speeds run incredibly fast. Up to 450 cows are killed every hour, and the workers use wickedly sharp electric knives to break them down into cuts of meat like chuck and rib. And as conveyor belts, meat grinders, and saws rumbled around Mohammed, he looked around the factory floor and noticed something else. Many of the other workers were from places like Somalia, Eritrea, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

3:45They all arrived here as refugees, like him. I understand that people are getting their job as I did. Oh. As I did. There's a caseworker. Caseworker. So he knew that everyone was getting the job the same way. The same way. The scale of meatpacking in this country is staggering. Half a million people work in the industry, producing tens of billions of pounds of meat every year and generating billions of dollars in profits. Companies like JBS are among the largest employers in rural America. But the industry doesn't just process animals. It churns through people. The work is so brutal and physically punishing that many don't last long on the job.

4:33Workers often suffer chronic injuries from the repetitive nature of the work. They can also lose fingers, even whole appendages. Research shows that there are about two amputations a week across the entire industry, which means that meatpacking companies are always searching for new bodies to run the line. But in the last 20 years, companies like JBS have come to rely on a new source of labor, refugees, arriving through humanitarian programs that are supposed to offer safety and a shot at the American dream. And it's through this particular arrangement that rural Midwestern towns like Greeley have become home to thousands of people like Mohammed, men and women who fled violence and persecution, only to find themselves doing what has long been one of the most dangerous jobs in America.

5:22In 1904, the journalist Upton Sinclair went undercover working in meatpacking plants in Chicago. Then he wrote a novel based on his experiences called The Jungle. He described poor, newly arrived immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, who worked in dangerous, squalid conditions. These immigrants came to America chasing the promise of a better life. Instead, they found themselves teetering on the edge of poverty and hunger and facing working conditions even worse than today's. The work left their hands so mangled that their fingernails wore off, and they were exposed to deadly infections. They'd pour acid on sheep pelts and yank out the wool with their bare hands, scalding their skin.

6:03With the slip of a sharp knife, many workers had severed the tendons of their thumbs. But it wasn't those brutal conditions that captured the public's outrage. As Sinclair later said, quote, I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach, end quote. People cared less about exploited workers than about what was ending up on their plates. Sinclair described poisoned rats ground into sausage. Or how cows covered in oozing boils were butchered and made into canned meat. Those were the images people couldn't forget. Even if Sinclair's book didn't do exactly what he wanted it to, it was still influential.

6:40Federal laws were enacted to enforce inspections and sanitation. But in the 1940s, it seemed like things were finally going to change for the workers. A boom in the post-war economy meant that people were eating more meat, which in turn increased the hiring at meatpacking plants. Workers' jobs became skilled labor and were unionized. For the first time, their positions were salaried. Meatpackers could finally afford a middle-class lifestyle. They had boats in their driveways and pools in their backyards. But the relief was short-lived because meatpacking companies made a decision that would transform the entire workforce and add a whole new layer of vulnerability in an already dangerous industry.

7:22In the 1960s, meatpacking companies left the cities where they'd been based for decades and moved their plants to rural America. The shift put them closer to livestock and cut down on transportation costs. Critically, it also let them escape the unions in the cities and the prying eyes of pesky reporters and politicians. But there was a problem. Rural communities that they relocated to did not have sufficient labor for them. This is Don Stoll, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Kansas. He told me that without the unions, the working conditions and pay inside the plants declined once again.

7:59and to attract the workers they needed. Companies looked south to Mexico. Well, meatpacking companies had always advertised on radio stations in South Texas and elsewhere, which broadcast into Mexico, that there were jobs available in meatpacking plants. But in the 1980s, with the blessing of the INS, they were actually set up recruiting stations in Mexico City. There were many reasons that these Latin American workers were drawn to meatpacking, despite its gruesome reputation. One of the attractions of meatpacking for immigrants is that you don't have to speak English to work in a meatpacking plant.

8:39And you don't have to have any pre-existing job skills. By the 1960s, Greeley was becoming a leader in meatpacking. It was one of the first small towns to build a big, modern packing plant. And ranchers from all around came there to harvest their cattle. Increasingly, Mexican immigrants staffed the factory. Many of them had previously worked in nearby agriculture, but these packing jobs were inside, shielded from the hot sun, and they paid better than field work. In the 1980s and 90s, new waves of workers arrived in Greeley, not just from Mexico, but other parts of Central America. They moved into the neighborhoods around the packing plant, which was now called Swifton Company.

9:19By the early 2000s, about one-third of Greeley's population was Latino. You could see it everywhere. The local grocery stores started selling fresh tortillas and dried chiles imported from Mexico. The schools created ESL courses. But the change also brought backlash. The city was starkly divided along racial lines. And meanwhile, in the background, another labor problem was brewing. It was an open secret that hundreds of workers at the plant were undocumented. The meatpacking company reviewed their workers' documentation with a federal system called E-Verify, which was known to be deeply flawed.

9:55And on the morning of December 12, 2006, the situation reached a breaking point. That morning, Greeley's Meatpackers started the day like most other days. The first shift arrived at the factory before sunrise. They put on their hard hats and white smocks and took their positions along the massive conveyor belt, ready for the first slaughter of the day. But then, just before the giant factory rumbled to life, all hell broke loose. Just after dawn, federal agents from ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, descended on plants run by Swifton Company, the nation's third largest meatpacker. It's the largest ever crackdown on illegal immigration in the workplace.

10:361 ,200 arrests now reported across six states. Shortly after 7 a.m., agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement charged inside and swarmed the factory floor. People ran like mad. Some tried to hide in the cattle pens or inside the bathrooms or supply closets. But in the end, hundreds were rounded up and arrested. Several hundred family members gathered along the fence between the Swift Company and Highway 85. Some were crying. Some were praying. Others were yelling at the federal agents.

11:14Similar scenes played out in six different meatpacking plants across Middle America, at the same time, on the same day. ICE agents arrested close to 1 ,300 workers for having, quote, questionable documentation. Overnight, Swift lost about 10 % of its workforce. Without enough people, some factories couldn't operate, and the company was hemorrhaging money. It was a crisis of epic proportions, and it raised the same old question. Where on earth would Swift find more people willing to perform this dangerous work? This time, Swift found its answer in an unlikely place. A federal program meant to help people fleeing war and persecution.

11:54That's when we return.

12:05Before the raids in 2006, Swift & Company was already limping along financially. For years, they'd struggled to make a profit, and it only got worse when they lost a large fraction of their workforce. Five months after the raids, it was announced the company was being sold to JBS, the Brazilian-owned meatpacker. The new owners got busy trying to solve the labor problem. One news article from that time reported how company officials met in a war room with maps pinned to the walls. They marked the cities and towns outside their meatpacking plants as potential recruitment zones. They advertised the open positions on the radio, newspapers, and billboards.

12:43But not many people wanted to sign up. And so, to dig themselves out of this labor shortage, JBS adopted a new strategy. The company set its sights on a new population. Like the undocumented workers before them, these workers didn't speak much English. They were eager to find jobs and willing to do hard labor that many others refused. And crucially, they were in the country legally. JBS turned to refugees. An aggressive recruitment campaign began. Company representatives went to Denver and staked out East African restaurants and mosques. They offered new hires a cash bonus of up to$1 ,500 and more for referrals.

13:26And they used these same tactics across the heartland, convincing refugees to move away from the cities where they had access to federally funded support services. They chartered buses and drove hundreds of refugees to isolated meatpacking towns like Cactus, Texas, Grand Island, Nebraska, and Greeley, Colorado. At the time of the SWIFT raids, right, everything changed in 2006. Paul Stein was Colorado's refugee coordinator at the time, the most senior person at the state level. And he started to notice more and more refugees moving to Greeley. They were recruited by SWIFT, vigorously recruited.

14:05You had a lot of, at that point, primarily Somalis, some Burmese, who moved in to take advantage of the employment opportunities. And then those refugees would petition and bring their families. According to Stein, as well as several other people I interviewed for the story, the number of refugees living in Greeley ballooned overnight. This is a story of backing into a plan rather than having the plan. It totally started because of me packing. But when refugees landed in Greeley, they struggled with everything. Most of the services Greeley had developed over the years were tailored to Spanish speakers, not speakers of Rohingya, Somali, or Tigray.

14:50Housing was hard to find, and without translation services, families struggled to enroll their kids in school or see a doctor. Soon, an office for refugee resettlement opened up. We started with a very limited presence. I think we had a mighty team of one, one case manager, who for a time actually worked out of his vehicle. This is James Horan, the president and CEO of Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, which ran the office. I think, you know, there really wasn't an infrastructure for other than Spanish-speaking newcomers, right? And so I think a lot of it was just as simple as making the adjustment of new languages, new cultures, and everything that came along with that.

15:38Gradually, you could see another wave of change washing over Greeley, once again driven by the meatpacking plant. For decades, the town had been mostly white. Then it became white and Latino. Now it was increasingly international. On the main boulevard, there was the Mexican grocery store, but you might also see women walking by in a bias. Eventually, a halal market and an East African restaurant opened up downtown. And the population of refugees continued to grow. Not long after JBS bought Swift, they announced a second shift, meaning the plant would operate more than 18 hours a day and they'd have to double their workforce.

16:15Lucky for JBS, America's refugee resettlement program became a steady source of workers. When I first noticed how this had happened, I was shocked. A program meant to be humanitarian in practice was pushing people into some of the hardest, most dangerous jobs in the country. But as I dug deeper, I learned this wasn't part of a grand malicious scheme. The meatpacking companies were just taking advantage of America's flawed resettlement system and how it was designed to work. America's current refugee system first emerged in the aftermath of the Vietnam War with the Refugee Act of 1980. It increased the number of refugees admitted each year into the country.

16:58And for the first time, it created a standardized resettlement process overseen by the federal government. The new system helped to resettle the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Asian refugees. They could be called the new settlers of the United States, and they come to America's shores out of desperation, sadness, violence, and deprivation from their own battered homeland. Many have escaped by small boats from the new communist governments. Often they brave dangerous seas in small boats, attacks by pirates, and months of overcrowded conditions in refugee camps.

17:37The resettlement program was well-intentioned, a way to welcome people and offer them a shot at the American dream. But it carried a built-in flaw, rooted in another American impulse. We wanted them to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. That's why the very first priority of the 1980s Refugee Act was economic self-sufficiency. Refugees were expected to find work and get off government support as quickly as possible. Job counseling is a key part of the orientation effort. Job skills previously learned are sometimes adaptable. In other cases, however, entirely new jobs must be learned and training programs must be set up.

18:17In the 45 years since the passage of the Refugee Act, making it to the U.S. as a refugee has become a significant feat. To start, you have to undergo several interviews with international and U.S. agencies who decide if you qualify. They ask a series of questions, like, are you fleeing political persecution? Will you be killed if you return home? If the answer is yes, and you can prove it, then the U.S. government subjects you to a series of rigorous background checks and medical screenings. The process takes up to two years. If you're approved and you already have family in the U.S., you'll be sent to live near them.

18:53Otherwise, the State Department decides which relocation site to send you to. Historically, the U.S. has accepted more refugees than any other nation. But once people get here, we offer them little support. Places like Canada give newly arrived refugees up to a year of services and financial assistance. But the U.S. gives people just three months. And then they're on their own. When a refugee arrives in the U.S. to a place like Greeley, one of the first things that happens is that they're assigned a caseworker who teaches them the basics of life in America, like how to find an apartment, how to take the bus and buy groceries, and how to see a doctor.

19:33But the most critical thing a newly arrived refugee needs to learn is how to get a job. I started as just what's called a job developer. Back in 2008, early on in his career, John Tabor worked at a refugee resettlement agency in Illinois. I found John through a researcher on refugee resettlement who worked with him at that same organization. They both thought they'd be helping refugees, but soon learned that wasn't necessarily true. In fact, years later, when I spoke with John over the phone, he felt a lot of remorse, which is why he was so honest and candid with me about what his work was actually like.

20:13There is only a very, very small amount of resettlement money that these families are allocated. You know, if they don't get a job pretty much immediately, they're unable to pay their bills. So, you know, within a few months, they'd be facing homelessness. You know, like literally, welcome to America. Now you're going to be evicted. At his job, John was up against the same clock as the refugees he was helping. He had to get everyone gainfully employed before their three-month safety net ran out. And he might have a caseload of 50 to 60 people. You know, did a little bit of sort of skill development, but frankly, we didn't really have a lot of time for that.

20:56It was mostly get their resume together, try to figure out what they did in the past and get them into work as soon as possible. But it was rarely that straightforward. We're talking about some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Many didn't have any skills that would translate to the modern American job context. Some had lived in refugee camps for their entire lives. They didn't have any work experience. You know, you couldn't put like sitting around the refugee camp or you couldn't put like tilling the field. You know, it just wouldn't translate. And so John and his fellow job developers connected the refugees with whatever employment options they could find.

21:37It's not like they were applying to some high-level management position. They were at entry-level meatpacking jobs. Meatpacking. Remember Mohammed, the Burmese refugee from the beginning of the story? This is exactly how he got his job. A caseworker referred him to JBS. John remembers it was one of the most reliable choices because meatpacking plants were always hiring and they paid better than most of the other options. With the high rates of injury and turnover, plants were constantly looking for new workers and the jobs didn't require any English or previous experience. There's one company, Tyson Foods.

22:16Like JBS, Tyson is also a massive American meatpacking company. Tyson would announce like eight positions or nine positions and you'd get, you know, we would all show up with our refugees. And it was a very, very well-established theater. It wasn't a humanitarian project for them. It was here's a group of workers that will be efficient and effective and, you know, will work faster and better than your American employees. And so that was the kind of relationships that we would form. So like we were selling a product, really. And as time went on, John noticed that the recruiters he was in touch with at Tyson became more specific about what type of worker they wanted.

23:02Not so subtly would say, you know, we give us Burmese. You know, they were just sort of, you know, these workers have worked out in the past. And there was this sort of tacit understanding was we should deliver them these workers. Like if we showed up with five or six, I'm just saying like Iraqis, let's say, because, you know, Iraqis had personalities, you know, big personalities. They came from different culture that we knew that wasn't going to satisfy their demands. And that's not something I'm particularly proud of, but it was just the realities we were facing. He says this part of the job kept him up at night.

23:37He and his team at the agency even tried to come up with alternatives. But nothing ever really worked. You know, it just, the American machine just swallowed him up. And there was never any breathing room. I mean, the margins are tiny in our system. After a few more years in this work, John left the field. But it taught him something about America's refugee resettlement program. The narrative that we're giving people these great opportunities, you know, like, there's a dark side. The system is supposed to get refugees out of danger, but it then leaves them with little support. Many don't have language skills or a safety net.

24:18Compared to other immigrant groups, they're overrepresented in low-skilled work, they earn less, and are more likely to live in poverty. That's what makes them ideal recruits for meatpackers like JBS. With so few options, they take jobs most others won't. And even when the work leaves them injured, pushes them to work at impossible speeds, or exposes them to religious discrimination, many feel they have no choice but to stay. We reached out to JBS for this story, but they declined to comment.

24:53Back in Mohammed's home, he tells me a bit about what it was like when he first came to Greeley. It was a shock to leave behind the hot, tropical climate of Burma. He remembers he saw snow here for the first time. What's something that Greeley doesn't have that you miss from your home country, Burma?

25:19He's talking about the gardening. He said Greeley didn't have the same variety of fruits and vegetables he was used to. So he started a garden in the backyard. How did he grow?