PANHANDLE, Texas (AP) — After his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued a series of orders ending legal pathways for immigrants to live and work in the U.S.
Those orders resonate powerfully in the Texas Panhandle, where nearly half of workers in the meatpacking industry are thought to be foreign-born.
Three months into the new administration, confusing government directives and court rulings have left vast numbers of immigrants unsure of what to do.
Immigrants and Panhandle meatpacking
Immigrants have long been drawn to the meatpacking industry, back to at least the late 1800s when multitudes of Europeans — Lithuanians, Sicilians, Russian Jews and others — filled Chicago’s Packingtown neighborhood.
For generations, immigrants have come to the Panhandle to work in its immense meatpacking plants, which developed as the state became the nation’s top cattle producer.
Those Panhandle plants were originally dominated by Mexicans and Central Americans. They gave way to waves of people fleeing poverty and violence around the world, from Somalia to Cuba.
They come because the pay in the Panhandle plants starts at roughly $23, and English skills aren’t very important in facilities where thunderous noise often means most communication is done in an informal sign language.
What workers need is a willingness to work very hard.
‘Leave the United States’
“It’s time for you to leave the United States,” said the Department of Homeland Security email sent in early April to some immigrants living legally in the U.S. “Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you.”
This is what President Donald Trump had long promised.
America listened when Trump insisted during the campaign that immigrants were an existential threat. Immigration into the U.S., both legal and illegal, surged during the Biden administration, and Trump spun that into an apocalyptic vision that proved powerful with voters.
What was often left out, though, was the reality of those immigrants.
Because while the White House focuses publicly on the relatively small number of immigrants they say are gang members, there are roughly 2 million immigrants living legally in the U.S. on various forms of temporary status.
More than 500,000 Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Haitians were told they would lose their legal status on April 24, though a federal judge’s order put that on hold – temporarily. About 500,000 Haitians are scheduled to lose a different protected status in August.
“It’s all so confusing,” said Lesvia Mendoza, a 53-year-old special education teacher who came with her husband from Venezuela in 2024, moving in with her son who lives in Amarillo, the panhandle’s largest city, and who is in the process of getting U.S. citizenship.
An industry dependent on immigrants
Now, an industry dependent on immigrant labor is looking toward a future where it could have to let go of thousands of immigrants.
“We’re going to be back in this situation of constant turnover,” said Mark Lauritsen, who runs the meatpacking division for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents thousands of Panhandle workers. “That’s assuming you have labor to replace the labor we’re losing.”
The last haul?
Trucking seemed to be the key to the American dream for a Haitian immigrant named Kevenson Jean.
Kevenson Jean’s truck had taken him across immense swaths of America, taught him about snow, the dangers of high winds and truckstop etiquette. His employer owns the truck, but he understands it like no one else.
He laughs and pats the hood: “I love her.”
He and his wife came to the U.S. in 2023, sponsored by a Panhandle family whose small nonprofit employed him to run a school and feeding center for children in rural Haiti.
“We are not criminals. We’re not taking American jobs,” said Jean, whose work moving meat and other products doesn’t attract as many U.S.-born drivers as it once did.
“We did everything that they required us to do, and now we’re being targeted.”
On a Tuesday in mid-April, Kevenson left Panhandle on what he thought would be his final haul.
He looked miserable as he made his checks: oil, cables, brakes. Eventually, he sat in the driver’s seat took off his baseball cap and prayed, as he always does before setting off.
Then he put his hat back on, buckled his seat belt and drove away, heading west on Route 60.
Days later, Kevenson got word that he could keep his job.
No one could tell him how long the reprieve would last.
