On Wednesday, August 7, 2019, Raúl* didn’t go to work at the chicken processing plant. In a last-minute change, his supervisor told him to take the day off to rest. Now, Raúl—who is undocumented—interprets that as an act of God. If he had shown up to work, he says: "I wouldn’t be here to give my testimony.”

That day, he was "saved" from a massive immigration raid of several meat processing plants in Mississippi. Even though he wasn’t arrested, the raid left a mark. He stayed inside in the months after, out of fear of being detained by immigration authorities. And just when he’d gathered up the courage to go back to work, the coronavirus pandemic hit.

We’ve been in touch with Raúl over the past few months. In February 2020, weeks before the first COVID-19 case was recorded in Mississippi, he landed a job at DG Foods, one of the state's many chicken processing plants. He thought that was where he became infected with the coronavirus, but now he’s not sure. Soon after, his 18-year-old son, who works at another area plant, also fell ill. Before long, nearly the entire family was sick with the virus.

"There are two enemy forces coming after the immigrant community: immigration authorities and the coronavirus," he says.

After the August 7 raid, which resulted in the arrest of 687 undocumented workers, processing plants in central Mississippi stopped hiring Latino employees who they suspected were unauthorized to work legally. But when the pandemic arrived, many of those same employers changed their minds.

Activists and workers in the area, who we met in August while covering the impact of the raid, say employers are using the promise of bonuses or a better hourly rate to lure employees, but aren’t taking the measures necessary to ensure worker safety. Undocumented immigrants like Raúl have decided to return, putting themselves and their families at risk. Even some of the workers who were detained last August have gone back to work.

In April, after Trump classified meat processing plants as essential facilities to remain open during the pandemic, workers received letters that serve as a kind of safeguard should they be detained by authorities for any reason. The irony is not lost on anyone: Workers arrested months ago and threatened with deportation are now considered essential in supplying the United States with food.

“The irony, the pain, the confusion, the reframing of the conversation does a lot to the psyche of human beings," says Lorena Quiroz, an organizer with Working Together Mississippi.

An estimated 51% of workers on the frontlines of meat and chicken processing plants are immigrants, according to a study published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

For months, activists and workers around the country have raised alarm bells about the risks of outbreaks in processing plants. They say companies have not taken the pandemic seriously enough and that working conditions in processing plants—where social distancing is not possible—will have a fatal impact on the communities where they're located. They have not been wrong. So far, more than 27,000 workers at these facilities have been infected and more than 90 have died, according to a Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) database.

In the Mississippi towns that suffered the brunt of last year’s raids, infections have reached beyond just the plants. Some of those arrested in August who remain in ICE detention centers awaiting deportation have also tested positive for the coronavirus.

Raúl's brother-in-law, who was arrested in Mississippi, is among the more than 2,200 detainees who have fallen ill with the virus in ICE detention centers nationwide, according to the agency's own figures.

“My family told me that he tested positive for coronavirus while locked up in prison,” Raúl says. “That breaks my heart. My soul hurts because of that injustice.”

The pandemic has once again brought to light the deep inequalities that exist in the United States. Latino and Black communities have been hit particularly hard. Many Hispanics who live paycheck to paycheck are unable to stay home. In an economy that seeks to exploit cheap labor, immigrants who work in meat processing plants or agricultural fields must continue to show up.

Most don’t have access to healthcare due to high costs or because they’re undocumented.

Despite declaring many of these workers essential, Trump has not stopped his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

At Univision Digital, we’ve spent the last few months reporting on the Trump administration’s immigration raids. This project began after we made a documentary about the impact of a 2008 raid in Postville, Iowa, which took place during the presidency of George W. Bush and resulted in the arrest of 398 workers. At the time, it was the largest workplace immigration raid in the country’s history. But not for long: in August of that year, more than 595 workers were detained in a similar operation in Laurel, Mississippi.

When Barack Obama was elected in November of that year, his administration halted massive workplace raids but continued to deport a record number of individuals. More than three million people were deported during his eight years as president.

We assumed the Postville documentary would serve as a way to examine a past event and explore how an Iowa town has recovered in the decade since. We didn’t expect it to resonate so deeply with current events. While editing the documentary in Spring 2018, the Trump administration once again began to launch massive workplace raids.

In the early days of his administration, arrests were low compared to numbers recorded in Postville and Laurel 10 years earlier. In January 2018, 21 immigrants were detained during several raids of 7-Eleven stores across the country. Three months later, 97 workers were arrested at a meat processing plant in Tennessee. But by August of that year, the numbers had increased. That month, 133 people were arrested at meat processing plants in Nebraska and Minnesota. In April of 2019, another 280 were arrested in Texas. And months later, in August, the Mississippi raids became the largest in the country's history in a single state.

At a press conference after those arrests, Mike Hurst, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Mississippi, proudly announced a “new record: believed to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation's history.”

Through the seven stories here, some which were previously published, we seek to show how the Trump administration's massive raids and anti-immigrant policies affect and destroy entire communities—from local economic impacts to long-lasting psychological ones. We also seek to evaluate whether these raids even achieve their goals to deliver jobs back to local communities and reduce immigration.

And we also look at the resilience and strength of so many immigrants. Even in the communities hit hardest both by Trump’s "zero tolerance" policies and the unprecedented public health crisis caused by the coronavirus, immigrants continue to take to the streets to fight for their rights.

*Name has been changed to protect the worker’s identity.