Hundreds of meatpacking workers with work permits lose their jobs after Trump immigration crackdown

Source: NBC News

July 30, 2025, 12:58 PM EDT


Hundreds of immigrant workers at a meatpacking plant in Iowa have lost their jobs and face deportation risks after their work authorizations, which were tied to their immigration status, were revoked following the Trump administration's termination of a series of legal immigration programs.

More than 200 employees at a JBS pork production facility in the city of Ottumwa began receiving letters of termination six weeks ago and having individual meetings with their employer, according to Otumwa Mayor Rick Johnson and Brian Ulin, a member and spokesperson of the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 230, which represents JBS workers in Ottumwa.

In the meetings, JBS told the affected employees that their “status was being rejected” by the company's verification system, Ulin told NBC News on Tuesday. "It said that they were no longer eligible to work in the U.S.”

Many of the employees lost their legal immigration status and thus their accompanying work authorizations following the Trump administration's termination of programs such as the CHNV parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, as well as various types of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, according to the mayor, Ulin and Paulina Ocegueda, vice president of Ottumwa’s chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation's oldest Hispanic civil rights organization.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/iowa-jbs-plant-lose-work-permits-tps-trump-rcna221672