Politicians’ racially charged remarks draw migrants’ fury

MINNEAPOLIS — As coronavirus hot spots erupted at major U.S. meatpacking plants, experts criticized extremely tight working conditions that made the factories natural highrisk contagion locations. But some Midwestern politicians have pointed the finger at the workers’ living conditions, suggesting crowded homes bear some blame.

The comments — including a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice’s remark that an outbreak didn’t come from “regular folks” — outraged workers and advocates who slammed them as elitist and critical of immigrants, who make up a major share of America’s meatpacking workforce.

And the remarks stood in contrast to public U.S. outpourings of gratitude for other essential workers like police officers, health care professionals and grocery store workers. The union that represents most packing plant workers has estimated at least 30 have died of the virus.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, generated ire last month when discussing the closure of a Smithfield pork plant in Sioux Falls that infected 1,000 employees and people who came in contact with the workers, saying “99% of what’s going on today wasn’t happening inside the facility.”

The spread of the virus happened “more at home, where these employees were going home and spreading some of the virus because a lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the community, the same building, sometimes in the same apartment,” she said on Fox News.

Noem wasn’t alone. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, also a Republican, took heat for remarks last month about “people concentrated together” after a meatpacking plant virus outbreak in his state.

President Trump has ordered meat companies to stay open. The United Food and Commercial Workers said in response that the administration is rushing to reopen plants without assuring worker safety.