Alex Baumhardt/Minnesota Reformer
WORTHINGTON — Typically about 10 to 15 cars and their new owners drive off the lot each month at Los Partners Auto Sales in Worthington, a small city in southwest Minnesota where roughly 1 in 3 residents is an immigrant.
But since early January, when the Trump administration ramped up its federal immigration operation to 3,000 agents, Larry Trovino has sold just three.
“People got scared to be on the street,” said Trovino, Los Partners’ manager. He’s lived in Worthington for 18 years.
“You can feel it, the sadness from town. There’s no people walking around. You go to the stores, and they lock the doors now. You’ve got to wait until they open the door for you. It’s not normal,” he explained on a quiet Wednesday afternoon at the shop.
The surge of federal immigration officials ordered by President Dondald Trump in December primarily targeted the Twin Cities metro, but other parts of the state — including southwest Minnesota and Worthington — have not been spared. At least three men were arrested by federal immigration agents in Worthington since late December, according to local news reports, and neighborhood watch group pages on Facebook show near daily posts of presumed sightings of agents around the area.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for a county-by-county breakdown of immigration arrests in Minnesota over the past year. Department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that in the past nine weeks, Homeland Security has arrested 4,000 “criminal illegal aliens including vicious murderers, rapists, child pedophiles and incredibly dangerous individuals.”
On Thursday, Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan announced many of those immigration agents would be sent home in the coming week.
It can’t happen soon enough for Worthington, where foot traffic downtown has quieted to a patter since the beginning of the year, and businesses are suffering economic losses some owners said they might not survive even now that the feds say they are winding down Operation Metro Surge.
“It’s definitely not the same town anymore,” Trovino said.
Economic engine
Worthington, about 60 miles from the state’s border with South Dakota, is the seat of Nobles County, which has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any county in the state, according to U.S. Census data. One in five residents in the county of roughly 22,000 is an immigrant, and roughly 70% of those immigrants are Hispanic or Latino. Most newcomers arrived from Mexico, followed by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, within the last decade-and-a-half.
Many came to work on area farms and at the JBS meatpacking plant, the town’s largest employer with roughly 2,100 employees.
From 2010 to 2020, the total immigrant population in the 23-counties of southwest Minnesota grew 40%, according to a 2022 analysis from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Although the influx of people has led to some racist backlash, the growth has undoubtedly revived towns like Worthington, where businesses that had shuttered in the ‘80s and ‘90s were reopened and renovated to support Mexican and Asian grocery stores and restaurants, churches and other places of worship.
“I have often brought folks into the narrative by inviting them to come to Willmar. Come to Worthington. Stand with me on this street corner. Spin your head around. Look at all of the businesses that are owned by entrepreneurs of color,” said Scott Marquardt, president of the nonprofit economic development group Southwest Initiative Foundation. The group provides grants to businesses to help update old buildings for new commercial projects.
“I am worried about survivability now,” he said. “As you get out into these smaller communities, that entrepreneur may be the only source of groceries; the only auto repair shop. So is somebody going to come in behind? I’m worried about the long-term, sustainable impact. I’m concerned about what it means for succession.”
‘No one is leaving the house’
On Wednesday afternoon, several Latino grocery stores and Mexican restaurants downtown were open, but with doors locked. Patrons had to be let in by an employee at the door, meant to ensure no one is a federal agent. Joyce Heywroth was the lone customer at the downtown laundromat, where she said typically there would be other customers, but she assumed many were avoiding the place out of fear that ICE agents would be in town.
At Tienda Tacana #2, a corner store downtown, cashier Laura Hernandez said business almost entirely depends on what’s been posted on social media that day related to ICE sightings.
“On the days that a lot of stuff is online, and around those days specifically, that’s when people just won’t come out,” she said.
Jamie Salinas, CEO of the Worthington Chamber of Commerce, said he and other city officials have had to spend time dispelling unfounded rumors about specific spots in town in recent months. A local college baseball training inadvertently sparked fear when people reported to online networks an unusually high number of out-of-state plates in a city parking lot.
“Everybody is just trying to stay ahead of everything, trying to keep an eye out for everybody around here,” he said.
At the Top Asian Food and Deli down the street, cashier Cristian Roche said the Saturday that Alex Pretti was killed by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, very few people came through downtown. When he drove past the Walmart, he said, the parking lot was nearly empty.
Ana Cuadros, owner of downtown bakery Panaderia Mi Tierra, said business is down roughly 50% since the beginning of the year. Sales are down about 70% at RG Music store, owner Maria Agorra said.
The high concentration of Latino bakeries, markets and clothing stores typically brings customers — including many other immigrants — from St. James and surrounding communities to Worthington, Agorra said.
“Now, no one is leaving the house or leaving their neighborhoods,” she said in Spanish.
Not the first time
There was fear in Worthington during the first Trump administration, and even before that. Worthington was the target of one of the state’s largest federal immigration raids in 2006, when the JBS meat packing plant — the largest employer in the city — was targeted by federal immigration agents as part of a six-state operation that resulted in 1,300 arrests, with more than 200 in Worthington.
Rena Wong, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 663, which represents about 1,900 JBS workers, said the two-decade old incident had a lasting impact.
“That memory still lives in the community. Folks see ICE agents driving around and walking around in the community — they’re at the Walmart. They’re at the local stores and restaurants — and so of course people are scared and worried.”
Wong said they’ve partnered with other area unions to create a legal defense and support fund for members and their families, including several in Worthington.
At the school district, the second largest employer in the city, Superintendent Joel Heitkamp said they’ve struggled with a few days of large absences among school support staff, which are predominantly employees of color, he said.
School staff were at trainings at Worthington schools on Martin Luther King Jr. Day when they heard that ICE agents were in town and had taken two men.
“So a small group of us went to every building for about an hour on that day and just held a question and answer,” he said. The next day, there were many staff absences, and student attendance dropped by about 20%, though the numbers recovered within a few days, Heitkamp said.
He said COVID-19 provided a good training ground for dealing with the insecurity and uncertainty families and staff feel during this time.
“I’ve tried to approach it in that same manner, knowing that every day as school leaders, we don’t know what’s going to pop up, but we do know that we have to respond,” he said.
That means getting school supplies and other materials to kids staying at home, making sure they reach families that have fallen out of contact with teachers, and ensuring kids know they are safe when they’re at school or on the bus.
Heitkamp hasn’t seen any major exodus of kids or families from the district. But Trovino, at the car dealership, said he’s heard from friends who manage apartment buildings in town who have seen an unusually high number of tenants abruptly leaving. Trovino also owns and rents out a home in town.
He said his tenant left a few weeks ago. He didn’t tell Trovino where he was going.
“He just said he doesn’t feel safe in Worthington any more,” Trovino said.