In the Nebraska town of South Sioux City, the world is turning against Trump

On the main drag of South Sioux City, dozens of taquerias rub elbows with Somali clothing stores and Laotian grocers, a testament to the waves of immigrants who have built and transformed this town of 14,000 on the Nebraska plains.

All were drawn here by work in the area’s slaughterhouses. The largest, a sprawling white and grey complex a few kilometres away, is Tyson Foods’ main beef processing plant.

From her food truck on Dakota Avenue, Anita Martínez has watched for two decades as a quiet strip with just a handful of businesses transformed into a bustling multicultural thoroughfare.

Most of the newcomers are from her native Mexico, with further influxes from elsewhere in Latin America, as well as East Africa and Southeast Asia.

“It’s really grown a lot, and I get along well with everyone,” Ms. Martínez, 72, says one mild, autumn Friday evening as she and her two daughters serve up tacos and tortas from Doña Ana’s Lonchera.

“The best part is mingling with people.”

But since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, South Sioux City has felt under threat.

Many people don’t go out for fear of getting grabbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ms. Martínez says. Her sales have dropped by half.

“The United States gives us so much,” she says. “Let’s hope to God that things go back to the way they were.”

Adds her daughter Noemí Castro, 50: “Before, it was the American Dream. Now, no.”

Even as Mr. Trump continues his campaign of mass roundups and deportations, immigrants remain central to America’s economic and social life, including in its most staunchly conservative regions.

The Siouxland, as residents here call the swath of Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota centred on the convergence of the Big Sioux River with the Missouri, has overwhelmingly backed the Republican Party since the 1960s.

Now, anger and fear over the President’s immigration crackdown are threatening the party’s hold on the region.

Polls show Latinos nationwide are moving away from the GOP, after Mr. Trump made inroads with them two years ago. In a Telemundo survey earlier this month, Latino voters favoured Democratic control of Congress by a 24-point margin, while 69 per cent disapproved of the President’s handling of immigration and 74 per cent disapproved of his economic management.

Locally, they may play a decisive role in tipping a close race.

Dan Osborn, an Independent Senate candidate in Nebraska, is polling competitively against incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts. The Democratic candidate has dropped out, banking that Mr. Osborn, a mechanic and union leader campaigning as a political centrist, stands the best chance.

At a town hall one clear, sunny Saturday morning in Ponca, a village about a half-hour drive from South Sioux City, immigration emerges as a top issue.

One man in the audience recounts the story of a local Mexican father who was recently deported despite having lived in the U.S. since he was four years old. Another, who identifies himself as a high school teacher, tears up as he describes the worry among the children he works with.

“Nobody should have to wake up afraid like that in this country,” Mr. Osborn says. “Too many innocent people are getting caught up.”

His wife, Megan, says rural areas are suffering because they often rely on immigrants to serve as doctors, nursing home workers and other health care staff. “You have communities that are driving 200 miles to go and see somebody for the specialized care that they need,” she says.

Yamilet Gomez, an 18-year-old college student born in the U.S. to Guatemalan parents, says she hopes the election will bring to power someone who can stop what Mr. Trump is doing on immigration.

“It’s scary for some families to even go shopping,” she says. “They have to be careful just to go outside.”

Back on Dakota Avenue, in a building that houses a bazaar of Somali shops selling luminous, flowing dresses and sarongs, next to a halal grocer and a restaurant serving up dishes of fava beans and goat meat, you’ll find Abdikadir Moalim.

A 30-year-old ethnic Somali who grew up in Kenya, he immigrated to the U.S. in 2022 after winning a green card lottery. The following year, he came to South Sioux City for a quality assurance job at Tyson Foods. He’s currently working on bringing his wife and toddler daughter here from Kenya.

Fluent in Somali, Swahili and English, Mr. Moalim has set up a non-profit, Somali Community of Siouxland, to help fellow recent immigrants. At his desk in a room decorated with flags from around the world, he shows people how to fill out paperwork, apply for jobs, find housing and write CVs. “Everyone feels like they’re contributing a lot to the city, to the state. They work tirelessly to support their families, they get taxed. They’re adding value to the community,” Mr. Moalim says.

Earlier this year, when Mr. Trump ordered an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, home to America’s largest and most visible Somali community, it rattled people in South Sioux City, Mr. Moalim says. Many did not report for work in the days and weeks that followed.

Ironically, a lot of Somalis he knows backed Mr. Trump in 2024. Many of them work as truckers, with pay and expenses that fluctuate widely when the economy rises or falls, and they bought Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge of greater prosperity. “He promised a lot of economic stability, and they supported him and voted for him. But that’s not how things turned out,” Mr. Moalim says. “They feel they made a mistake.”

Then there is the President’s xenophobic rhetoric − he has called Somalis “garbage” and accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country” − which has emboldened others to say similar things.

Standing on the porch of her house a few blocks away, Sandra Davila recounts the bigoted comments she’s heard on the street and at the store since Mr. Trump came to power.

“There’s just a lot of extra racism,” she says. “You know: ‘Go back to your country’ or ‘Don’t speak Spanish.’ I was born here.”

It didn’t used to be like this, the 52-year-old says. When her family moved to South Sioux City from Brownsville, Tex., in 1989, after her father and brother were hired to work at a meat-packing plant, there were few Latinos. She was the only Hispanic person in her high school graduating class.

But she doesn’t remember facing any discrimination.

“Everybody just kind of worked together. You never really saw any big segregation at all,” says Ms. Davila, an administrator at a pork plant who has raised four children of her own here. “Now, it’s very divided.”

When her parents immigrated from Mexico in the 1960s, she says, it was also much simpler than what people face today. “Back then, citizenship and residency was so much of an easier process.”

Ms. Castro, of Doña Ana’s Lonchera, is hoping the Nov. 3 midterms will rein Mr. Trump in. She’s voting Democrat and has been encouraging her four grown children to get to the polls. Her youngest, a 20-year-old daughter, has registered for her first election. “I’ve inculcated in them to vote this time,” says Ms. Castro, who works in the quality control lab of a construction company.

This sense of civic duty has seen Ms. Martínez do everything she can to help out the community at this moment of need. She and one of her granddaughters bring food to people who can’t go out and also do their shopping for them at Walmart. A couple of months back, she and her family distributed bags of school supplies to local children.

Originally from Mexico’s Jalisco state, Ms. Martinez immigrated to the U.S. in 1970. She decamped from California to South Sioux City in 1996 for a job in a slaughterhouse and because her brother was living here. She started the food truck business in 2002.

Her whole family helps out − from her 82-year-old husband to her two daughters and son to the grandchildren. In addition to its regular spot on Dakota Avenue, the lonchera makes visits to the area plants.

It’s just one example of how, without immigration, neither this town nor country could function.

“Even though some don’t have papers, they are hard-working and humble. They are thinking of a better future for themselves and their families,” Ms. Castro says. “At the meat-processing plants, it’s Latinos. My respect to them because those are hard, gruelling jobs. Or the people who work in the fields. Who else is going to do that work?”

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