Kentucky Unions Stand Up to Halt Deportation of Two Hundred Workers

Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations.

The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.

They’re in the U.S. on “humanitarian parole,” a program that the government until now has used to provide visas to people fleeing war or political instability in certain countries.

“I worked with a lot of those people—they’re some of the nicest people I've ever dealt with,” said Halee Hadfield, who worked at the plant until last year and is now part of the United Auto Workers organizing drive at the nearby electric vehicle battery park BlueOval.

“They come from extreme poverty and neglect, the likes of which most Americans, myself included, couldn’t even fathom. These people deserve better.”

CRYPTIC THREAT

In late March the Department of Homeland Security ended the humanitarian parole program nationwide for 532,000 immigrants from four Latin American countries. Workers received letters warning them to leave the U.S. before April 24 or face “adverse immigration consequences.”

The meaning of this cryptic threat became clearer on April 8 when Reuters reported that the Trump administration plans to fine migrants under deportation orders up to $998 a day if they fail to leave, including seizing their property if they do not pay.

“What is happening to our members at Appliance Park is unfolding at workplaces and in communities all across the country,” said IUE-CWA President Carl Kennebrew. “We cannot allow those who are sowing division to win. Blaming immigrants is an age-old trick to create fear and distract us from the takeover of our economy by billionaires.”

The Internal Revenue Service reached an agreement April 7 with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to share tax information for immigrants who don’t comply with deportation orders, including those suddenly deprived of their legal status.

The Trump administration has also floated deporting incarcerated U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s most notorious prison, despite the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

CBS News found that three-quarters of the hundreds of undocumented people sent to the El Salvador prison had no criminal records—including sheet metal worker Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a SMART Local 100 apprentice, who was deported there by mistake without due process in what the Trump administration described as an “administrative error.”

LOUISVILLE’S CUBAN COMMUNITY

Appliance Park, now Haier’s global headquarters, has been union since the 1950s. It’s the only unionized one of the nine GE Appliance manufacturing sites across the country.

Kentucky is right-to-work, but 97 percent of workers at the plant are dues-paying union members. Local 83761 President Dino Driskell said they speak more than 20 languages, came to the country legally, and contribute to their local communities.

“They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” he said, “not ripped from their families to be shipped away.”

Louisville is one of the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas with the most Cuban immigrants. At least 30,000 Cubans call Jefferson County home. The influx has offset a population decline of 770,000, according to the New York Times .

They began arriving in 1995 after the Cuban and U.S. governments signed an accord establishing a lottery to allow 20,000 Cubans per year into the country. Those who didn’t have family to receive them in Miami went to smaller cities like Louisville.

The Cuban immigrants have transformed Louisville, from the dining and entertainment scenes to the makeup of its workforce, flocking to jobs at UPS, Amazon, Ford, and GE.

PROFITABLE MANUFACTURING PLANT

The workforce at this plant has grown from a little over 1,000 workers before 2017 to nearly 6,000 today. The surge came after the Chinese-company Haier—the world’s largest home appliance manufacturer—bought Appliance Park from GE in 2016 for $5.4 billion.

GE ​​cut 32,000 jobs in 2004, closing 27 locations in 2009 and 2010. Now a tiny number of the jobs have returned, as the company under Chinese ownership has become profitable to the tune of $11.3 billion in 2023.

Immigrant workers from Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East account for more than 1,000 of the workers. Word of mouth gets around, as immigrants talk to other recent arrivals about where to work—and there is always work.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

Like at many manufacturing plants, a high churn rate due to low wages and mandatory overtime keeps job openings plentiful. Heading into the contract fight last fall, Driskell said the average wage was $18.50, “behind any other major company in this area.” The new contract ratified in January contains raises between $1.50 and $3.75 over four years, a 60 percent drop in the health care deductible, and a third paid holiday. Wage tiers remained.

DEPORTATION DRAGNET

Trump’s deportation dragnet has ensnared even people with legal status. Yeon, a CWA member from Cuba at GE who is a U.S. citizen, also received the notice because he sponsored a family member to come to the U.S. under the humanitarian parole program. (He asked that we not use his last name to protect his family from any reprisals from the government.) His uncle works as a repair tech at a communications company called CTDI in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

“The fear Cuban workers have is that the companies they work for won’t keep them on if they lose their legal status,” said Yeon, who is bilingual but preferred to speak in Spanish. He also said Cubans who voted for Trump are feeling some trepidation. “We are watching students detained for protesting the genocide in Gaza, stripped away of their free speech rights,” he said. “They’re labeling the students terrorists!”

The Supreme Court decided April 7 to vacate temporary restraining orders issued by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., which had stopped certain deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. “Not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a dissenting opinion.

Yeon has worked at the GE plant for eight years, starting at $14 an hour and earning $21 an hour now on the repair line with other Cubans as well as Haitian and Venezuelan workers. He says that company supervisors are worried about losing immigrant workers because they won’t have workers to fill production lines, already a perennial problem due to understaffing. Immigrant workers tend to stick around despite the low pay.

Yeon said that divisions over immigration haven’t broken out into the open at work, but on a union Facebook group, he explained to hostile union members the legal status of the people Trump was targeting and shared screenshots of his uncle’s work and travel authorizations, with their expiration dates of 2026.

The union says there’s a lot of misinformation, confusion, and division among workers—especially around the phrase “humanitarian parole,” which some people incorrectly interpret to imply that workers with this legal status have criminal records. Yeon says that despite his years in the country, he’s still baffled by the ignorance of the average American.

“These are human beings with families and kids who have built lives here, and they deserve dignity, compassion, and due process,” read a press statement from the Kentucky State AFL-CIO.

The labor federation also highlighted that “the way this information was delivered—through mailed notices with little to no direct assistance—has left families in distress, with no clear next steps.” Many of the targeted workers don’t speak English, which has worsened the confusion and fear.

KNITTING A COALITION

Cassie Lyles teaches civics to high schoolers in Louisville and lives near the Appliance Park. After spring break, she has been teaching remotely due to flooding. She worries about whether the workers’ children will return to school.

“Before the revocation happened, I already had kids who were scared and they didn’t know whether it was better to come to school—because they felt safe at school—but what if their family was deported while they were gone?” she said.

“So now that the shoe has dropped, I can only imagine how these kids are feeling,” she said. “I wonder if they'll show up when we come back in person. The fears they were already worried about have come to life.”

Lyles is a member of the Jefferson County Teachers. Her students are mainly from Cuba, and their parents have legal papers to reside in the country through humanitarian parole. Many apply for U.S. citizenship after they obtain permanent residency—which they’re eligible for after a year in the country, thanks to the Cold War, unlike many other immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere.

“One of the requirements in Kentucky is that kids have to pass the naturalization test in order to graduate,” said Lyles. “So oftentimes I’ve given materials, and the kids take material home to help their parents pass the test when it’s time for them to take it.”

The National Education Association has shared resources with teachers to handle potential raids, and the local labor movement is coming together. “I think the best thing we can do is stick together, because it’s not just going to affect people at the Appliance Park,” said Lyles. “This is going to affect workers in every union. These are our neighbors. These are kids who are in my building. So we want to make sure that we stand strong.”

The Kentucky AFL-CIO is planning a rally and know-your-rights trainings for affiliated unions whose members may also be affected by deportation orders.

“The labor movement has an opportunity to strengthen our organizations and show that we fight for all members,” said Kroger driver Ryan Haney of Teamsters Local 89 in Louisville. “If the Trump administration can get away with coming after immigrants and federal workers, they’ll keep coming for more of us.”

Over the weekend, Lyles participated in the local Hands Off rally, one of 1,400 nationwide
mobilizations, signing up 600,000 to protest Trump’s various assaults on workers and the public.

“The Trump administration wants to drown us,” she said. “If there’s so many issues, we can’t possibly pay attention to them all.” But by attacking everyone from immigrant workers to the Department of Education, she said, Trump may also be knitting together a coalition.