The snow and fairy lights make Main Street resemble a scene from It’s a Wonderful Life, with only a glimpse of a Mexican flag in the grocer’s window or a handwritten sign in Spanish indicating that this is different from dozens of other mid-Western towns.

But on the outskirts of Marshalltown, the grey windowless bulk of the Swift & Co meat plant looms out of the fog like a battleship. And it is there that workers hurry away from the gates, waving away questions with a polite “No hablo inglés”.

In December last year US immigration agents raided the factory at dawn, divided the workers into two groups – US citizens on one side, Mexicans on the other – and detained 99 people for lacking legal documentation. Children arrived home to find that their parents were gone, others were left crying at school because there was no one to pick them up...

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