4 Borderzones of enforcement Criminalization, workplace raids, and migrant counterconducts 1 Jonathan Xavier Inda On December 12, 2006, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states: Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Iowa, and Minnesota (US ICE 2006). Taken into custody were 1,282 sus- pected undocumented migrants, most of whom were Latino (that is, of Latin American origin). A majority of these individuals simply faced deportation for being present in the United States without authorization (see Bibler Coutin, this volume). However, 65 were charged with criminal violations related to identity theft or other infractions (i.e. re-entry after deportation). Not only were these migrants looking at deportation, they also potentially faced time in prison. The arrestees were not the only ones affected by the raid. There was plenty of collateral damage. Migrant families were particularly hard hit. Many lost their primary breadwinner. Husbands were separated from wives, parents from chil- dren, and siblings from each other. The broader migrant community in the towns where the raids took place also suffered. The city of Marshalltown, Iowa, for example, witnessed a decrease in its Latino population as a result of ICE’s opera- tions (Perkins and Piller 2007). Not only did the arrestees leave, but so did other migrants who were fearful of further raids. Some left Marshalltown to pursue jobs in other states, while others returned to their home countries, mainly Mexico and various Central American nations. These departures greatly impacted on those migrants who stayed behind. For example, Latino businesses suffered heavily. As Marcela Hernandez, an employee at La Guadalupana bakery, put it: [The raid has] affected the restaurants, the stores and other businesses. . . . People keep leaving, even a year later . . . . People have fear because they don’t know what will happen. They don’t have any security. Every day, they hear about more raids in other states and they are reminded of the raid last year. (Cited in Perkins and Piller 2007) The raids that took place against Swift & Company are not unique. In fact, raids became rather commonplace in the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush, and they have continued, to some extent, under the new Obama admin- istration. In this chapter, I focus on the increased salience of workplace raids in the management of irregular migrants in the US. Specifically, I locate such raids