The Daily - Tuesday, Dec. 26, 2017

The Daily is revisiting favorite episodes of the year — listening back, and then hearing what’s happened in the time since the stories first ran. Today we’re going back to an episode from the early weeks of the Trump administration, when we met a man named Carlos who got caught up in the president’s crackdown on immigrants already living in the U.S. illegally. Guests: Monica Davey, the Chicago bureau chief for The New York Times; Tim Grigsby, a print shop owner in West Frankfort, Ill. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Duration: 24m
Broadcast on: 26 Dec 2017
Audio Format: other

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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Brought to you by the Capital One Saver Card. With Saver, you are an unlimited 3% cashback on dining, entertainment, and at grocery stores. That's unlimited cashback on ordering takeout from home, or unlimited cashback on tickets to concerts and games. So grab a bite, grab a seat, and earn unlimited 3% cashback with the Saver Card. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. Hi, it's Michael. This week, the Daily is revisiting our favorite episodes of the year, listening back and then hearing what's happened in the time since the story's first ran. Today, we're going back to an episode from the early weeks of the Trump administration, when we met a man named Carlos, who got caught up in the president's crackdown on immigrants already living in the U.S. illegally. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the date. Federal immigration agents are celebrating the president's new plan to deport unauthorized immigrants, saying they feel newly respected, empowered, and finally free to do their jobs. And the story of what happened when those federal agents showed up in a small town that had overwhelmingly voted for President Trump and his campaign rhetoric became a reality. It's Monday, February 27th. Monica Gaby, I'm a reporter at The New York Times. Nice to meet you. You don't have? Yeah, I work right for The New York Times, but I work out of Chicago, so I cover the Midwest. So I'm not here from New York. Everyone keeps asking me, "You flew all the way here, what?"

So today, we're in West Frankfort, Illinois, where my colleague Monica Davie, the Chicago bureau chief at The Times, had heard about a recent incident involving one man in town, an incident that has shaken the whole town's beliefs about politics, identity, and immigration. West Frankfort is a small town of 8,000 people, and it's down in Southern Illinois, a five-hour drive south of Chicago. So it's way down in kind of the heart of coal country. It's generations of people who have worked in the coal mining industry, and unfortunately, the coal mining industry has suffered down there, so a lot of people have lost their jobs. What are the politics of this town? In the past, I'm told by people who live there, it's been a democratic stronghold, but things have changed there, the economy has struggled, and in the county that West Frankfort is in, people voted 70% for Donald Trump because they're worried about their jobs. They feel like he's going to potentially bring them back and bring back their husband's jobs, and there's a real worry about the future of the industry down there. And the incident that brought you to West Frankfort revolves around a man named Carlos. Who is Carlos? Juan Carlos Hernandez Pacheco is a manager of a restaurant, La Fiesta, which is a Mexican restaurant right there on Main Street in town. And I'm not sure I've ever walked into a town and asked after someone who wasn't either the mayor or some political figure, some superstar, and had so many people say to me, "Oh my gosh, Carlos!" It doesn't matter what he's doing, if you come in, he will sit down with you, and he'll ask you about your kids, and he'll ask you about your family, and everybody knows it. It'll be really hard to find somebody that doesn't. You know, I literally walked into the hair salon, and the ladies in the hair salon just couldn't be more effusive with their stories about what Carlos had done for them. He'll ask about a family member, and he may sit down and talk with him, and if that person is sick, he may go visit him in the hospital. You know, everybody you ask has a little story about Carlos. One of my buddies dad was in St. Louis in the hospital getting open heart surgery. My buddy was up there, and as he's coming down the elevator, you know, it's a two-hour trip from us. Carlos is coming up the elevator, and he's like, "Carlos, what did you do here?" And he's like, "I'm here to visit a friend." They talk about how he was really involved in raising funds in town. We've done several fundraisers together that he's held at Lafayette restaurant. So he held a Blue Lives Matters event last fall when, you know, there was so much tumult

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