Why Ruben Gallego’s Trip to a Meatpacking Plant Matters

WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED that the first Latino U.S. senator from Arizona was visiting Iowa, it wasn’t the obvious 2028 presidential overtures that piqued my interest.

It was another stop that Sen. Ruben Gallego made that surprised me. Before his obligatory tour of the Iowa State Fair last Friday, the Arizona Democrat made a 6 a.m. visit to the JBS Foods meatpacking plant in Marshalltown.

Visiting a meatpacking plant is a clear way to try and appeal to working-class voters. But JBS is also on the forefront of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, with another one of their Iowa plants telling 200 workers recently that their visas had been revoked because the president was ending their protected status. The race to succeed Trump is going to be a free-for-all, and Gallego may be one of the entrants in the field. His visit to the meatpacking plant suggests his approach, should he run, won’t be the same as recent Democrats.

Those on the ground are already noticing. Joe Henry, the state political director for the League of United Latin American Citizens in Iowa, has held positions with the Hispanic civil rights group since 1982.¹ So he has seen his fair share of election cycles and candidates. He spoke with Gallego in Des Moines and found Gallego to be not just the kind of younger, fresher face Democrats need, but also one who can speak to voters in “working-class terms.”

“It’s about time,” he said. “We need these elected Democrats to be touching base with working people.”

Chuck Rocha, who served as a senior adviser to Gallego’s Senate campaign, explained the political value of Gallego’s approach. “To be able to go on the shop floor and speak English and Spanish is a goldmine for people putting together strategy on how to reach Latino men who drifted from the party,” Rocha told me. “Relatability is something you can’t train a candidate to be, you’re either relatable or not.”

After Gallego’s visit, I spoke to him about how immigration fits into his vision of a workers-first Democratic party, his party’s lackluster response to Trump’s violent and punitive mass deportations, and Gallego’s vote earlier this year for the Laken Riley Act, which many Democrats and advocates have come to view as a major mistake. I also asked him about his 2028 plans—but no spoilers! Read on to see what he did or didn’t rule out. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

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ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO: Thanks for chatting, senator. I understand the broader 2028 questions people throw at you when they see your recent trip. But I want to start with: Why the heck are you at a meatpacking plant in Iowa at 6 a.m.?

RUBEN GALLEGO: That’s the shift that I used to work growing up when I worked in a meatpacking factory. And so I think it’s important that we as elected officials, especially Democrats—since we kind of lost contact with the 6 a.m. shift worker, and don’t really have their support anymore—go back out there and meet them where they are.

CARRASQUILLO: I hear from Democrats and advocates all the time, explanations, excuses, or anger about the party not being able to speak about immigration. Where have you seen the party err in not being able to speak forcefully and morally about the unpopular overreach from the president on immigration?

GALLEGO: The thing is they’re afraid to say anything one way or the other and I think they’re not recognizing the fact that most Americans understand that the policies are kind of complex. But they’re not saying things that are fairly simple, ‘Yes we want border security, but no we don’t want to be separating families.’ That’s the message that I’ve been continuing to say everywhere. We as a party should be very happy that illegal crossing is down to zero. But at the same time we have to be advocating for keeping families together, finding a pathway to citizenship, giving Dreamers access to the American Dream, and then even right now dealing with these roundups, standing up for individual rights against racial profiling, and coming up with a solution.

And my solution is, ...