Deportations Could Upend This Parachute Factory
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A couple months ago, our colleague Ruth Simon took a trip to Asheville, North Carolina to tour a factory there. I've got a five-minute tour and a five-hour tour and everything in between. Okay, I'll take the in-between. Ruth is being led around the factory by John Oswald, CEO of Mills Manufacturing.

Mills isn't just any factory. They make crucial equipment for the U.S. military, specifically parachutes. When a soldier jumps out of a plane, whether on a training mission or in combat, there's a good chance they're trusting a Mills parachute to carry them safely to the ground. And if you have any questions or you're curious about anything, don't hesitate to stop and ask me. I'm fascinated. I'm just trying to take it all in.

Overhead, fluorescent lights illuminate rows of workstations covered with fabrics, straps and thread. There are hundreds of sewing machines in the mills factory, operated by employees who painstakingly cut and stitch each piece of each parachute. So how many steps to make a parachute? Oh, so from this particular one, there's 27 steps.

A single skipped stitch among thousands is considered a major defect. Throughout the factory, signs spell out the company's mission: to bring troops safely to the ground 100 percent of the time. — And your signs are all in—oh, you have it—wait, so you have— — We have it in multiple languages. — So English, Spanish— — Moldovan and Russian. But we also speak Ukrainian and Romanian.

Mills' signage is multilingual to reflect its workforce. A third of the factory's 155 employees are U.S.-born. The rest are immigrants. And dozens of them are here in the U.S. under an immigration status called humanitarian parole. It's a status that has come under fire from the Trump administration. And that's putting the Mills factory, its workers, and its ability to keep making parachutes at risk.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Thursday, June 5th. Coming up on the show, these workers make parachutes for the military. Now, they fear deportation.

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Mills Manufacturing has been making parachutes since World War II. It's one of just two companies in the U.S. that are qualified to make the MC-6 and the T-11, the military's main personnel parachutes. I had no idea what went into making a parachute for the military. This week, I chatted with Ruth about her visit to Mills. There is so little margin for error. So, like, if there is a flaw in the parachute,

in one of these parachutes, the consequences could be really severe and very, very tragic. You're talking about people's lives who are at stake. The man in charge of this tricky production is the one who is touring Ruth around, John Oswald. Good morning. Morning. He has short salt-and-pepper hair, a calm demeanor, and knows this factory inside and out.

Oswald's been the CEO of Mills for 16 years, but he's worked there for even longer. You've been here for how many years? I've been here 27 years. Oswald joked with Ruth that he is one of the few people at Mills who doesn't sew, but he keeps the business running. Back in 2020, Oswald had a problem. Mills was getting more orders for parachutes than it could produce. Oswald needed more workers, but the labor market was tight.

And his recruiting efforts were coming up short. We just, we weren't able to hire the people. What was going on in the workforce, there weren't people out there looking for work. The pay at Mills is decent. Workers can earn up to 20 bucks an hour, plus overtime. And they can get raises for mastering additional skills. But the work is difficult. Training a new worker can take months. And some don't stick around for long.

Mills' employees cut and sew for 10-hour shifts. Many, many steps to making these parachutes. It is repetitive work. It requires a lot of attention and a lot of... And it's not work for everyone. But around the summer of 2023, Oswald noticed that hiring was starting to get easier. At first, he didn't understand why.

We just noticed there were a lot more people coming in and the people that were coming in were staying. We would have people that were coming in via referral. We would have people that were coming in just showing up at our door and putting in an application.

One big reason why those people were suddenly showing up was a policy shift from the White House. — Now, the Biden administration has promised to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into this country. — Mills started to see more and more job applicants who are in the U.S. through a program called humanitarian parole. It's a special status for immigrants who can demonstrate that they have an urgent need for safety. For example, because their home governments are targeting them or their country is under attack.

It's been around for decades, but President Biden expanded it significantly. His administration opened up humanitarian parole for people from Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. And some of those new immigrants were showing up in Asheville, North Carolina, knocking on the door of the Mills factory. It just kind of happened. We didn't necessarily go and say, oh, let's go and tap into this community. We kind of found each other organically, naturally.

Mills' workforce has been diverse for decades, with about a third of its employees coming from the U.S., a third from Eastern Europe, and a third from Latin America. Today, dozens of Mills' immigrant employees are on humanitarian parole. What's been the most difficult parts of making that United Nations work? Oh, the language barrier is a challenge.

Oswald says employees use Google Translate to communicate. Multilingual staff members often double as interpreters on the factory floor. Many of Mills' employees gather each Friday for a two-hour English class, and they share meals together a few times a year. I want to come to the potluck. Huh? I want to come to the potluck dinner. They are pretty impressive. During her visit to the Mills factory, Ruth spent part of the day posted up in a small conference room.

There, she met with some employees, including a sewer from Nicaragua. -William, and your last name is? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 10. - 10. - William Gonzalez Gonzalez is 33

— So they had the opportunity to come by the parole program. — In 2018, González participated in a government protest while he was a student in Nicaragua.

— That year, hundreds of people were killed while demonstrating against the country's former president. — So pretty much whenever the protest was going on, what he saw, it was pretty much a lot of violence from the police against the people that was doing that. So that made him fear to participate again.

And how did you find this job? So he had already a cousin working in here. So there's five relatives in total that work here. When Gonzales joined Mills last year, he had no sewing experience. But he proved a quick learner. His job is to sew nylon straps, pockets, and flaps. These parts are made with thicker fabrics that require more strength to maneuver.

Gonzalez told Ruth he sees a future for himself at Mills. He's interested in training to become a mechanic. Because he's a good learner, he would like to learn that, and he said he already talked to his supervisor about it. But last week, Gonzalez's future at Mills got more complicated. That's after the break.

— My administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. — On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the end of humanitarian parole programs for four Latin American countries. The administration said that humanitarian parole programs were always meant to be short-lived, and that the Biden administration used them too broadly to protect immigrants from deportation.

That executive order was paused by a federal court. But then, last week... The Supreme Court has just cleared the Trump administration to temporarily end humanitarian parole protections for 500,000 immigrants. This ruling will allow the Trump administration to terminate their parole legal status and also their work permits that have allowed them to live and work in the U.S. legally.

About half a million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua have lost their legal status as a result of the Supreme Court's move. Many have pending applications for other immigration statuses they hope will protect them from deportation. And so that's creating a lot of anxiety and a lot of confusion among workers and their employers. And everyone's trying to figure it out.

including at the Mills Parachute Factory. Eleven employees are from countries directly impacted by Friday's Supreme Court order. It's a meaningful portion of...

of Mills' workforce. These people all work together, and one step is important, and one skill is important. It sounds like you take one person out of that production line, and you're not just going to miss them, but the people who are connected to them in the process are also going to have problems. You can't just say, we're going to bring someone new in, even if you can find them, and they're going to be able to step in and fully do the job.

right away. Mills CEO John Oswald told Ruth on her tour that if Mills loses its employees on humanitarian parole, the company might struggle to fill the military's parachute orders. We would then have to go and prioritize and work with the government to say, what's your priority? What do you need us to focus on? Because we can't. We can't do everything. And then we would have to start over and try and rebuild the workforce and

in other ways, but it would take us a long time to recover. I mean, do you think would it take a year, five years, two years? Oh, I mean, to recover from that, it would... Oh, I don't think I could recover in a year. It would be difficult to understand what that would do to the labor market because, again, we're looking for very...

for people that want to come in and work and sew and work in this environment. Not everybody does. You spoke with John Oswald just briefly after the court's move last week. How did he seem? How was he thinking about all of this?

I think he's very concerned about the impact of these changes in immigration policies on his business, but also on the people who work there. And he kept saying that to me. How many other employers like Mills could this court move impact?

Lots and lots and lots. You have big companies that employ people through these kinds of programs. You have small employers that employ people through these kinds of programs. They are scattered all across the country.

Workers on humanitarian parole work at companies like Amazon, GE, and Marriott. And at smaller employers, like Eli's Cheesecake in Chicago. And Goodwin Living, which runs senior living communities in the D.C. area. And what about William Gonzalez? What could this ruling mean for him? I haven't spoken to William since this decision came down, but...

I know he wants to stay here. He wants to work here. He wants to work here legally. And he's trying to figure out how to keep his status solid. One way he's trying to do that is by applying for asylum, which, if granted, would allow him to remain lawfully in the U.S. Gonzalez submitted his application for asylum a few months ago, back when Trump returned to the White House.

— Most of Mills' employees impacted by last week's decision have also applied for asylum. — What Gonzales doesn't want to do is go back to Nicaragua. When Ruth was at the factory, he told her he was afraid of what might happen to him if he returned. — So pretty much the biggest fear is to go back because whenever they go back, it sounds like they investigate them whenever they get there.

And if they participate in anything that it was pretty much against the government, they may end up in jail or they don't know what else they do. Gonzalez is weighing his options. But for now, he's still coming to work, still sewing the parachutes that'll keep U.S. troops safe. That's all for today, Thursday, June 5th.

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