An immigrant’s death at an Oklahoma poultry plant highlights dangerous conditions for workers
October 23, 2025
Current and former employees describe a punishing pace of work and questionable safety standards at a Heavener plant where recent immigrants fill a constant need for laborers.
It was just before 3 a.m. in March when the hum of machinery at the OK Foods poultry plant in Heavener was broken by a haunting scream, according to one worker.
That night, the sanitation crew included 49-year-old Leovigildo Ramirez Castillo, a father and immigrant from Mexico. While working above a massive auger — a screw-shaped machine that strips meat from chicken bones — Ramirez slipped through a grated floor and fell into the blades, local media reported. A co-worker rushed to shut off the power, according to a police report, but emergency responders declared him dead at the scene.
His death shines a light on the hazardous conditions faced by the thousands of workers, many of them immigrants, who keep eastern Oklahoma’s poultry plants running at breakneck speed — jobs that are often low-wage and high-risk.
The Fort Smith, Ark.-based company OK Foods, now a subsidiary of Mexican poultry giant Industrias Bachoco, employs over 700 workers at the plant in Heavener and many more contract workers. Ramirez was one of those contractors. He worked for Tennessee-based QSI LLC, which staffs the plant’s nighttime sanitation crew.
https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/an-immigrants-death-at-an-oklahoma-poultry-plant-highlights-dangerous-conditions-for-workers/
