ABSTRACT
On May 12, 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided Agriprocessors Inc., a Kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, for allegedly hiring undocumented workers. The report features an interview with Chicago Tribune journalist Antonio Olivio conducted by National Public Radio's (NPR) Michele Norris. The report features an interview with Chicago Tribune journalist Antonio Olivio conducted by NPR’s Michele Norris. The ideological construct of NPR’s “imagined nation” works in concert with market-based research to implicitly exclude individuals who do not meet their demographic summary. The chapter argues that colorblindness operates as a neoliberal form of social regulation in NPR’s broadcasts and transcriptions of the Postville raid through likening Latinas/os to “illegal” subjects whose inherent criminality discursively casts them outside the law-abiding, overwhelmingly white, and relatively affluent imagined listening community. It shows how NPR and its imagined listening audiences have absorbed a US neoliberal ethos that developed by and through a commonsense understanding of “illegal aliens” as Latina/o criminals.
