A decision to cut the workday for Muslims’ prayer time prompted protests at a meatpacking plant in Nebraska,top. A protest by Muslims at a plant in Colorado.

By KIRK SEMPLE

GRAND ISLAND, Nebraska - Like many workers at the meatpacking plant here, Raul A. Garcia, a Mexican-American, has watched with some discomfort as hundreds of Somali immigrants have moved to town in the past couple of years, many of them to fill jobs once held by Latino workers taken away in immigration raids.
He has been particularly troubled by the Somalis’ demand that they be allowed special breaks for prayers that are obligatory for devout Muslims. The breaks, he said, would inconvenience everyone else.
“The Latino is very humble,” said Mr. Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Incorporated, since 1994. “But they are arrogant,” he said of the Somalis. “They act like the United States owes them.”
Mr. Garcia was among more than 1,000 Latino and other workers who protested a decision by the plant’s management in December to cut their workday - and their pay - by 15 minutes to give scores of Somali workers time for evening prayers. After several days of strikes and disruptions, the plant’s management abandoned the plan.
But the dispute revealed racial and ethnic tensions in this Nebraska city of 47,000, an unexpected aftermath of the workplace raids by federal immigration authorities.
Grand Island is among a few cities where discord has arisen with the arrival of Somali workers, many of whom were recruited by employers from elsewhere in the United States after the immigration raids sharply reduced their Latino work forces. The Somalis are largely in the country legally as political refugees .
In some of these places, including Grand Island, this newest wave of immigrant workers has had the effect of unifying the other ethnic populations against the Somalis and has also diverted some of the longstanding hostility toward Latino immigrants among some native-born residents.
The federal immigration crackdown has hit meat- and poultry-packing plants hard. More than 2,000 immigrant workers in at least nine places have been detained since 2006 in major raids, most on immigration violations.
Struggling to fill grueling low-wage jobs that attract few American workers, the plants have placed advertisements in immigrant newspapers and circulated fliers in immigrant neighborhoods. Some employers, like Swift & Company, which owned the plant in Grand Island until being bought by the Brazilian conglomerate JBS last year, have made a particular pitch for Somalis because of their legal status.
The new tensions here extend well beyond the walls of the plant. There is resentment, discomfort and mistrust everywhere in Grand Island, some residents say .
In dozens of interviews here, white, Latino and other residents seemed mostly bewildered, if not downright suspicious, of the Somalis, very few of whom speak English.
“I kind of admire all the effort they make to follow that religion, but sometimes you have to adapt to the workplace,” said Fidencio Sandoval, a plant worker born in Mexico who has become an American citizen.
The Somalis, for their part, say they feel aggrieved and not particularly welcome.
“A lot of people look at you weird - they judge you,” said Abdisamad Jama, 22, a Somali who moved to Grand Island two years ago to work as an interpreter at the plant and now freelances.
Xawa Ahmed, 48, a Somali, moved to Grand Island from Minnesota last month to help organize the Somali community. A big part of her work, she said, will be to help demystify the Somalis for the larger community.
“We’re trying to make people understand why we do these things, why we practice this religion, why we live in America,” she said. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding.”