When Felicita Bautista prepared her husband’s coffee and kissed him goodbye on the morning of April 16, she thought she’d hear from him at lunchtime when he usually called.

Instead, the phone rang at 8 a.m. Ms. Bautista’s husband, José Ramírez, told her immigration agents had raided the Pilgrim’s Pride chicken processing plant in downtown Chattanooga and that he had been arrested.

“At first I didn’t believe him, I thought it was a joke, but he assured me it was true,” the 28-year-old Guatemala native said.

Ms. Bautista’s husband, who had been in the United States illegally for five years and previously was deported in 2003, was among the 100 workers arrested in Chattanooga.

The couple now speak several times a day. Mr. Ramírez said the calls help him get through tedious days at the Bradley County Jail.

“The days go by very slow,” Mr. Ramírez said in a telephone interview from the jail. “It’s frustrating being separated from my family and not knowing when I will see them again. I’m only waiting for the moment when we’ll be together again.”

Mr. Ramírez is charged with re-entering the country illegally, a crime that could carry up to two years in prison, including the time he has served, before he is deported, said his appointed defense attorney Anthony Martínez. Mr. Ramírez is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 9.

To keep himself busy, Mr. Ramírez has learned to draw and periodically sends his wife and their 2-year-old son, Luís, drawings of religious figures and representations of himself and the jail.

“I want them to feel happy,” he said.

Ms. Bautista said she is working overtime — as many as 19 hours a day — since the arrest.

“Sometimes I work from 6:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. because what I earn is not enough,” she said. “I have to pay the bills, buy my son diapers. I also have to send money back to my parents in Guatemala. It’s just not enough.”

Ms. Bautista had to find a roommate to share her $700 monthly rent. She spends another $200 per month on telephone calls from her husband and sends whatever money she has left to her husband so he can buy food and hygiene products in jail.

In Ms. Bautista’s Oak Grove home, a “God Bless America” beach towel, decorated with pictures of the Twin Towers and the Statue of Liberty, hangs on the wall.

THE STORY SO FAR

On April 16, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 311 foreign nationals working at Pilgrim’s Pride sites in five states. That number included 100 first-shift workers in Chattanooga, the majority of them Guatemalans.

Arrests also occurred in Mount Pleasant, Texas; Live Oak, Fla.; Batesville, Ark.; and Moorefield, W.Va.

Of those arrested in all states, 91 were charged with criminal violations, five of them in Chattanooga, including false use of a Social Security number, document fraud and re-entering the country illegally.

Of the 100 arrested in Chattanooga, 36, mainly primary caregivers of a children, were released with a monitoring ankle bracelet.

Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.