.A small town struggles after immigration raid
POSTVILLE, Iowa (AP) - A vague unease whispered through this tiny town in northeastern Iowa, where the rolling hills are a study in vivid colors - red barns, white clapboard houses, and vibrant green cornfields plowed with almost architectural precision.
It drifted through Postville's downtown, where restaurants serving tamales share three short blocks with El Vaquero clothing store, a kosher food market and the Spice-N-Ice Liquor and Redemption store.
It nagged at Irma Rucal that Monday morning after Mother's Day weekend, as the Guatemalan immigrant worked her regular shift salting chickens at Agriprocessors, the world's largest kosher meatpacking plant and Postville's biggest employer.
Then, just after 10 a.m., that insistent murmur burst to the surface with a frantic shout:"La Migra! Salvese el que pueda!" Immigration! Save yourself if you can.
The bulk of the plant's 900 workers - mostly Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants - dashed out doors, through hallways and into corners, trying to escape federal agents conducting what would be the largest immigration raid in U.S. history.
Outside the plant, Postville Mayor Robert Penrod, alerted just before the raid, gasped at the sight of helicopters, buses, vans and armed immigration agents.
"Oh my God, we have a big problem here," Penrod thought, then cursed softly to himself.
A few blocks away, at St. Bridget's Catholic Church, the sanctuary quickly overflowed with the terrified children and spouses of detained workers. They lined the simple wooden pews, and prayed at an altar decorated with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint.
For years, even decades, these Mexican and Guatemalan families had called Postville home. Here, in a place first settled by German and Norwegian Lutherans and Irish Catholics more than 150 years ago, Hispanic immigrants were raising children, buying houses, building businesses.
Like the Hasidic Jews who came to the town in 1987 to open the meatpacking plant, and the Eastern Europeans who made up the first band of workers there, the influx of Guatemalans and Mexicans had both buffeted and bolstered this quiet community - until it reached a new cultural equilibrium.
In time, the newcomers became part of the fabric of Postville, which proudly bills itself as "Hometown to the World." Now, they were clustered in hiding or being herded away in handcuffs by immigration agents.
Officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they should not be faulted for carrying out the law and guarding against identity theft. And yet Sister Mary McCauley, the pastoral administrator at St. Bridget's, said the lament of one longtime resident, surveying the chaos unleashed by the raid, summed up the thoughts of many:
"Sister, a real terrible thing has happened to our town."
---
It was as if a tornado had whipped through the town or a flood had swallowed up houses. A disaster. Man-made, but a disaster all the same. Three months after the raid, that's how many in Postville describe the events of May 12.
Lives disrupted. People pushed out of jobs and homes. Children separated from parents. Businesses verging towards collapse.
And as in any small town swept by disaster, the community quickly banded together to help the victims.
In the days following the raid, donations of food, clothing and money poured into St. Bridget's, which became a sanctuary to nearly 400 immigrants, and to the local food pantry, flocked by families in need.
Red ribbons, symbolizing support for the detained workers, still flutter from lamp posts and tree trunks. A sign on one front lawn near the Agriprocessors plant declares: "Immigrants Welcome. Bienvenidos."
"We've got a lot of people here who need help. We can't just throw them out on the street," said the silver-haired mayor. "They're our family. They've made their homes here, had jobs here, raised families here."
As with a disaster, the initial mobilization has been followed by shifting emotions - quiet anger at the federal government's actions; outrage at allegations of abusive working conditions at the plant; and above all, worry.
The entire town seems weighed down by worry and a bone-deep weariness these days.
At a recent Sunday sermon in St. Bridget's, where the pastor, Rev. Richard Gaul, likened the need to help feed immigrant families to the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
Inside Sabor Latino, where owner Juan Figueroa eyed empty tables and sadly considered closing the Mexican grocery store next door.
In Club 51, the town bar, where a jar of pickled eggs sits on the counter and regulars jokingly count down the minutes to the "Big Ol' Fish" segment on local news. On a recent weekday evening, some longtime Agriprocessors workers downed cold beers, and quietly fretted about the raid's effect on the plant - and the stream of new people arriving in town.
Postville has lost more than one-fourth of its pre-raid population of 2,300, including 389 Agriprocessors workers who were detained by immigration officials, and scores more who have fled or gone into hiding.
About 60 workers, mostly women with small children, were released on humanitarian grounds pending court dates. Of those, 40 to 45 were required to wear black electronic monitoring bracelets, leaving them unable to work or to leave.
The Mexican and Guatemalan families who once pushed strollers along the streets or frequented the downtown stores and restaurants now try to stay out of sight.
In their place are newcomers drawn, as they were, by reports of job openings at Agriprocessors, or recruited by labor agencies contracted by the plant. Many of the new workers are Somali men who keep to themselves and gather to share food and coffee at a storefront on Postville's main drag.
"This town has constantly been changing. It had opened its heart to change, but now I sense anguish within people," said McCauley. "They are asking 'What's going to happen to the town? Do we have the strength to make another adjustment?'"
To be sure, this town with no stoplights, three churches and one Orthodox Jewish synagogue has weathered its share of change, and forged an identity by absorbing successive waves of newcomers who found their way here.
First, came the Rubashskin family, which bought a defunct meatpacking plant on the edge of town and opened Agriprocessors. A small community of Hasidic Jews from the Lubavitcher sect, including rabbis who slaughtered animals according to religious law, followed.
Then came the first group of plant workers - immigrants from Bosnia, Poland, Russia and former Soviet republics. In the late 1990s, those workers were gradually replaced by Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants.
At one time, Postville was home to people from 24 nations, speaking 17 languages.
The mix of cultures, which might be unremarkable in a larger city, is striking in this two-square-mile town set in the middle of cornfields and dairy farms.
Hasidic Jews, in traditional yarmulke, broad-brimmed hats, black pants and tzitzit(fringes visible under white shirts) can be seen walking past Guatemalan women carrying infants swaddled in the brightly-colored woven cloth emblematic of their homeland.
Inside City Hall, municipal notices are posted in English, Spanish and Hebrew, and a sign lists major Jewish holidays. At Spice-n-Ice liquor store, which once stocked 23 varieties of vodka, the shelves now hold an assortment of Mexican and Guatemalan beer.
St. Bridget's Catholic Church offers Saturday Mass in Spanish, and provides bilingual church bulletins, hymnals and prayer books. On one downtown street, the Kosher Community Grocery Market, which advertises lox, herring, bagels and challah, sits beside Rinconcito Guatemalteco, where the menu features tamales and hilacho (shredded beef).
But now, many people fear that the raid has endangered that carefully calibrated balance of cultures.
"A lot of good workers were taken away, a lot of good families are gone," said Kim Deering, 48, a lifelong Postville resident and owner of "Wishing Well," a downtown home decor and flower shop. "The community is drained, of our 'giving' energy, of wondering how long the new people will stay, if it will be a culture that fits into our community. We are grieving, scared, apprehensive."
MyWay
It drifted through Postville's downtown, where restaurants serving tamales share three short blocks with El Vaquero clothing store, a kosher food market and the Spice-N-Ice Liquor and Redemption store.
It nagged at Irma Rucal that Monday morning after Mother's Day weekend, as the Guatemalan immigrant worked her regular shift salting chickens at Agriprocessors, the world's largest kosher meatpacking plant and Postville's biggest employer.
Then, just after 10 a.m., that insistent murmur burst to the surface with a frantic shout:"La Migra! Salvese el que pueda!" Immigration! Save yourself if you can.
The bulk of the plant's 900 workers - mostly Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants - dashed out doors, through hallways and into corners, trying to escape federal agents conducting what would be the largest immigration raid in U.S. history.
Outside the plant, Postville Mayor Robert Penrod, alerted just before the raid, gasped at the sight of helicopters, buses, vans and armed immigration agents.
"Oh my God, we have a big problem here," Penrod thought, then cursed softly to himself.
A few blocks away, at St. Bridget's Catholic Church, the sanctuary quickly overflowed with the terrified children and spouses of detained workers. They lined the simple wooden pews, and prayed at an altar decorated with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint.
For years, even decades, these Mexican and Guatemalan families had called Postville home. Here, in a place first settled by German and Norwegian Lutherans and Irish Catholics more than 150 years ago, Hispanic immigrants were raising children, buying houses, building businesses.
Like the Hasidic Jews who came to the town in 1987 to open the meatpacking plant, and the Eastern Europeans who made up the first band of workers there, the influx of Guatemalans and Mexicans had both buffeted and bolstered this quiet community - until it reached a new cultural equilibrium.
In time, the newcomers became part of the fabric of Postville, which proudly bills itself as "Hometown to the World." Now, they were clustered in hiding or being herded away in handcuffs by immigration agents.
Officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they should not be faulted for carrying out the law and guarding against identity theft. And yet Sister Mary McCauley, the pastoral administrator at St. Bridget's, said the lament of one longtime resident, surveying the chaos unleashed by the raid, summed up the thoughts of many:
"Sister, a real terrible thing has happened to our town."
---
It was as if a tornado had whipped through the town or a flood had swallowed up houses. A disaster. Man-made, but a disaster all the same. Three months after the raid, that's how many in Postville describe the events of May 12.
Lives disrupted. People pushed out of jobs and homes. Children separated from parents. Businesses verging towards collapse.
And as in any small town swept by disaster, the community quickly banded together to help the victims.
In the days following the raid, donations of food, clothing and money poured into St. Bridget's, which became a sanctuary to nearly 400 immigrants, and to the local food pantry, flocked by families in need.
Red ribbons, symbolizing support for the detained workers, still flutter from lamp posts and tree trunks. A sign on one front lawn near the Agriprocessors plant declares: "Immigrants Welcome. Bienvenidos."
"We've got a lot of people here who need help. We can't just throw them out on the street," said the silver-haired mayor. "They're our family. They've made their homes here, had jobs here, raised families here."
As with a disaster, the initial mobilization has been followed by shifting emotions - quiet anger at the federal government's actions; outrage at allegations of abusive working conditions at the plant; and above all, worry.
The entire town seems weighed down by worry and a bone-deep weariness these days.
At a recent Sunday sermon in St. Bridget's, where the pastor, Rev. Richard Gaul, likened the need to help feed immigrant families to the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
Inside Sabor Latino, where owner Juan Figueroa eyed empty tables and sadly considered closing the Mexican grocery store next door.
In Club 51, the town bar, where a jar of pickled eggs sits on the counter and regulars jokingly count down the minutes to the "Big Ol' Fish" segment on local news. On a recent weekday evening, some longtime Agriprocessors workers downed cold beers, and quietly fretted about the raid's effect on the plant - and the stream of new people arriving in town.
Postville has lost more than one-fourth of its pre-raid population of 2,300, including 389 Agriprocessors workers who were detained by immigration officials, and scores more who have fled or gone into hiding.
About 60 workers, mostly women with small children, were released on humanitarian grounds pending court dates. Of those, 40 to 45 were required to wear black electronic monitoring bracelets, leaving them unable to work or to leave.
The Mexican and Guatemalan families who once pushed strollers along the streets or frequented the downtown stores and restaurants now try to stay out of sight.
In their place are newcomers drawn, as they were, by reports of job openings at Agriprocessors, or recruited by labor agencies contracted by the plant. Many of the new workers are Somali men who keep to themselves and gather to share food and coffee at a storefront on Postville's main drag.
"This town has constantly been changing. It had opened its heart to change, but now I sense anguish within people," said McCauley. "They are asking 'What's going to happen to the town? Do we have the strength to make another adjustment?'"
To be sure, this town with no stoplights, three churches and one Orthodox Jewish synagogue has weathered its share of change, and forged an identity by absorbing successive waves of newcomers who found their way here.
First, came the Rubashskin family, which bought a defunct meatpacking plant on the edge of town and opened Agriprocessors. A small community of Hasidic Jews from the Lubavitcher sect, including rabbis who slaughtered animals according to religious law, followed.
Then came the first group of plant workers - immigrants from Bosnia, Poland, Russia and former Soviet republics. In the late 1990s, those workers were gradually replaced by Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants.
At one time, Postville was home to people from 24 nations, speaking 17 languages.
The mix of cultures, which might be unremarkable in a larger city, is striking in this two-square-mile town set in the middle of cornfields and dairy farms.
Hasidic Jews, in traditional yarmulke, broad-brimmed hats, black pants and tzitzit(fringes visible under white shirts) can be seen walking past Guatemalan women carrying infants swaddled in the brightly-colored woven cloth emblematic of their homeland.
Inside City Hall, municipal notices are posted in English, Spanish and Hebrew, and a sign lists major Jewish holidays. At Spice-n-Ice liquor store, which once stocked 23 varieties of vodka, the shelves now hold an assortment of Mexican and Guatemalan beer.
St. Bridget's Catholic Church offers Saturday Mass in Spanish, and provides bilingual church bulletins, hymnals and prayer books. On one downtown street, the Kosher Community Grocery Market, which advertises lox, herring, bagels and challah, sits beside Rinconcito Guatemalteco, where the menu features tamales and hilacho (shredded beef).
But now, many people fear that the raid has endangered that carefully calibrated balance of cultures.
"A lot of good workers were taken away, a lot of good families are gone," said Kim Deering, 48, a lifelong Postville resident and owner of "Wishing Well," a downtown home decor and flower shop. "The community is drained, of our 'giving' energy, of wondering how long the new people will stay, if it will be a culture that fits into our community. We are grieving, scared, apprehensive."
MyWay
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