Iowa town struggles after immigration raid

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.

A mix of cultures
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."

Walking symbols of the raid
They have become walking symbols of the raid.

Las mujeres con brazaletes. The women with bracelets.

They came from Guatemala and Mexico to work grueling 12- to 14-hour days in the Agriprocessors plant, frequently standing in boots in knee-deep water, their hands cramped and swollen from shifts salting chickens or loading meat onto trays. They earned $6.25 to $7.25 an hour, with 20-minute meal breaks and, they say, often no overtime pay.

But these women, whose faces are now creased with anguish, say they were happy.

Happy to be earning enough money to support their families. Happy to be in a place where their children's hopes could bear fruit. Happy to be carving out lives in a quiet village, far from the privation and violence of their hometowns.

May 12 changed all of that.

Now, about 20 to 25 women remain tethered to the bracelets — black electronic monitoring devices that dig into the skin of their right ankles, leaving dark bruises and painful cuts. Some women try without success to protect their flesh with makeshift bandages fashioned from bandanas and shorn socks.

And the women who happily embraced hard work are forced to subsist on donations from St. Bridget's and the local food pantry while they await court dates.

Waiting and worrying
While they wait, they worry.

Not, they say, about their own fates. But about what lies ahead for their children — those born or raised here, and those left behind in Guatemala.

"I am very nervous. I don't know what is going to happen. And I don't know if I have the strength to keep fighting," said Silvia, 39, speaking in Spanish during a support group meeting for immigrant women, too afraid to give her surname. "I wish I could plead with the judge, for my children's sake, that he would give me a little more time here so my children could continue studying, so I could keep working."

Without the income from jobs in this country, these mothers say they will not have enough money to send their children to school, to fund dreams of college and careers, and in many cases, even to buy them milk.

"You come here with so many plans, and illusions that your children will do better than you did," said Isabel Amparo Morales Diaz, 36, who left her four children in Guatemala when she came to Postville two years ago.

During their weekly phone calls, Morales' children proudly share their aspirations with their mother — one son wants to be an architect, her only daughter plans to become a doctor or a teacher.

"What joy that gives me to hear. I see that they could have a future," said Morales, sadness leaving her eyes only to resurface a moment later when reality returns. "It wounds my soul to think that I might not be able to give them what they desire, to think that I might fail them."

As Morales speaks, the other women sitting on metal chairs arranged in a circle nod their heads, faces downcast. Many are single mothers; others are married to men who were picked up in the raid and are now in jail or already deported.

All speak of the same concerns, and the same confusion. They do not understand why some people disparage them as "illegals" or "criminals." They do not understand why federal officials are pressing criminal identity theft charges against many of the detained immigrants, who say they did not know they were buying stolen information.

"I wish people could put themselves in our situation for one moment. What would they do if they were poor, if they were in dire need? Wouldn't they risk coming here as well?" asked Maria Ruiz, whose 5-year-old son was born in this country. "I wish that the hearts of people with hearts of stone, of ice, the people of ICE, could be transformed into good hearts. We came here to work, not to do harm to anyone."

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