How an immigration raid changed a town

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0605/p17s08-usgn.html

Postville, Iowa - This town tucked in the black-loam corner of northeastern Iowa has long been a bustling, polyglot place. If it was a morning pastry you wanted, you could get it at a Somali-run coffee shop. Other red-brick storefronts along Lawler Street, the main thoroughfare, specialized in Mexican or Guatemalan food.

Jewish kids attended school at their own yeshiva, while their parents bought matzo ball mix and gefilte fish at a kosher restaurant and grocery store. A sign at the high school track and football field, set hard against rows of corn, cautioned youths about rollerblading or biking on the grounds – in English, Spanish, and Ukrainian.

But then federal immigration authorities raided the dominant business in town, a meat-processing plant, which employed almost half the area's 2,300 residents, many of them undocumented workers. Today, one year later, Postville is hanging on by a bib-overall thread.

Read more of this article by Steve Dinnen at the Christian Science Monitor.

Topics: Building Community, Business, Civic Life, Community Health, Economics, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), Immigrants, Work